Spring

Intraparadox: Interview with Lebohang Kganye

Mohlokomedi wa Tora

»On the 30 August 2018 at the Pretoria Art Museum I had the privilege of interviewing Lebohang Kganye on her solo exhibition Mohlokomedi wa Torai. The body of work that she has produced for this project gives two matriarchical perspective of her family narratives from where Ke Sa Le Teng her SASOL New Signatures winning video installation left of.

Mohlokomedi wa Tora Installation 1

Mmutle Arthur Kgokong: Thank you Lebohang for agreeing to talk to me once more. Uhm, it is a very interesting exhibition from the winning work last year. When I first saw that it is an installation I was struck by the fact that you have included your old man in this exhibition to give us that familiar element in your work. I just wanna ask you, you know, how has it been for your to create a new body of work for this solo project? Having won the prize last year, how did you produce this work?

Lebohang Kganye: I think it is daunting, I think even when I won it, I have been thinking about working in a particular way or experimenting with something very particular which was installation. I have already done it but I have never really resolved it, I have been doing it for the animation pieces and for the photography element uhm people should experience the work in that was, but I have never resolved it how to… because it was temporal, because it was softer cardboard. How to make it stand. Or be more permanent if you can say so was not really resolved. So this was great because it allowed me the time I had a good budget to kinda figure out and experiment with that. So I think it was great because I already had an idea of what I wanted to do was an installation, even though I wanted it to move, and this and this and that, but it was just such a great starting point and I am extremely excited about how this part of it is resolved

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What happens if you press share/what happens if you publish

•A part of a larger amount which is divided among or contributed by a number of people

IT is not really rocket science that we live in a world that is so interconnected that more people know more about you than you can imagine. If we could allow some semblance we can always think about the internet as an inner-verse. An internal world to this one but a world that permeates our physical constructs and to a certain extend holds it in checks and balances as far as certain aspects of our modern society is concerned. i.e all the activities we do on the net both good and bad stuff

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Birth – for the old folks arcade gamers of Phelindaba

 *The beginning of this something

I have never had an interest in gambling. My ignorance extends from as far afield as the casual game of cards to a game of Dice. I knew a Knoxman while still at high school. Here was a man whose ways were outlawed from his garb to his disdain for protocol. Despite our school’s rules and regulations his feet were always kicked into a pair of All-Star Converse with some Grey Dickies spilling over them instead of the conventional Toughies and Grey Flannels. Occasionally he’d swap the Converse for a pair of Florsheims, always looked dapper the pantsula way that gent; I suspected that the game of chance, his mind always drifted towards during the course of the day, had something to do with money-Kachin that jingled in his back pocked whenever he chested into class or chested out either at change period or our breaks or when he decided that that was the day for him and He would rather go off to start his skool sa ma’dice some where in the school’s premises, especially those undiscoverable corners where only our School Principal braved to check in during his rounds. Mr. Knoxman forced issues with his kickers and overall attire until the teachers tolerated him

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Intraparadox: Interview with Elizabeth Balcomb

Auguries of Innocence

4 September at 09:40, Pretoria Art Museum

 Elizabeth Balcomb standing next to 'Son of Man, 2015' (3)

SELF PRESERVATION

Mmutle Arthur Kgokong: I hope you are ok this morning

Elizabeth Balcomb: I’m good very good, yes, yes

Mmutle AK: You slept in Pretoria or in Johannesburg? (laughs)

Elizabeth B: No in Pretoria, geeze just up the road, very closed. I’m fresh

MAK: …yah well I am glad that you are…

EB: close, close

MAK: fresh, you know, after last night’s busy evening.

EB: yes-yes

MAK: And thank you for agreeing to speak to me Elizabeth. Ehhm, I just want us to start right at the beginning. Where were you born, and you know, what was it like growing up where you were born?

