A THE STIMULEYE PRODUCTION
directed by Antoine Asseraf
filmed & edited by Thibault Della Gaspera
interviews Filep Motwary
coordination Clementine Colson
sound design Ça Va Chéri

Yes, this Hyères, festival graduates Felipe Oliveira Baptista (2002) and Charles Fréger (2001) return, not as young hopeful nominees, but as still-young confirmed professionals, now presiding over the juries.

Hyères 2013 fashion jury president Felipe Oliveira Baptista. Photo by René Habermacher.

Hyères 2013 preview. Visual by The Stimuleye.

And the nominees are…

FASHION SELECTION
Tomas Berzins & Victoria Feldman, Latvia + Russia
Henning Jurke, Germany
Camille Kunz, Switzerland
Yvonne Poei-Yie Kwok, The Netherlands
Xénia Lucie Laffely, France – Switzerland
Satu Maaranen, Finland
Marion de Raucourt, France
Damien Ravn, Norway
Shanshan Ruan, China
Xing Su, Canada

PHOTO SELECTION
Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, Switzerland
Emile Barret, France
Petros Efstathiadis, Greece
David Favrod, Switzerland
Dominic Hawgood, United Kingdom
Grace Kim, USA
John Mann, USA
Anna Orlowska, Poland
Peter Puklus, Hungary
Eva Stenram, Sweden

Fitting Model at the fashionselection at Felipe Oliveira Baptista's headquarters.

Where is JP Blanc there are always flowers.

The fashion selection meeting, with jury members, festival director JP Blanc and blogger Filep Motwary.

Photography selection: Portfolio of Dominic Hawgood, United Kingdom.

The entry of Petros Efstathiadis, Greece.

Prints of Eva Stenram, Sweden.

Full jury and exhibit lists coming soon, but we’re happy to report that fashion photographer and film maker Pierre Debusschere will be among this year’s exhibitors.

28th International Fashion & Photography Festival
Hyères 2013, April 25 -> 29
at Villa Noailles, Hyères

Forget the market.
For founder James Brett, it’s about special things, made by special people, people who haven’t gone to art school or thought of showing their work, much less of selling it.

Antoine Asseraf: What started you on The Museum of Everything project ?

James Brett: I don’t come from a particularly artistic family and my parents never taught me what creativity meant – but as a child I had a lot of it and it always got in the way.

And so I worked in different industries and was working in film, and I remember meeting a very interesting photographer, the late Bob Richardson. He was the father of Terry Richardson. Terry’s a terrible photographer (sorry!) but Bob was a genius. He was the first person who really told me that “You don’t choose it, it chooses you”.

In the same way, I can’t really tell you why I started The Museum of Everything. I didn’t set out to do it, I wasn’t interested in art, exhibitions, nothing. But I was working in film and I know film very well, I studied acting, so I’m creatively interested. And in my travels I started to see artworks, first of all by people in the American South, that was just cool and graphic. I always liked graphic novel and comics as a child – and as an adult frankly – and they started speaking to me.

The artworks were cheap, really like 20-25 bucks, and the more I looked the more I found. I started finding better examples, and realized there was a whole history in America of folk art, African-American art and self-taught art which seemed to come from the individual, it didn’t have the pretension or the words of formally-trained artists, and it was immediate. As a film-maker I loved that, because I’m not really interested in what you are or what you say, I’m interested in the stuff, in what you do.

As I continued I saw there were some other areas that had a great psychological depth. For example, the work of Henry Darger. I discovered there was a word for it, Art Brut, of which Dubuffet was the proponent. And that also interested me because in my youth, I was fascinated by the mind, how the mind works, and why we make the choices we do, all of this sort of existential philosophy of life.

Prophet Royal Robertson
untitled (NO DIVORCE WHORE's ALLOWED), c 1980
© The Museum of Everything

Henry Darger
untitled (Mascot Girlscout 20th Grade), c 1940/60
© The Museum of Everything

I also saw there were no museums in Britain that really showed this work, and when a big museum did a show, it kind of fell short of the truth and beauty of the work because historical curators often do not present this art with life or communicate the life and passion of these artists. They neutralize it, and contextualize it and dampen it, instead of this great glorious sound, you hear this “eek eek” tiny squeak.

I got to know a few people in the art world, like Hans Ulrich Obrist, director of the Serpentine Gallery, who encouraged me. We then found an old building and put lots of art inside it – and because I had a feeling nobody would come, I contacted lots of contemporary artists who I knew liked this work, people I knew personally, from Mamma Andersson, Ed Ruscha and Maurizio Cattelan, to people like Hans who I knew had an interest….

I said “Would you write about these artists, would you say something to help put this into a context?” – and that became a very interesting contextualization, because it meant I could let others speak for these unknown artists. And because the artists we were showing tend to be more anonymous, less verbal and more immediate and emotional, it was a fantastic mix.

We opened the doors during Frieze in 2009 and we had a monster hit. People wrote about us, we were going to be open for a few weeks and stayed up for 4 months. The show went over to Italy, then we did another one in London with Sir Peter Blake, and the more we did it, the more this thing we created had a life of its own and showed it could do some fascinating things.

WILLIAM HAWKINS, untitled (AtLAS BUI1dINg), 1980
THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING, EXHIBITION #1.1, PARIS, CHALET SOCIETY
PHOTO: NICOLAS KRIEF © THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING

We also did some unusual projects – we did one in Tate Modern where we advertised for self-taught and marginal artists, if they had a vision, if they had a disability, if they were somehow not within the main sphere of art, we said come show us the work, if we like it we’ll hang it up, we’ll do a temporary exhibition – it starts empty and it creates as we build. And people came ! There were so many people at the Tate, it was quite phenomenal! We met people you wouldn’t dream of meeting.

