An inebriated heckler gatecrashed the final session of a three-day arts conference in Cape Town this week in a bizarre conclusion to a talk shop that was slow to start and strong to finish. The event was hosted at the International Convention Centre by a cultural project called CAPE to discuss a mooted art biennial for Cape Town to kick off in September next year.
Artist Wayne Barker disrupted the final session on Tuesday by stumbling to the speakers’ table clutching a glass bottle and proclaiming himself drunk and bored. He was eventually escorted out before returning minutes later to moan from the side: ‘I feel impaled. I feel lost.”
The sideshow offended some delegates whose patience was already strained by heckling in the audience. Artist Mustafa Maluka suggested a different tone had to be found for debate. ‘Some people were very disrespectful of the spaces … What gives them the right? It is disturbing that this kind of stuff can happen. There are certain rules that govern society and if you don’t follow these rules there are repercussions. It spoilt my day. It’s good to be critical but we have a lot of things to think about,” he said.
A number of delegates agreed the art world needed to find a new language for constructive engagement. Western Cape government policy adviser Edgar Pieterse suggested the ferocity of debate was connected with the dearth of forums: ‘People are anxious to be included because they have so little contact and can’t access the information.”
Barker’s disruption capped a day of strong opinions. The most volatile panel addressed art practice and activism, with each of the four speakers surpassing the other in the provocation stakes.
Artist and scholar Thembinkosi Goniwe fired the first salvo. In a familiar broadside, he accused the art world of prematurely brushing aside identity politics and called the industry pretentious. Kendell Geers said that was precisely why he worked in it: ‘It’s the most charged, volatile and important space in terms of high capitalism in the world today. If you want to put a bomb at the centre of the capitalist beast, the place to do it is London, New York or Paris. The captains of industry don’t go to church but to art galleries and museums and that’s where they put their faith … If you can change the minds of one person in that space, the trickle-down effect is powerful.”
Artist Tracey Rose was clearly preoccupied with strained relations between herself and the organisers, but the audience never quite got the gist of her disjointed ramblings. She closed with invective directed towards the former minister of education, Kader Asmal, — the patron of CAPE’s project.
And poet Lesego Rampolokeng claimed he was a living art work — ‘a walking poem”, in fact. He presented a linguistically crafted critique of the art world to prove his point. ‘Artists have fallen in love with their chains and polish them with their brains,” he said. ‘We do not have a culture of criticism, just a tradition of bitching.”
The audience took its cue and the closing session included heated debate. Even Geers, who is no stranger to controversy, was surprised at the degree of hostility. He said: ‘There are so many problems and few processes to address them. But we share a central agenda: how to make South Africa more active in the field of African art. To be really liberated, we have to become African.”
But, the numerous African delegates had struggled to get to the conference in the first place. Every African panelist required intervention from CAPE to assist with obtaining visas. Visa problems contributed to the no-show of some high-profile guests such as Olu Oguibe, Mai Abu El Dahab and Moshekwa Langa.
Departing delegates were left none the wiser about the ultimate shape of any proposed September event. They expressed frustration at the absence of a response from the CAPE organisers — in particular from artistic director Gavin Jantjes, who left the conference early. But CAPE’s CEO Susan Glanville-Zini said Jantjes was only officially appointed last week and the expectation was ‘ridiculous”.
Jantjes said in his keynote speech that new paradigms did not cost anything except thought and discussion: ‘It is not a monetary issue but a thinking question.” It soon emerged that the lofty ideals of the proposed Cape biennial are rooted in a far more pragmatic concern about bums on seats — and not of the theatrical kind.
The Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) was one of the first parties to climb on board when the initiative was suggested in 2003, according to Glandville-Zini.
ACSA has a vested interest in seeing more tourists pass through customs and in the process help the Western Cape economy. The Department of Arts and Culture has reportedly committed R3-million over three years to help fund CAPE’s initiative but it was actually the tourism board that first supported the idea.
Jantjes said tourism and art were not opposed. He said they could work together and that finding synergies would involve business as well as the government. ‘Cultural investment is very important to develop the nation as a whole. It is not returned in cash but in the spirit of the country,” he said.