EB: Alight, I was born in Westerneria, but ehhm when I was not even three months old my parents moved to Howick in KZN, ya, and then we moved to Pietermaritzburg after, …my father was a minister of a church, but this was during apartheid days, and he was part of the underground [movement] to overthrow the government and in his church he wanted black people to come…and and just start changing South Africa but [the church] elders kicked him out as a result and so we had to leave Howick and moved to Pietermaritzburg and he started lecturing Theology and so yah that was very part of my life was that experience, Yah…

MAK: So (interrupts)

EB: but, about, I wanted to be …no, I was told the moment I started drawing pictures that I was talented and I had always had that encouragement my whole life and when I was about eleven years old I saw a sculpture and I wanted to start sculpting from about that age

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ShowMax Deluxe is Naspers’ leap frog

*ShowMax Deluxe does not exist, it is a proposed concept

{UPON} its announcement to enter the fray of subscription video on demand (SVOD) at the over the top (OTT) content market ShowMax’s pre-narrative was told from two divergent but parallel strands. Naspers was pregnant with a subscription video on demand service. Upon its launch, it would offer subscription video on demand service via streaming – which was nothing new considering what was going on. Parallel to that narrative strand, a story was told of how it would compete with MultiChoice’s DStv, a satellite based pay television service. That narrative strand has pretty much remained the same following its activation a couple of weeks ago

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Evanescent Friendship

*Soon passing out of sight, memory or existence

 

ΤΗΣ day I found friendship was the day Desmond and I were caught by surprise by a low flying airplane while playing on a mound of sand at my grandmother’s backyard one summer’s day. Having being forced earlier to drink castor oil by our mothers who happened to be affectionate friends, we messed our pants when we scurried away in a fright-flight away from the big iron monstrosity that streak-hovered passed us like a big gong bell.

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The Evanescent POST

*The official service or system that delivers letters and parcels

I have been waiting ages for some items I have ordered oversee. Actually for special effects purposes this opening line stretches the period immensely. But it does feel like a long time ago compared to the previous times when I had ordered books or electronics devises from oversee and used my post box address. Usually the items will reach me in or within a month’s time. The whole waiting period back then had been normalized. What is a month if you know for sure that you will receive your items? And you find solace in the thought that your nosy neighbors won’t have an opportunity to claw and sniff at your parcel with curiosity at your apartment block before you marvel at it with bated breath prior to its ceremonious unwrapping.

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At the other end; a person *unknown and the Dandy Kleva

*not known or familiar.*an unknown person or thing.

I

IN a world where it is easy to make new friends without meeting people in person, where business cards, at the brink of their extinction, are given out for their novelty’s sake to people who may never call you; In a world where the mobile phone has grown smarter from its former self wherein during its evolutionary journey to where it is today it had been used as a prop of multifarious progress, of which one of those uses was as a mirror, then quite recently evolving into a device capable of not only immortalizing its owner through a selfie situation quirky of indulgence but also to be a buffet sandwich of personal prime intel (psst, titbit – we ought to be jovial that there are undeniable signs that size-wise the device, having undergone loss of buttons, is taking a cul-de-sac to pay homage to its hefty ancestor). Now in this intricate plot of un-calculated fortunes – there lurks a dark force between people who know each other and perfect strangers, an in-between world, a world of the chippers blessed with the power to annoy all and sundry. Out of this quagmire rises persistent people whose main goal is to walk into our world and offer, without an invitation, an all out assault of stuff you don’t want.

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Speed Blog: 21 September 1976

I am writing this shortly before I turn 38. Let me give it to you in a straight line, I never feel any different on my birthday. But naturally like any other person I do reflect on the preceding year with some sweetness and bitterness. Besides, due to the fact that I am not a hermit there will be reminders in the morning that I am not alone in this journey we call life as close friends, family and colleagues heap happy birthday and a good year ahead wishes to me.

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An Epilogue to ‘Liberty’

WRITING is a solitary undertaking. It can always be akin to a striptease activity harboring towards the naked exposure wherein the pole becomes a limp and useless thing at the climax of the show. Your readers are bound to make certain assumptions about you as you put your soul out there in order to drive a point home. If you are committed to writing at an intense level, sometimes you even reveal your deepest ideals, especially when dealing with something that eats away at you and personally you feel next to no one as you brave a step into the forbidden alleyway to confront the so called Elephant in the room head on. Your readers might just have it in their head that they know you. Do they? Rare are those moments when someone will read your work, feel a connection and seek you in the public square to proudly announce that they heard your gospel and that it spoke to them. It is a sham if a writer pretends to hold on to certain ideals while falsely misleading his readers simply because he wants to score a crowd. Readers read between the words.

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