We also did a major show in London in Selfridge’s, which is a department store. They gave us this amazing opportunity, so we decided to use it to say something big – and what we did was go around the world looking for studios and ateliers for artists who have something wrong, what you’d call a learning disability, a handicap, but what other people might say is just a different ability, a different intelligence. It’s a euphemism, but how does the brain work, how do we communicate ?

For these people art was a language, even if they didn’t have a language. And we had every window of the store, so we put their work in the window, presenting them simply as artists. It was a huge show with almost 500 works and we made all kinds of products, because we thought “Fantastic, let’s communicate to the marketplace too”… it was huge hit and in hindsight, a very radical statement.

More recently we just came back from Russia, where we did the same thing we did at Tate. We built a mobile museum, we traveled from Yekaterinburg to Moscow, advertising for artists to see if they would come. That’s a another slightly radical idea – and we’re keen on doing this elsewhere in the world!

Aleksander Lobanov
untitled, c 1970/80
© The Museum of Everything

AA: What is the point where you thought you had a critical mass of art ? How much of this is stuff you collected ?

JB: I was pretty interested, but I’m fundamentally not a collector. Collecting is not interesting. If you ask me who the important collectors are, they’re the ones who actually did something, the great collectors who started the greatest museums of the world. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got 10 euros or 10 million euros. It’s the contextualization.

Absolutely my favorite museum in the world is the Casa do Pontal which is in Rio, started by a Belgian collector, interested in figures created by the local Brazilian artisans, it’s the greatest museum… Sir John Soane and his Soane Museum, unbelievable, filled with objects from around the world – these places are inspiring. They came from a collection, so there is a relationship.

Josef Karl Rädler
untitled, 1912
© The Museum of Everything

AA: I was wondering about the process of finding these works – I see a lot of things from Austria, is it because you’ve had the opportunity to go around Austria for while ?

JB: It’s a bit random, truth be told.

There’s often America because America is a big place with a good distribution system, plus there’s the haves and the have-nots so there’s two societies.There’s a lot of cultural values that come into play.

America’s interesting because I realized this work actually had a great similarity to Jazz and the Blues, so much of it was an African American story, and spoke of that particular migration, but it hadn’t been celebrated it in the same way. If you go to the Whitney, they’ll talk about the history of American Art, but you won’t find any of the self-taught African American artists there, they’ll tell you to go to the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Coming back to the question, these artists are everywhere. Not all of them are talented, but they’re everywhere, and for every 10 that are OK, one will be phenomenal. It’s a question of finding them, valuing them, privileging their work, trying to present it in a way that means something.

I come from film, I’m used to mise-en-scène. The thing to do when you make a film is not to keep the script in your head but to be in reality. Actors might be doing it very differently, so you’ve got to adapt, it might not be what you imagined when you wrote it. So when we’re putting on a show, it is equally important to let the building tell you what it wants you to do…

THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING, EXHIBITION #1.1, PARIS, CHALET SOCIETY
PHOTO: NICOLAS KRIEF © THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING 

AA: Talking about the building, how do you find a space like this ? Looking for a specific neighborhood ?

JB: No no, it’s a chance situation. Our first show in London had been in a similar building that we played around with. Of course I wanted to come to Paris, I was really interested. Marc-Olivier [Wahler, former director of Palais de Tokyo and founder of Chalet Society] had visited the museum. We had a chance encounter in Marrakech [Biennale] where we sat down and he told me what he was doing. He said “I’m creating this new sort of art space, do you want to come see it ?”.

Chalet Society, which is his space, was a temporary space here in Paris, so we came here, I looked around, and it seemed a fantastic fit. So there was no looking – in the life of the museum chance encounters are the way it tends to work – it was Marc-Olivier Wahler’s relationship with the building, they lent it for the project, that’s how it came to be. I couldn’t ask for anything more. He’s my host, I’m the lodger. And when I’m gone there’ll be another better looking lodger…

 MORTON BARTLETT, untitled, c 1950/60
THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING, EXHIBITION #1.1, PARIS, CHALET SOCIETY
PHOTO: NICOLAS KRIEF © THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING 

AA: What changes did you make if any, how did you curate the content for Paris, some things that would speak more to the people in Paris ? I guess at this point you’ve already had several exhibitions and you have a larger amount of art. Or did you just see with the space ?

JB: Less French things. And more French things. For example here there’s a strong history, an intellectual appraisal of self-taught and outsider art and Art Brut. There are other great spaces here in Paris, a great collection at ABCD, Antoine Galbert’s Maison Rouge, they’re all interested in this kind of material… They’re fantastic places but they tend to speak in a more narrow form. I thought it was important not to double on what they already did, not to present artists they’ve already shown, because we wanted to get past the idea of Art Brut, because it’s a limited idea, if you rely on that you don’t go anywhere.

Both Marc Olivier and I are interested in much bigger ideas, philosophical ideas about art and creativity as “what does it mean ?”. I believe you can answer this question with the artist who makes something for himself or herself, without thinking of the terminology and the words. It gives form to enormous ideas which have not been brought into common art culture. In my opinion, they’re hidden inside Art Brut but they’re much bigger than Art Brut.

William Scott
untitled, 2009
© The Museum of Everything

The best example is an artist with a learning disability who can make phenomenal work without any cultural knowledge or context. It’s a language. And the only word you can give to it is art. I guess that’s what’s important to do, and the artists were chosen with these philosophical ideas in mind.

It’s very subjective, but at the same time we worked with the building, trying to find the right alleyways, pathways, spaces.
It’s a dialog, but I thought about what has been, and what could be, and what’s fascinating now that the show is open is that we’ve had so many major artists here, thinkers, talkers … and they all say yes, they all see what we’re trying to say.

