“The biennale that doesn’t want to be considered a biennale which was becoming a biennale that became an exhibition ...

JUST when Joburg thought it was a leap ahead in the culture stakes, after the second Joburg Art Fair managed to pull 4000 more aesthetically minded day-trippers than it did last year, Cape Town is about to pull a rabbit out of its hat with Cape 09.

Next Saturday sees the launch of this citywide festival of contemporary art events, which aims to transform Cape Town into an African art hub for almost two months, from May 2 until June 21. On the Foreshore end of Long Street at 7pm there’ll be a one-hour procession inspired by the Cape Town Carnival. Curated by Claire Tancons (New Orleans, US), A Walk in the Night stages an inventive shadow play by visual artist Marlon Griffith (Trinidad) and composer Garth Erasmus (Cape Town), along with 100 local participants, that tells the story of Cape Town’s forced removals. There is some scepticism around the event being touted as “the second biennale exhibition of contemporary African culture”.

The local art world has lived through the foul-mouthed talkshop that was Sessions eKapa in 2005, then all the hype that led up to TransCape, which was described by Nigerian curator Bisi Silva as: “The biennale that doesn’t want to be considered a biennale which was becoming a biennale that became an exhibition that is now a process-driven project.”

Although it had to be radically reconceptualised at the 11th hour due to a funding shortfall, TransCape did actually take place in 2007 — but the feedback was fairly lukewarm.

This year’s programme looks more promising. With art projects ranging from explorations of Brenda Fassie’s roots to interventions on city transport routes, Cape 09 seems to have evolved out of an impulse to connect and jump social borders.

Far from taking place in the standard white cube gallery venues, events have been planned to traverse socioeconomic and geographic divides, and to open doors into new spaces such as the Cape Town Station, the City Library, Langa High School and Lookout Hill in Khayelitsha.

Cape 09 is the brainchild of the Cape Africa Platform, headed since 2007 by Mirjam Asmal-Dik who, after years of art experience in Europe, was manager of Pro Helvetia Cape Town (Swiss Arts Council) for a good stretch. “Cape 09: Convergence seeks to explore networks that accentuate the contemporary characteristics of Africa and highlight the way we create, consume, learn, share resources and interact with each other,” she says.

Robert Weinek, who co- ordinates the Young Curators’ Programme, has something of a cult following, built up over years of experience in the film industry, as proprietor of the legendary Bob’s Bar in Troyeville, at the Haenel Gallery in Cape Town and as co-ordinator of two Soft Serve events at Iziko SA National Gallery, among other projects.

Much of the Cape 09 programme has been cooked up by three bright young curators, Lerato Bereng, Nonkululeko Mlangeni and Loyiso Qanya, who participated in an intensive 18-month curators’ programme.

Qanya’s Khayelitsha exhibition, Umahluko, features work by Jane Alexander (SA), Rosy Sbrana (Botswana), Antonio Etona (Angola), Cremildo Walter Zandamela (Mozambique) and more.

For Thank You Driver, Bereng has overseen the conversion of six minibus taxis into “artworks on wheels”, so you can take a ride and experience moving artworks by writer Lebohang Thulo (SA); painter and sculptor Edwige Aplogan (Benin); video artist and writer Pompilio “Gemuce” Hilário (Mozambique); sound artist Isa Suarez (France/UK); performance and video artist Nastio Mosquito (Angola), cutting-edge collective Gugulective; and last year’s Absa L’Atelier winner James Webb (SA).

Mlangeni’s So Who Is Brenda Fassie is “a site and context- specific, oral history, ‘pop’ art exhibition” that brings together artists and members of the community to explore Fassie’s legacy, from her early days in Langa to stardom.

Meanwhile, visitors to the Cape Town Station will find TV appliance vendor stalls converted into galleries screening the One Minute World exhibition, featuring short videos by 840 artists from around the world.

The station platform will also play host to a range of interventions by artists and curators including Nicola Grobler (SA), Meschac Gaba (Benin-Netherlands) and Project Phakama Collective: Mwenya Kabwe (SA-Zambia) and Katy Streek (SA-Netherlands).


So pack up your cynicism in your old kit bag and hope that Cape 09 succeeds in being a gobsmackingly diverse and original biennale that does not just enact the vision of one or two pop-star curators.

CAPE África - Debates a fazer

A arte contemporânea tem fronteiras? Tem referências? O que entendemos por Arte Contemporânea Africana? Porque razão a maior parte das Bienais Africanas se limitam aos artistas africanos?

