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Remaining in difficulty with
ourselves
Molemo Moiloa
Let us be wary of applause. Sometimes congratulation
comes from those who think us harmless.
Eduardo Galeano,
Eduardo Galeano’s In Defence of the Word is a treatise on
creative action in the face of political hardship, but also in the
face of the inevitable irrelevance of the arts in societies that
have big problems. Galeano writes, in , as a banned and
exiled author and thus writes from the position of dis-ease
and distress about Latin America at that time. While condon-
ing the political happenings of much of Latin America then,
he despairs of the levels of poverty, illiteracy, class inequality
and elitism – which he feels situate writing, and creativity,
in a non-space that remains illegitimate, regardless of good
intentions. Many correlations might be drawn with the arts in
South Africa, as with many other parts of the world.
But Galeano is most interesting in his choice to ‘defend’
what is, rather than ‘imagine’ what isn’t. This is significant
because Galeano is writing as an exile, from the position of
being unwanted and unwelcome and one imagines, wishing
for another kind of world where he might be able to write
freely, within the bounds of his home and within an environ-
ment where there are sufficient means available for those for
whom he writes to access his work.
Yet Galeano seeks rather to exist in the world that is, to
defend its reality and its possibilities, choosing to take it on.
Galeano seeks to engage. And engagement means making
mistakes, getting one’s hands and heart dirty, losing the plot,
and over and over again, failing. This is not a case of seeking
to ‘imagine a better world’; it is not invested in fictions, nor is
it a utopian project. It is important that we make clear these
distinctions.
Eduardo Galeano was forced into
exile to flee a dictatorship aer
Uruguay’s military coup.
For interesting discussion, see
Gray, B. Making Art in the Wrong
Place: Violence and Intimacy in Speak
English to Me. In Critical Arts (),
. And Eleonora Belfiore, Art as a
Means of Alleviating Social Exclusion:
Does it Really Work? In International
Journal of Cultural Policy (), .
Also see Blackman, M. .
Wide Angle
Participatory practice as advocacy?
Remaining in difficulty with ourselves
For oen art practice that engages with communities, in South
Africa and the world at large, seeks to encourage community
participation, and works towards an involvement beyond the
clear confines of the ‘fine’ in fine art. It is seen as a utopian
quest, the imagining of a better world: an attempt at bringing
people together, in ‘dialogue’, in ‘collaboration’, in ‘participation’
and many other such buzzwords that have sought the legitima-
tion of art – particularly in countries, cities and neighbourhoods
of the poor, the marginalised, and the under-resourced. This is,
however, a misconception on the part of practioners and their
viewers. For this type of art has as much possibility for bet-
terness as does a painting created by a solo artist in a studio in
the northern suburbs.
What is more likely is that this kind of art practice will bring
about angst, conflict, divergences, inconsistencies, mistakes
and again, failures. Marginalised communities – and I speak of
South African communities as these are my experience – are
wary of outsiders, of helpers and do-gooders. People in these
communities may have little visual training, but are well-versed
in the discourse of exploiters, chancers and even well-meaning
fools. Practioners of this kind of art can expect from their
‘participants’ mistrust, the pushing of buttons, the asking of
very difficult questions. And whether these ‘participants’ decide
to continue or walk away, either way, by the end of it one is
unlikely to believe in the utopianism of the active and engaged
community developing art project.
By contrast, when we gather on sexy corners in trendy
neighbourhoods and sip red wine amongst familiar company,
we conjure for ourselves little parts of scary places where we
might feel relevant, clever and important and part of something
special. When we produce work in basements and refurbished
factories and show them on clean white walls, we create for
ourselves meaning and legitimacy of which, in the playgrounds
of politics, religion or service delivery, we would otherwise be
robbed. In the enclaves of galleries, the sentinels of public sculp-
ture and the hamlets of knowledgeable peoples, we have pro-
duced a utopia, performed another world, created fiction. To
paraphrase Slavoj Žižek, utopianism is believing we can go on
this way.
The northern suburbs of
Johannesburg are largely popu-
lated by comfortably middle class
residents.
Wide Angle
Participatory practice as advocacy?
Remaining in difficulty with ourselves
Perhaps this fictionalising is a reaction to the crisis of pur-
pose experienced by our struggle art forebears. Perhaps it is
the unrelenting angst of the vacuum of selood post- that
has resulted in the perpetual identity art of the contemporary
market. It is also likely influenced in part by a shi into the
international trends of postmodern practice that scorned the
political agenda of the ‘s and ‘s, only to have changed its
mind again more recently. But by and large, South African art
that today achieves success on the market is about selood –
race, gender, sexuality and the combination of these in the com-
plex and oen angst-ridden socio-political space that is South
Africa. Post-, with the end of the struggle art era, art that
cared about others was not so cool. Yet lately it seems to have
become so again. And it is within this context that practitioners
in participatory art now function. We should be wary of the
terms under which community based or participatory art has
become an accepted, even celebrated, part of the establishment
rather than simply being relegated to the cra of beaded bas-
kets, as it was some years ago. In some ways it is a welcome
inclusion, not having to pretend this is a distanced analysis,
nor an internalised ‘exploration’. But as Galeano suggests, we
should be wary of applause. Two particular points of caution:
. Part of the mainstreaming of community or participatory
art that has occurred more recently has seen a trend of
engaging individual narratives, and focusing on localised
voices. Grounded in the relativist perspectives of postmod-
ernism, this approach initially arose to indicate the limita-
tions of the historical canon’s grand narratives and to dis-
turb the mainstream voices of those who owned the voice
boxes. However, of late, the individualised narrative of ‘ordi-
nary people’, singular and personal experiences, and claims
of the personal being political, have come to act as a wide
path through which to express varied positions: they leave
much space for meaning, are open to multiple instances
of interpretation, and speak of experiences and aesthetics
rather than ideologies. Effectively, they afford the artists
the luxury of never being wrong (uninteresting perhaps, but
never wrong).Oen these singularised, individualised works
have a more poetic
For a very interesting article on the
shi of the political in art internation-
ally – and in relation to participatory
art – see Grant Kester’s Response to
Claire Bishop’s Another Turn in Art
Forum, May , as well as: http://
selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.