Because I come from film I always try to create a narrative. People change as they walk through the show, from the moment they walk in at the top of the stairs and then as they make their way down. They become different human beings and that’s very interesting to me.

George Thaxton Miller
untitled (broke!), 1965
© The Museum of Everything

AA: Your exhibit made me think of the book “Beautiful Loser” about the art which derived from skater culture, made mostly by people who also lack artist training…

JB: As our project evolves, my thoughts evolve on the process: the thing about Russia, we met 100 artists a day, some not of interest, some of incredible interest – and so many of them had so much to say.

Some would put a matchstick down and talk for 20 minutes… the smaller the piece the longer the talk! Everybody’s busy expressing themselves, we live in a culture where that’s encouraged, but mere expression is not enough, I mean have you ever sat through those movies and 2 minutes into the movie you want to kill yourself, 10 minutes into it you’re pulling your fingernails and your eyelashes off, and 20 minutes into the movie you’re writing shopping lists for the next 2 years of your life?

It’s a travesty of modern times, that expression is important. Well it is and it isn’t. You don’t have to force people to engage with your ramblings on life unless of course you’re fascinating, unless of course you’re that special person who has that gift, and we all wanna know, and we all wanna see it and love it.

THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING, EXHIBITION #1.1, PARIS, CHALET SOCIETY
PHOTO: NICOLAS KRIEF © THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING 

AA: I guess that’s the limitation of film, you’re forcing people to look at it in this framework with this time, whereas a museum if you don’t like it you just walk faster and get out of it.

JB: You are so correct. I love the lack of the sensation of time in a museum. You can walk through this museum in 5 minutes or less. You can take 5 hours. You choose the amount of time you choose to engage with any work. It’s completely in your hands, the opportunity to stay is there for you and that’s a phenomenal advantage.

I don’t believe there are any bad movies in this show, but if there are, you can just walk past them. I think my point though is about expression. Everybody has something to say. Our job at The Museum of Everything is to find those creative voices, the ones that are truthful, that are hidden, whatever hidden means, or ones which somehow connect to this bigger idea of “Why do we exist ? Why does creativity exist ? What does it mean ?”

For me, I keep going back to the artist with the learning disability. I’ve met many now, and some you really want to communicate and connect with them and it’s very difficult. But you can do it through their work, you can see it, you can feel it no matter how abstract, you can feel the energy and the way their minds work and their bodies. And to me that’s the most beautiful part of it.

It’s not the same as a child, because someone with a disability is not a child, they’re adults, but they’ve developed in a different way, their intelligence is unusual.

Today we realize that in the diversity of the human experience in the 21st century, education and language can be barriers, as much as they’re enablers. One of my favorite writers, William Burroughs, says: “Language is a virus from outer space”.
I love words, I use them all the time, but sometimes it’s better to shut up.

Museum of Everything founder and director James Brett, by Antoine Asseraf.

AA: What are some of the upcoming projects after Paris ?

JB: We’re going to go back to Russia, because we traveled through the country, but when we arrived in Moscow the place wasn’t built yet, so we’ll go back to put on the show, which hopefully will then travel…

And anyone reading this on the blog is free to invite the museum somewhere – half the time we use the museum as an excuse to visit places we haven’t been to! I love the idea of the museum becoming an international force in the promotion of creativity as a human right. We’re wide open!

AA: I think what’s interesting is that you don’t question whether this is “craft” or whether this is a tradition which is being repeated…

JB: Sometimes you meet artisans, but what’s interesting is when they change. Michael Gerdsmann is a registered blind artist from Germany. He was taught knitting to do covers for teapots and was selling them in the market, and thought “What’s the point of this? I need to do something better!”. So he started making covers for iPods and headphones, electrical equipment, and had this idea that somehow these two were well-matched. So he started as an artisan and became an artist.

AA: Today we think “this is an artist, this is his expression, and we value his expression” because it’s the Artist. In other countries there is still traditions, and who makes the one particular object doesn’t seem important in that context, it’s more about the history of the object…

JB: There is a difference between the person who makes for himself and the person who makes for the market. I wouldn’t talk about artisans, I would talk about who the work is being made for. Trouble is, according to that theory, Jeff Koons is an artisan and Damien Hirst is an artisan… and by the way, I think they are, they’re very good artisans!

[My mother arrives and the conversation turns to cheesecakes].

The Museum of Everything – Exhibition #1.1
at Chalet Society
14 Boulevard Raspail 75007 Paris
Until Christmas 2012

Until February 24, 2013.

Miss Marion Hopscotch performance
Saturday November 10th from 3pm-6pm

“HE KNOWS WOMEN, AND WOMEN KNOW HIM”

Erotokritos, it’s a strange name for a fashion brand.
It’s an even stranger name for a person.
And yet, he is truly called Erotokritos Antoniadis, named after the main protagonist of medieval epic poem, a hero “born from the labors of love”.
For 15 years, his label has been seducing women of all ages, drawn to collections that go back and forth between the sophistication of Paris and the dolce vita of Cyprus…

"come and get it."

“THEY CALL HIM MONSIEUR CHYPRE”

France and Cyprus, Paris and Nicosia, it’s a long-distance couple.
In Monsieur Chypre, by Antoine Asseraf & René Habermacher, they come to life:
Loan Chabanol, channeling the nostalgia of Marguerite Duras’ The Lover, plays the tormented Parisian woman, cracking at the surface,
while Constantino Kouyialis, in his first first on-screen role, is a revelation as the seductive eponym hero, a modern day Alexis Zorbas.

“AN EROTIC FASHION EPIC” we call it.