CAPE África

Debates em Maputo -C. C. Franco Moçambicano - Nov 2008

A necessidade de uma discussão alargada e de tornar públicos os resultados obtidos, são os objectivos das sessões de debates promovidas pela CAPE AFRICA PLATAFORM. Maputo e Luanda foram capitais escolhidas para sessões de debates de workshops alargados a artistas e público em geral.

Para que a discussão perdure e outros contributos surjam, deixamos aqui a intervenção que o Gemuce fez na confenrência do Cape África em Angola.

Referências, identidades e preconceitos
"Eu sou inteligente porque venho de África e não porque sou africano."
Bento Carlos Mukesswane

Um dos grandes desafios do Movimento de Arte Contemporânea de Moçambique - MUVART ao longo do exercício das suas actividades, tem sido a difusão do seu manifesto pelo público, a sua tradução nas curadorias que faz, na produções dos seus membros ou mesmo do seu posicionamento político.

A afirmação "não queremos ser uma África estagnada nas suas tradições…", tem suscitado observações críticas por parte de algumas pessoas que interpretam esta afirmação como um discurso traidor de valores culturais africanos. Contrariamente, o discurso Muvart pretende exactamente promover os valores culturais africanos, se não mesmo Humanos, em que "mudanças de mentalidade" libertadoras de algemas preconceituosas são a força locomotiva deste movimento.

Estas algemas não estão somente nas cabeças dos africanos, permanecem um pouco por todo o mundo. É um desafio de todos e só ganha aquele que se tiver libertado. A minha paixão particular sobre arte contemporânea reside também nesta liberdade preconizada na sua estética. Entende-se que a necessidade de valorização da identidade "folclórica" seja importante, mas não se pode confundir com o sentido funcional da dinâmica de um movimento artistico global. Se percebermos e aceitarmos que a linguagem contemporânea ou conceptual, não pertence ao ocidente mas sim ao universo percebemos que o processo de libertação já está em curso. África só pode ter identidade nesta dinâmica se poder participar activamente nela. Aliás, África é uma referência e não uma identidade. Não estou com isto a propor esquecimento das tradições, antes proponho que se faça uso do que possa ser necessário para funcionar hoje, para todos, se for o caso.

Obviamente a construção desta comunicação contemporânea não depende somente das instituições consagradas como tal, mas de uma interacção intelectual, de observações e questionamentos partilhados sob diversas formas e em diversos espaços.

CAPE África
Debates em Maputo -Rua D'Arte - Nov 2008

Are there any frontier’s for contemporary African Art? Is there any reference? How do we understand contemporary African Art?

The need for an open and broad discussion and public promotion of the results of this and other issues is the objective of the debate session’s promoted by the Cape African Platform.
Maputo and Luanda were the chosen capital’s for the debate session’s, consisting of open workshops for artists and the general public.
In the spirit of the continuity and future contribution, here is the intervention by the artist Gemuce from the Cape Africa session in Angola.

Reference’s, Identity, Prejudice

"I am intelligent because I come from Africa not because I am an African."
Bento Carlos Mukeswane

One of the greatest challenges for the Movimento de Arte Contemporanea - Muvart throughout its practice has been to make its manifesto known to the public, its translation into curator-ship practices, artistic production and political positioning.

The statement ‘we don’t want to be a traditionally stagnated Africa’ has been interpreted through critical observations by some people has a betrayal to the African cultural values.Contrary to this, the Muvart discourse is intended to promote African Cultural values up to Human Values by which changes of mentality would open and free us from prejudices in an ongoing strength of cultural movement.

This prejudices are not only in the minds of the African’s, but consistently all over the world. Thos is a challenge for everyone and will win the one who has freed himself.My special passion for contemporary art resides also in the freedom of its aesthetics. The need to value the ‘folkloric’ identity is important but cannot be mistaken with the dynamic functional sense of an artistic movement. If we understand and accept that contemporary language does not belong to the West, but rather to the dynamic cultural universe, it is seen clearly the course to freedom. Africa can only have identity in this dynamic’s if actively participates in it. Africa is a reference not an identity. I am not suggesting that we forget our traditions, but we rather make use of whatever is necessary to work today for all if necessary.

Obviously the construction of this contemporary communication relies on established institutions as such, but more also on intellectual interaction, observation’s and shared questioning in different form’s and places.