com///bishop-claire-artifi-
cial-hells-participatory-art-and-poli-
tics-spectatorship.pdf
A cursory glance at any recent
books on South African art, from Sue
Williamson. . South African Art
Now. Harper Collins: New York, to
Sophie Perryer (ed). . 10 Years
100 Artists: Art in a Democratic South
Africa. Bell-Roberts Publishing and
Struik: Cape Town, will list a majority
of artists dealing predominantly with
identity issues – though from various
angles and with many complex as-
pects: from more established artists
like Willem Boshoff, Candice Breitz,
Steven Cohen, David Koloane and
Sam Nhlengethwa, to Tracey Rose,
Mary Sibande, Nicholas Hlobo and
Zanele Muholi.
It should be noted that though
there has been significant growth and
interest in this field in South Africa
since mid-, there were early
projects that ran when it was not
so fashionable, such as the Joubert
Park Project.
Wide Angle
Participatory practice as advocacy?
Remaining in difficulty with ourselves
aesthetic sensibility – such as Stephen Hobbs and Marcus
Neustetter’s UrbaNET Hillbrow-Dakar-Hillbrow, which saw
these artists attempt to deliver letters from immigrants in
South Africa, to people still living in Dakar, with only hand-
drawn maps of memories from ten or more years before for
guidance. While quite moving, and conceptually very inter-
esting, the work appears to accomplish little more beyond
the delivery of a letter.
. Another aspect of the postmodernist turn that ensures all
doors are le open and all channels are possible, is that
much contemporary art ‘asks more questions than it an-
swers’. A rhetorical phrase that many artists, including
myself, are guilty of, ‘more questions’ is the stuff of par-
ticipatory art – an indication of its inability to leave some-
thing particularly tangible behind; an attempt by the art-
ists to afford it some currency, some worth. In comparison
to UrbaNET Hillbrow-Dakar-Hillbrow, a work such as the
Made in Musina Project by Rangoato Hlasane and Thenjiwe
Nkosi saw the development of an arts network, through the
VANSA Two Thousand and Ten Reasons project, in a border
town with otherwise relatively little arts connectivity. This
project afforded wider possibilities for further production
and ongoing creativity to a large and possibly growing
number of people, and importantly, the work does not end
at the point that the initiating artists walk away.
But frankly we have asked enough questions, and we are at the
point where we need answers. Creatives should be leading the
pack with possibilities, new ideas, dangerous thinking. Perhaps
it’s time we began to think again on a grand scale, and took the
chance on previously failed plans and big ideas gone awry. For
otherwise we might remain localised, might continuously ask
questions, yet never get any further. And it might remain cool;
we may even discern applause. But ultimately we remain harm-
less and ineffectual. We do little other than gaze at our own
navels – only now we do so in the presence of ‘ordinary people’
and sex workers and gangsters and school children and prison-
ers and the sick and the dying.
Wide Angle
Participatory practice as advocacy?
Remaining in difficulty with ourselves
Galeano’s In Defence of the Word is despondent; it struggles
to find solutions, and seems somewhat resigned to its own con-
tradictions. But it maintains the need for literature to attempt
disruption, to find a place of unease: “a literature which does
not set out to bury its own dead, but to perpetuate them; which
refuses to clear up the ashes and tries on the contrary to light
the fire”. Accordingly, I suggest an art that is not utopian, that it
does not remain within the easy bounds of what is accepted as
art by the galleries, their patrons, nor those that seek their ap-
plause. I’m not giving particularly tangible suggestions here; I’m
working on it. But I think that step one is to let go of ‘imagining
a better world’, and not to see ourselves as do-gooders. We need
to recognise that the work we do is messy and difficult. But we
also need to take greater chances, and not remain within the
safe confines of easy boundaries – perhaps venture into the
political, the ideological. For the bravest of us might well en-
gage the grand narratives and not cower in their ability to make
us look rather stupid. Let us resolve to remain in difficulty with
ourselves, to challenge our relevance head-on in the midst of
those who question us and to deny again and again the right to
feel comfortable – particularly in the imagining of easier, better
worlds.
References
Galeano, E. . In Defence of the Word. In Index on Censorship (), .