“Erotic,” how could it not be with a name like Erotokritos ?
“Fashion,” of course: stylist Michaela Dosamantes, fresh from winning Best Fashion Award at La Jolla Fashion Film Festival for La Main Dans Le Sac, mixes the season’s classic looks to capture the heroine’s transformation from “bluesy” in Vuitton to “red-hot” in Valentino.
And “epic” ? What else do you call a fashion film 10 months in the making, taking place not only in Paris but in numerous locations in Nicosia, in the salt lake facing the Hala Sultan Tekke mosque in Larnaca, in the Almyra and Anassa deluxe hotels, in small taverns by the side of the road, or in the majestic monument carved directed in the stone, the tomb of the Kings in Paphos ?

“HIS VOICE IS A SONG”

All this, to the original soundtrack of Lori Schonberg and Shane Aspegren, members of Ça Va Chéri.
(Download it here).

So, now the tough questions.
Is Cyprus really like this ? A little bit. Not at all. It depends how you look at it.
It is an island of freedom in the east mediterranean, where couples from Israel and Lebanon come to escape religion. It is the birthplace of Aphrodite. You go, you decide.

So how can I meet this Mister Cyprus ? We hear that one a lot. From women (and men) of all ages. Maybe he’s real, maybe he’s a figment of our collective imagination, our repressed desires. One thing’s for sure — we can’t give you his number.

“ATTEMPTING TO CHARM HIM IS USELESS. HE IS THE ONE WHO WILL FIND.”

Monsieur Chypre
Film credits
Fashion credits
Goodies

Everything you need to know about the
Hyères International Fashion + Photography Festival 2012.
April 27-30 2012, Villa Noailles, Hyères, FRANCE.

Fashion + photo juries, fashion shows, exhibitions by Yohji Yamamoto, Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Jason Evans, Chronique Curiosités, Maison Rondini, Matthew Cunnington & John Sanderson, Fabrics Interseason, Lynsey Peisinger & The Stimuleye, Lea Peckre, Celine Meteil, Internationales Fashion + Textile Conferences, The Shoes/TEED/Citizens…

a film by The Stimuleye,
with Lynsey Peisinger and François Sagat.

Lizard photo: Whitney Lewis-Smith.

Legs with severed head (Guy's head, btw) Peter Shmelzer.

Men wrestling: Matthew Dayler / Photo of man laughing: Tony Fouhse.

Creepy baby head: Robert Farmer.

Guy's taxidermy collection.

Directed by Antoine Asseraf & René Habermacher
Starring Amy Bailey

Marios Schwab
Style.com show pictures and review
Vogue.it – A Short Film With

His work, that is often characterized by a dislocated humor, is transcending the divides between fashion, performance and photography and interrogates the body in relation to society, ideology and politics, subverting the western ‘art library’ as he calls it.

The Stimuleye talks to charming Athi-Patra, who was recently featured in the Phaidon book ‘Younger Than Jesus’, a directory of the world’s best artists under the age of 33, about his work and influences.

Athi Patra Ruga’s intervention for the X-Homes Hillbrow project with the character of ILUWANE.
Photography by Nadine Hutton

RENÉ HABERMACHER: Where are you right now?

ATHI-PATRA RUGA: I’m in my Cape Town studio editing my latest tapestry series and fighting my cats… simultaneously. [laughs] I’m big on cat competitions… my two Russian blues Azange and Shadofax will be taking part so we have been grooming them like crazy… with a few scratches to prove it… hehe.

You’ve just came back from a break – have you got an idea already on what to work on?

At the moment I will be spending the next year creating quietly an extensive body of work revolving around a series of portraits that I will be rendering in tapestry. I have been doing a lot of sittings with various people and doing preliminary sketches. I am editing those now to get started in the next month. I was thinking of titles to name this body or the final exhibition etc: What do you think of :…the do’s and dont’s of bodyworship [laughs]

I am very interested in the power-relations involved in portraiture… especially in response to the ethnographic history involved. I am always concerned with who or what element in the image takes more precedents/importance… the technique or the seater or the artists ego. That argument in my head leads to some lovely renderings.

Your work is known to straddle the divides between fashion, performance and many more disciplines. What is your ultimate goal?

Transcending all boundaries that have been put on who and what one should create.

Athi-Patra Ruga's monogram and portrait photographed by Ant Strack

The monogram you use ‘AP’, seems to be derived from Albrecht Dürer?

Nice spotting, yes Dürer is the reference. A big part of the work is appropriation and ultimately subverting the “western art library”. In this case I am always interested in this “I am the one and only”, self-centric way of creating or rather I am totally disturbed by it. The logo is for Athi-Patra Ruga and studios cc. The name of my company and studio. The “and studio” part alludes to the idea that collaboration forms a big part of my practice. I would like to continue with this point.

Does Athi-Patra mean anything specific?

No, it’s a brand like others. And a brand is the highest promise of good quality and superior concept.

It’s two nicknames of my birth name. I’ve been called those names all my life really. It’s as old as I can remember.

So where does the “evil little boy”, as you called yourself come from?

Well I don’t know… I embrace my evils and vices I suppose. As to where it comes from, let’s just say there are a lot of boys and girls think so… at some points I tend to believe it. [laughs]

I was born in a Bantustan, which is a puppet state created by the apartheid government, a dictatorship. In March 1984, on my 13th birthday, Biggie Smalls died. My mom was a midwife, my dad a sports journalist. My parents were gone for long stretches of time and I had to defend myself. It seemed natural, it was one big ball of trauma. I grew up in the townships and during the strikes and boycotts. Many kids [or rather young adults] used to brutalise us for going to suburban/private schools. I spent most of my time indoors as many kids could not cope with me: I was violent in a violent time. Both at home and outside, the country was going through a revolution.

Athi-Patra Ruga: "Idol Death Mask Series" 2009, Modeled Paper, Approx. 27cm x 23cm each
Image courtesy of the artist and whatiftheworld gallery

How does your family perceive your work as an artist?

