Pissing Against A Wall
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Afrikaans national newspaper, Rapport, has apparently caused an uproar in the conservative dorpie of Stellenbosch with an inflammatory article about the well respected Stellenbosch Academy of Art and Design, in particular attacking lecturer Carol – anne Gainer with the fascinating paragraph:
"Studente kla dat 'n dosent 'n naakfoto van haarself waar sy op haar kunswerk urineer as kuns aan hulle gewys het - sodat die studente 'uit die boks moet dink'."
Which translates as:
The students complained that a lecturer showed them a naked photograph of herself urinating on her artwork, claiming this to be ‘art’ so that the students be encouraged to ‘think outside the box’
Presumably this uproar refers, albeit obtusely, to a number of Gainer’s works: the 2003 video, Piss, Piss Drawings and the Marking series, both from 2005. Piss shows the artist (though only her body below the waist is visible) peeing through her red panties onto red African soil and focuses on the penetrating indentation that her urine makes in the ground. The Piss Drawings show beautiful and delicate abstract drawings of urine and charcoal dust on Fabriano and the urine on paper Marking pieces, such as Marking London and Marking Durban, eloquently infiltrate the usually reserved-for-men act of marking territory.
The issues at hand then are intricate, and include notions of territory, home, ritual and modernist hegemonies, always questioning the role of women within public, domestic and artistic tropes. Certainly to reduce these pieces to a woman ‘urinating on her artwork’ is a gross misrepresentation of the artist, but also a patronising attack on female artists’ rights to make work that deals with issues of feminity and the abject body. Rights that, last I heard, were won (not without a fight) in the 1960s with Feminist Performance Art. Would these students complain about a classical, or contemporary, photograph of a female nude? Could we really be that backward, and conservative to fear this kind of artmaking? Well, apparently in Stellenbosch, we are.
Of course, the fact that a bunch of students actually engaged in tertiary art education could be shocked that a naked photograph (not even a performance, or video, God Forbid) of a woman pissing on an artwork be considered as art shows an ignorance, lack of insight and general stupidity that is literally frightening.
Click here to read the article in the Rapport, and work on your Afrikaans so that the editors can have the pleasure of shifting through responses.
posted by Linda Stupart at 2:19 PM
5 Comments:
Stellenbosch should be drowned in a river of piss so that they can grow a brain hopefully. Piss drunk on the dop system, stunted fucking imbeciles.
You may find his style a little direct, but I must say the above commentator does have a point. I've had cause to spend a lot of time in Stellenbosch during the last year, and it is a staggeringly conservative little enclave. I had no idea that societies like that still existed in the present day until I experienced it myself.
My understanding is that staff at the university (and other places too it appears) are subject to constant harrassment by ultra-conservative parents and students. A hideous mixture of corporatism and Christianity hold sway, sometimes even in the upper power structures of the university, rendering academic discussion and criticism impossible in the face of simplistic fundamentalist drivel.
My view is that parents, who seem to be the main culprits in harrassing people, should be made to sign an indemnity form, which should explain to them in advance what thinking about art may entail, so that if they are not willing to engage with cultural debate they can voluntarily exclude both their hideous selves and their hideous spawn from the outset.
I was accepted both at michaelis and stellenbosch. I'm really fucking glad i went to michaelis.
I remember seeing a Mapplethorpe image of a penis, with something being inserted into the urethra, on one of our first lectures.
This scared away a Christian girl, who never continued with her degree.
Maybe all art-students to be, should have a pre-university lecture showcasing some of the most challenging artists.
Sad.Its ridiculous that Gainer's work has been so worryingly misinterpreted (she wasn't pissing ON an artwork after all), and having read the Rapport article it seems that it is not only 'lack of insight', 'general stupidity' and rank conservatism that are at issue here, but as the above writer suggests, a case of funding and censorship under the headline of education. Parents dont want to pay R300 000 to see their children fail, and admittedly nor would I, but that doesn't give them the power or right to determine what should be taught. Good wholesome hard-earned calvinist cash should ensure healthy clean-thinking young men and woman. The more you pay, the cleaner they should be. Surely?
Well, had anyone done their homework they would have discovered that urine apparently has a host of wonderful and beneficial properties. Containing essential vitamins and minerals it acts as a mild disenfectant, can be bathed in, used to grow plants, and yes! drunk on a daily basis. 'Artists', someone once explained to me using an extended and rather dubious physiological analogy, 'act like the kidneys. They filter out all the toxins'. I'm left wondering after this incident if perhaps this idea has some merit. Artists filter out the toxins only to introduce fluid back into the system in a refined form. But as anyone who has tried to drink their own urine will tell you, sometimes its hard to swallow.
Trivia for you hungry minds to chew on: Picasso peed on a sculpture he made of Dora Maar to give it a 'patina' (but it turned green).
Not that this has anything to do with the Stellenbosch debacle. Looks like Carol-Anne G has got loads and loads of teaching to do... much luck to her.
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