Amused. However one would expect, from many conversations, that they would have problems, but I grew up in a very art-sensitive home. They have been very supportive with the rising to actually making my own money. That investment is certainly paying back for them. Proud would be the one word.

It’s said we primarily derive our topics and reflections from childhood experiences- (I admit it sounds very freudian) do you feel the same? what do you remember having left an important mark in your consciousness?

There are so many. I think the ones that have filtered to my image-making a probably those that have been a wake up call as to realising my identity. For example the first moment I was ever called a Kaffir/Faggot/Hood-Rat. I came out at 12 year old. So I had to deal with it.

In a way, I also feel that this resistance to my identity validates me.

However, in my work I try to be graceful and answer or make sense as to why people can so label others with such vitriol. This leads me to one explanation, of which the history and the effects of popular image making become a little formula I use to understand and convey in turn healing these early memories we are speaking about.

When you left home- what did you go for?

I left home at 17. I had just graduated from a liberal arts highs school and moved to Johannesburg to study Haute Couture.

Tell me what is your flirt with fashion about?

I don’t flirt with fashion – I’ve seen what heroine did to my friends and yep…! I think it’s my addiction to the idea/s of perception and the result of that in relation to my life and art.

Fashion is like being part of a SAW Trilogy movie or something.

Don’t get me wrong I love my Raf and shit but I have my issues with it. I cannot play around or even fuck with anything that lacks a political backbone and is transient.

Left: Athi-Patra Ruga, "Castrato as [the] Revolution" 2010
Wool and tapestry thread on Tapestry Canvas, 80cm x 125cm

Right: Athi-Patra Ruga, Votive portrait (umthondo Wesizwe) 2009
Thread on tapestry canvas 74x 94cm. Images courtesy of the artist and whatiftheworld gallery

Is there a connection with your most recent work, the tapestries?

In 2005 after leaving Haute Couture school, I wanted a little hobby to keep that “petite main” discipline going on. It some how led to me picking up readymade tapestries, of which I then felt I could continue also my interventions by actually carrying these said interventions on the canvas – a DADA thing I always say, but it alludes to the point earlier of my obsession with how we receive and act upon imagery. Most of the time the images are very faux naive. However, by the time I am done re-owning them… they are totally different stories. I find that act to be triumphant and a fat middle finger to those ignorant image makers out there.

How much does the backdrop of South Africa form your identity and your work?

Well, to begin with I am Athi.

Then along the way we can add many a labels. South African being one of them. However as much as this is something I do not cling to so much in my work, I do not want to give the impression that the South African Dynamic is nothing I do not interrogate in my work. There is a rich mythology and language that is influenced by the mixes in languages and nuances in this country that lead to a visceral rendering in different design/art elements in my work. I would think it a sin to make or render my practice into a “Poster Boy for South Africa” Sometimes I tend to be very anti-South Africa, that’s part of it, I suppose.

The collective consciousness in the global sense is my concern , as I feel that I have been born into a world that already has so many issues that intermingle through colonialism/christianity/commerce. This hybrid of problems is not only a South African thing. It would be silly to think that MTV and the internet have not had a role to play in this continent and the african diaspora. I travel extensively and I feel that it is a big goal of mine to understand every culture today and to communicate to them. I shy away from art that separates me from the global collective experience by churning art that auto-exoticises me.

[…] If I would have to leave the country, I would like to move to Kinshasa. It’s indescribable!

The history of the place, the music, the culture of physical fitness, the sex, and how in a world that has nothing, people create the most optimistic environments for themselves. This is a place I consider a spiritual home for me, there is a newness in how a society can be resilient and form its own modes of beauty that absolutely blows my mind. And I would love to be part of this newness.

Hypothetically the move would be like many that I have made, simply a new chapter with new concerns and struggles and obviously this will translate in my work as I am a firm believer in the relationship between acting and art making.

Athi Patra Ruga: "Untitled" (X Homes Hillbrow). Photography by Nadine Hutton

Can you tell me more on who is the character of AFRO-WOMBLE and the story behind?

The Afro-Womble character came after my seminal character of Miss Congo. In 2007 I was invited to do a show in Switzerland after a three month residency. I had created an outfit made of a loooot of afro wigs, a poetic stab at the performance-driven christmas parties in lilly-white corporate settings. And also I was going through a phase of translating brutalist / Le Corbusier manifestos into clothes as an exercise.

So the story begins when I was coming out of a Bern club and I see this poster of two white sheep kicking a black sheep of the Swiss Confederation flag, rendered in very cutesy manner that would make Murakami weep. On being told what it was all about and then after just freaking out about its xenophobic connotations, I decided to do a series of performances on a fast-melting glacier, a sheep farm in Lucerne, and an intervention in Zurich during election Day. The way in which the material and many memories clash, and the results that come out is a leading thing in unraveling the work.

I enjoyed Switzerland… I was in Bern with a very cool circle of friends who were all expats from Europe Africa and America. I took speed for the first time there.

How did the Swiss react to your street performance?

It’s interesting that they could identify the schwarze schafe [sic]. The immigrants felt I was poking fun at something they were in the thick of. That made me want to take responsibility for their pain… however I am merely an artist, not an activist you see. I seek engagement, I solicite engagement – Not a confrontation, that gets us nowhere.

Top Left: Swiss People's Party (SVP) "Create safety" poster
for the abduction of criminal foreigners in Switzerland

Following: Athi-Patra Ruga's reaction with the character of Afrowomble:
"Even I Exist in Embo: Jaundiced Tales of Counterpenetration", 2008. Photography by Oliver Neubert.

How you felt being in Switzerland?

I felt unchallenged…

In the “international” art circuit African artists are comparably underrepresented. So are women. What are your thoughts on current racial and gender segregation issues in the art world?

They [THE SO CALLED INTERNATIONAL] do not even enter my headspace. I feel that would be pandering to others codes of acceptance. Integrity and a good work ethic gets you to the places you wanna be at. And also I feel that us as women/gays/blacks/non-christians/lepers/tax evaders etc. have the responsibilities of owning our destiny. That is very important to me.

In your performances you use your own body as a tool- part of this is altering, dislocating and manipulating your physique and with this challenge the perception of classic gender roles.

For me it is a way of returning to a sense of embodiment, simply. I cannot comment on fashion’s apolitical and transient nature without physically mirroring and in turn subverting it’s patriarchal elements of shape shifting and engineering a woman’s body. This leads to a certain amount of disembodiment, non?

This translates in my performances in the sense that when I perform, my preparation is to hire a personal trainer to mould my body. Like the skinny fag designers do – with me being in charge of course. For MISS CONGO I could fit into a size 34, for BEIRUTH too. Later on when I decide to kill Beiruth [for the print series…”THE DEATH OF BEIRUTH”] I decided to gain 20 kg’s. Now with the latest character Ilulwane, I want to have this amazon-like musculature, all in the name of conveying ides around the body-politik.

Athi-Patra Ruga: "The Death of Beiruth" #1 & #2, 2009, Lightjet Print, 74 x 107 cm, Edition of 5 + 2AP
Images courtesy of the artist and whatiftheworld gallery

One of your recent exhibit is called ‘…OF BUGCHASERS AND WATUSSI FAGHAGS’, I love this title! What’s the story behind it?

‘…OF BUGCHASERS AND WATUSSI FAGHAGS’ was the first solo exhibition of Athi-Patra Ruga’s to be held in Johannesburg. The exhibition revolves around the principal character of the “bugchaser”, Beiruth, and his ‘tales of counter-penetration’, realised through craft-mediations and performances undertaken in various urban centers around South Africa and abroad.

This body of work is an interrogation of my interest in the history of image-making, and of displacement – both of people and images. The title of the show is double-edged: it refers to the sexual practice of ‘bug-chasing’ (the act of contracting the H.I. virus intentionally) – with it’s seemingly altruistic motivation; while also referring to the history of the ‘Watussi’, a colonial mis-pronouncement of the Tutsi people of the Burundi-Ruanda nation. The Watussi myth is further explored in the “Pixilated Arcadia” series of tapestries, referencing paintings done by Irma Stern during her 1943 and 1946 expeditions to central Africa depicting the “Watussi”. Stern’s works are re-narrated through irreverent subversion, with the aim of focusing attention on the implicit ethnographic and propagandistic undertones of the work. The “Watussi women” meditations find their retort in the “… WATUSSI MONEYSHOT” (2008) tapestry – a parody on the historical and the contemporary hoochie-mamma…

Athi-Patra Ruga: "the naivety of Beiruth", 2008, lightjet print on fuji crystal archive paper, 40 x 60cm.
Photo by Chris Saunders. Images courtesy of the artist and whatiftheworld gallery

There is this work I did with BEIRUTH….a quick background:

In 2008 , a young lady was physically beaten up in Johannesburg for wearing a mini-skirt[ yes]. it sparked an outcry from us more enlightened people…it is the event that gave rise to Beiruth. as you see Beiruth is this hyper feminine creature who is what people probably found threatening with that young girls honing of her “sexualness”. It’s has a lot to do with putting people civilisation to the test by means of mirroring it…reflecting it.

Beiruth’s name is derived from a pun around the middle-eastern city of Beirut and Ruth, one of the two books in the christian bible authored by a woman…or the only two that were allowed in the bible. – a play on the theme of Orientalism; but more importantly it is the illusive figure that qualifies the autonomous body against that of the sovereign state. The BEIRUTH debut is in a video work title: “…after he left” (2008), the BEIRUTH is documented undertaking various journeys: catching a taxi to the Cape Town township of Atlantis, a place that is a far cry from its legendary namesake; Beiruth seeking a sensual ideal in the form of the increasingly-popular evangelical churches. The video is accompanied by a series of performative stills “…the naivety of Beiruth” (2008), which documents Beiruth’s interactions with various spaces of the inner-city, including Johannesburg Central Police Station (formerly John Voster Square- notorious for deaths in detention during the apartheid).

South African society still suffers from a lot of fractions….

South Africa was built and was sustained for 300 plus years on separation. It’s all we know. The other validates you as a body not you validate yourself…. I believe the whole world has that syndrome.

South Africa is too young a country. The population is starting to engage with race and gender issues now in relation to reconciliation maybe.

Is it that wearing a “miniskirt” or being openly gay becomes a statement, more than just taking your freedom…

….and if it’s a simple statement, you must be neutralised. Unless you fight tooth and nail to retain it. That is the legacy of this country on my generation: WE FIGHT. Coz freedom is all we know….and would give up a lot to retain that personal freedom.

All you have to do is check out skattie. That is the little group we live and express our selves in… against maybe 70 percent of the country. And we fight to retain it. we are having crazy fun down here!

Hope i’ll have the chance sometime to check it out myself!

From your lips to god’s ears….

Athi Patra Ruga: "Deadboyz Auto Exotica Series" 1, 74 x 107 cm, Edition of 5 +2 AP, Photographer: Oliver Kruger
Image courtesy of the artist

What is up next?

I have just come out of a crazy year of gallery exhibitions which started with one in London’s FRED LTD. ,and include a solo here in Cape Town [“Teeth are the only bones that show.”] , a series of performances and now the solo that happened at The VOLTA NY Fair in March. I have also been selected to present a work at the PERFORMA biennale in New York so I shall be travelling that side a lot for pre production for the final performance to take place in November. Performance will take the fore this year clearly as i find that it is usually the basic canon and starting for projects in my other media.

I’m very excited about the PERFORMA piece and how it is developing right now:

Most of the performance works that I make revolve around the interventionist execution, where I am firstly influence by a space along with its myths and history , for this work I will finally be doing what i call an “opera sans mots” inspired by the visual works of my long time heroes David Worjnarowicz and Alvin Baltrop with the latter being the icon of the work. Manhattans West Side Piers forms the backdrop of the space.

Athi-Patra Ruga is represented by the whatiftheworld gallery

Collaborating with Dutch designer Irma Boom, Jennifer Butler has published an innovative book: JAMES JENNIFER GEORGINA, a taxi yellow, 1200 pages volume in limited editions of 999 copies, parted in three sections with a joint spine, telling a unique story through 1136 postcards and 20 dialogues.

Jennifer travelled the world with her husband James, in an effort to dry him out from his alcoholism, while their daughter Georgina stayed at home with various nannies, but Jennifer sent her daughter 1 postcard per day away –  1136 postcards written from 1989 to 1999.

205 flights taken, 268,162 miles driven, 2 bullfights.

A speeding ticket.

53 unpaid parking tickets.

13 cancelled flights, 1 bomb scare, and 205 churches visited, politics, wars, rising prices, births, funerals, holidays…

Yet what comes forward above all is their relationship.

JAMES, JENNIFER, GEORGINA by Jennifer Butler. The 3 spine design allows to lay the book flat

We meet at the American Library in Paris, 23 years after the odyssey started.

As they arrive, Jennifer, a former model, on her side her very British gentleman James, holds a copy of the book in her hands, spiked with post-its of matching yellow. She is in full swing, mentioning another book by Allen Fletcher: “Be aware of wet paint,” he wrote in his beautiful handwriting: ‘I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way’ and it really sums me up: I don’t know ever where I am going, but I have a sense that I am gonna get there!”.

It was in fact Allen Fletcher’s work, and particularly “The Art of Looking Sideways” that made her look differently at the value of the hundreds of postcards she had kept in boxes after 10 years on the road. When in 1999 the drinking of James stopped, so did the postcards. In 2007, Allen Fletcher was only a few months more to live, so he recommended to Jennifer to work on her project with Dutch designer Irma Boom.

Jennifer Butler at the American Library Paris

Behind the book, says Butler, lies a passion “for extending the boundaries of what a book can be. And the knowledge that books have to be more, different than ‘information.’ More than being able to download them from the internet” she says.  According to her, ‘the book’ is not in the ‘up’ – it’s in the ‘down’:

“The book remains to spread something else: maybe sheer beauty or a much slower, more thought-provoking message” Jennifer expresses in her first correspondence with Irma Boom, sharing the designer’s standpoint on book-making today.

Despite the highly sophisticated and calculated design, JAMES JENNIFER GEORGINA is an emotional matter: “The book is an extension of the content. Irma would not have designed that way for a book about tennis players, or about architecture, whatever. This book is married to the silk screen yellow that she chose, and the yellow canvas. The book is yellow because its full of light and success! […]”

“My husband, Georgina’s father, was drinking himself to death. And with one failed marriage behind me I fought to stave off a second.” James was given only two more years to live, so  “to save us I took the difficult decision to leave Georgina at home. We travelled to dry James out and we travelled to shield her from the indignities of drink. Everyday we were apart I wrote to Georgina. If love waits upon a gesture, then my gesture was these postcards. I wanted her to know just who I was and just what I did. They’re a testament to a mother’s love and a sharing of advice, anecdotes, front page news and exotic places” she explains.

Cassette with the Book of 1200 pages, sewn in yellow cloth

“The post cards were never written for public consumption. They were written because I loved doing them.

And I did miss Georgina. And I did feel guilty and it was a way, felt like mothering from a distance.”

For Jennifer, it is actually a very traditional story: “there is a situation, a lot of descriptions with the postcards of a story, there is drama and there are 3 characters. They’re just divided in a very innovative way, because the description and the situation is part 1, the drama is part 2, and the characters are in an album in part  3. Usually when you read about a family or a story or a novel it’s all in one. […] ” She continues, “when people hear the word alcoholism – you know its like a dirty word or somebody survived it. The alcoholism really gave the book its Alfred Hitchcock time element.”

Jennifer admits that there was certainly a bit of irresponsibility concerning the traveling, looking back on it:

“The structure was: let’s go. Like Thelma and Louise. And I was so excited having James sober and clean shaven!  He was adorable and generous and he is so knowledgeable about Europe, its history and its wars. It was like being back in university when we were driving! And there was no drink. Because he was so excited being on the road. So it really was not just about keeping him sober. He was sober and I loved the way he was.”

Postcard from Granada, February 10, 1996

The book is framing this story of longing guilt and salvation for a wider audience in a fresh way. Despite the 210 postcards that are printed full bore in the volume, accompanied by 400 in miniature, most remarkably, the book also features a series of conversations between James, Georgina and Jennifer: “One guideline that Georgina said, and James backed her 100% up was: there would be no editing! […] “

Irma Boom, according to Jennifer, had approached the book with an enormous integrity and much love for its protagonists had insisted “that we pose the question to Georgina in one of the conversations: what was the sacrifice made by not being there. I said: ‘oh, isn’t this fantastic, Georgina spends every night looking at them.’ My mother said: ‘this is disgusting! my granddaughter is alone a third of her life!’ – of course the people who love you tell you the biggest truths.”

“It was never ever difficult [to talk about our issues as a family]. We’re all very strong characters and I think the love is so loyal that nobody worried about sacrificing love. It was never difficult to talk about the painful subjects: most of all it’s a love story.”

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“Daddy has been brilliant. His French is so good the natives want to claim him.” postcard from March 17, 1992

The [conversation] number 17, the ambush in fact, really laid to rest the most painful experience other then my adoption in my life. I was adopted. And I think one of the reasons why I married James, unconsciously, was that he came from this family which dated back from the doomsday book.  And he never humiliated me or said anything.”

Jennifer recalls being on a bus in Elmira, in upstate NY, where she grew up- and the bus was about to go by where she lived at the time, when she heard a woman saying: ” ‘Oh yes, that’s where Dr. Gladstine’s  adopted daughter lives” and the woman she was sitting with said “Oh, I wonder why Mrs. Gladstine couldn’t have any children.” Again these details inspired me to be a writer. I needed to get this horror on paper, but I still feel an outsider. It’s still an ulcer and very sore point. But I accept it more now, I am not so angry. It’s hard to be adopted, you wonder why your mother could not handle it.”

“Growing up in a small town where gossip had the most real estate value, you become very observant. And I had big ears!”.

"This is my favorite photo of all time" postcard from April 24, 1996

She witnessed another incident, that she describes us. Being about seven, she was walking home from the playground: “I saw sister Ignacious who was the head sister at Saint Joseph’s Hospital where my father was chief of staff – and she was smoking a cigarette! With her elbow outside the window of the station wagon she was driving – and I could not wait to get home to describe… it just seemed inappropriate for a nun to be smoking a cigarette and be driving with one hand! like the teenagers were doing.”

This impression still inspires her, and is probably one of the reasons that brought her to writing and yielded to a correspondence with Simone de Beauvoir she wrote to me “Vous avez beaucoup de talent” — I was thrilled! I slept with the letter! I still carry it around with me!”

In 1959 she won the New York State historical society contest in writing an essay about a village called Horseheads, NY, and the reason of how it came to be called that. “I won 50 dollars! that was an enormous amount of money to a kid!” she says.

Jennifer had laid aside another novel she was working on before James, Jennifer, Georgina:

“Fuji Views”, that she stopped mid-stream, halfway through with about 100 chapters, using the structure of the views: “you know how it’s to write like a train – and I just stopped. In fact I was talking about Joanne, the main character yesterday. It’s definitely on a front burner.”

We ask Jennifer to tell us a little about the Postcards themselves: “Of course I hated choosing 210 of 1136 postcards. it was like abandoning the things I’d  written and loved. As Steinbeck would say: “get rid of all the pretty little things.”

The first Postcard to Georgina, from October 25, 1989

“This is the opening one and it says: “Oui love you more than Paris”- And the “we” is spelled “Oui” its a postcard of a painting of Berthe Morisot of a mother looking at her baby in a cradle. Georgina would have been four months old at that time, and she would not have come home from the hospital until she was three months old because she weighted not even a kilo when she was born. So this was the first postcard that I wrote to her. We didn’t travel while she was in hospital.”

Postcard from London, Mai 6, 1997

“I like this one: ” there is a great effort to be common, common manners or common collars, common ideas, everything but common sense. a kind of tore-poor. flat brain, flat line” and its a cartoon of Tony Blair.”

Postcard from March 22, 1998

“At the end when things were really deteriorating – it’s bad. You know I am taking Prozac and I definitely say ‘this has got to stop!’ James cried when he re-read all the postcards in the last few days.”

The last Postcard from December 11, 1999

“I love the stamp! it reminds me of Rothko, who is one of my favourite artists, because he makes me calm. The last postcard was not chosen because what it said, it was by chance. Because this book has been cosmic and there been a lot of luck. It says, ‘is there is an old french proverb translated: “the simpler the explanation, the closer the truth.”  And it’s true.”

“This book, is really a very simple book. When you think, its postcards, they are usually such a cliché, they are so ordinary. One would not be interesting, but 1136 were hugely interesting!

One reason why I chose, that I knew why Allen Fletcher had recommended Irma, was because I didn’t like Helvetica. You’re laughing! It’s not that i dislike Helvetica- I understand Helvetica and it’s very clean and very accessible, but I hate the G’s !

And if you look at my handwriting, you know my handwriting is unique to me. As Georgina said “I simply have tried a thousand times to forge your signature and I can’t!” and the way I write physically and the pen that I use is always been incredibly relevant to what I write. And I still write long hand I don’t write on the computer. So yes, its Palatino and Neuzeit.

I love the questions that she asked and that she allowed me the arguments. We had passionate fights were we didn’t talk to each other for several days. She would TNT the book with all of these post its. And then on my computer there would be a magenta line which meant: “I don’t like this – fix it!

We communicated and we never signed our emails. Our motive communication was that we didn’t put the X for “love” at the end- that was: ‘I hate you at this moment.’ and we both used it. We both developed a culture and a vocabulary between our selves working together.

Jennifer Butler at the American Library Paris

One of the 1136 Postcards written to Georgina was addressed to Jennifer – from James.

And here they sit at a table late at night, engaged in conversations to different directions but holding hands across an empty chair of someone left earlier, Jennifer mentions the books impact to her personally:

“I would never have learned so much about our marriage and our relationship if I didn’t have it a year and a half later to read. All these moments would have been forgotten if the postcards wouldn’t have been written. And the photographs — I would have forgotten whatIi looked like when I was a young girl!

All these things…. it’s not a tragedy that I am old, because I have the evidence of what it was like to be young. I would not want to be that age again. I made so many mistakes! And my husband thinks I am gorgeous – and he tells me everyday…”

JAMES, JENNIFER, GEORGINA

Jennifer Butler (Text)

Irma Boom (Concept & Design)

Erwin Olaf (Portrait Photos)

London/Amsterdam 2010

Yellow cloth sewn/in cassette 1200 pages

Unique binding method with coloured edges

Full colour illustrations

Text in English

Edition limited to 999 copies

Price: € 999.00