GIMBERG NERF

So Gimberg Nerf defriended me:

Funny it only came from Gimberg

Subject: Farewell
Dear Ed

Thank you most sincerely for being my friend here on Facebook, unfortunately the time has come, as we both knew it would, for us to part ways. I have advanced valiantly, and now it is time to for me to retreat with indifference: I am moving on.

Please do not take this personally, there is no need for hard feelings, some things just aren’t meant to last. I cannot say that you did not give me what I was looking for: over the past twenty days I have made six hundred and sixty six friends and had the opportunity to share thoughts with many. For a brief period a large group of good people have been connected, however loosely, through me: satanists, churchgoers, artists, scientists, parents, teenagers, porn stars, pimps, writers, actors, musicians, believers, non believers etc. etc. Good people. Lines have been crossed and apologies made, and I have emerged a better man. I suspended my disbelief and have learnt that making friends, like making art, is easy, by which I mean that it is easy to make bad friends and bad art. There are many reasons for my sudden departure, chief amongst which is probably that there are better ways of doing so little. At the end of the day, the few genuine interactions I’ve had here are not worth the countless lifelines that I’ve thrown into the void. I have seen the error in my ways and (now that I am beginning my Walk for Good) I will look for you on new paths.

I might not be able to claim that I was a good friend to you, but I can claim to have been honest and while I won’t promise that I’ll miss you, I might. Please do not worry about me or mourn for this friendship lost: I am something without you. It has been a pleasure to share this wide road with you for a little while and just because I am gone from Facebook does not mean that our friendship needs to end. Feel free to send me an email (gimbergnerf@gmail.com) or you can send me a real letter:

P.O. Box 0045
a/c 7925
Observatory
Cape Town
South Africa

I apologise if you feel somehow cheated, or that you’ve been used, if it is any consolation let me leave you with some words I found while walking this path:

Friend, n. An investigator upon the slide of whose microscope we live, move and have our being.

Friendless, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterances of truth and common sense.

Friendship, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

Ambrose Bierce in the Devil’s Dictionary

I am looking forward.

Yours truly,

Gimberg Nerf

GIMBERG NERF

I wake early on a lovely grey morning and start my trawl through neglected emails and sexy fuckbook messages lost in weeks past. But these days are quite boring as my Facebook pages are filled with rubbish from my new friend Gimberg Nerf.

Designed by super art duo Christian Nerf and Douglas Gimberg, this character befriends and comments on players in the artworld. They first started out with a few photoshopped images of their faces as one. It turned out a bit scary. That is until they realised that the only way to be slightly socially acceptable is to use only Nerf’s forehead and maybe his glasses.

As self-proclaimed art wankers and anti-social networkers they seemed to have succumbed to the obvious. And maybe it is their loneliness and Woodstock isolation that drove them into cyber world purely to be loved, doggedly disguised as another anti-establishment artwork as an entry to world of Web 2.0.

This is evident when one studies social networking behaviour. Theirs for instance, is that of the first time user. Clever remarks to art aficionados and slightly flirtatious moments with female members.  And the obsessive and almost desperate need for attention, staring at the FB page for hours awaiting response.

At present it is a very weak work that will maybe, in the near future, develop into a great one. But maybe not.

And at least its better than their genius boat idea.

Or maybe its not.

L/B's Lounge - Lang Baumann

Well it’s all ok again. Blackman and I jump-start my car. We go shopping for Woolworths microwave meals and antibacterial glass wipes. We then head over to @Home and have an argument about pasta bowls and juicers. We decide that this is ruining our relationship and buy some stationary instead, only after picking up my recently repaired man groomer from Clicks. We are all very happy on a very particular and usual Friday afternoon.

Daniel Baumann / Ed Young - Miami

But today is just Friday. And it is the Friday that Early Friday moves to L/B’s lounge, above Jo’burg Bar. L/B’s was initially conceived as a Pro Helvetia funded art project  – to make Bruce Gordon a special lounge as an artwork in 2003. It was produced by Swiss duo Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann. Since it’s inauguration it has seen many a party. Often involving Cameron Platter tumbling down the staircase and biting bouncers in their inner thighs and speeding away the wrong way up Long Street.

The furniture also has taken its toll as many babies had been conceived on the puffy furniture lining the lounge. The big round one in the center was once almost the catalyst for little Eddy Rosa-Clark. But those days have long disappeared beneath the smog of Cape Town bohemia and nostalgia and the Love Below.

Blackman and I head out for a late lunch at Royale. The service is terrible. The waitresses are rude. Our orders get mixed up. The food is ok. We consider frequenting Hudson’s Burger in future as at least the waitresses are hot.

We head over to L/B’s and get told please not to come in. We are ushered into Jo’burg’s main bar area. Bruce Gordon then notifies us that the seating is not ready, having employed some back door tik addict to re-upholster as is well needed. But Early Friday carries on and everyone has a good time. Lot’s of young art students are bewildered at the idea that they are now occupying the den that was recently only home to numerous devious characters and lovely ladies who charged them after a night of fornication.

And everyone seems in good spirit. Tequila paves the road and I find a chair that doubles up as a sexy rocking horse. Blackman plays with Robert Sloon’s third nipple as Sloon starts to lactate. International artist and curator Bianca Baldi’s hair blows in the beautiful wind created by the new super fan installed by Gordon. Baldi’s nipples rise with the crisp air and it’s all a bit slow motion. Painter Jake Aikman hates it all and drags Sloon off for a Royale burger and milkshake.

We head for the Kimberley Hotel and Pieter Hugo has a post-exhibition deppie look on his face. I comfort him.

I head home as Blackman goes to Evol.

Pieter Hugo - Abdulai Yahaya, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2010

I am very excited about driving myself to an art exhibition. I have just restored my 72 Mercedes and had all the paperwork done. I even have a drivers licence. But I had left the lights on upon returning from the Regenerations show at the Michaelis Galleries which myself and Mr. Taylor had to flee.

It is not only because of the bad port or drawn out speeches, but maybe because of the lack of punch in the photographs. It was all a bit of a cool kid photography vibe. The photographers were all really good but it seemed like a sort of Photoshop fuckfest curated from FFFFOUND!.com. It all a bit middleclassy suburbia.

And I blame this exhibition for my car battery being dead.

But tonight we head out for another photographic exhibition – Pieter Hugo at Michael Stevenson Contemporary. We leave the bar and get into Blackman’s recent investment – his chav two door BMW that matches the chain around his neck and looks particularly good when him and Jake Aikman wear matching black Adidas sweaters.

Linda Stupart sits in the back because she is a lady. She cries because the Beamer seats are too small and she has wounds because she “fell over again”.

But the Hugo show is ok and we gladly support the Friends of the South African National Gallery by purchasing a glass of bubbly from the bar. We smooch and kissy-kissy our way through the dense crowd. Hugo’s portraits of people living in Ghana on top of an electronics graveyard called Agbogbloshie with high concentrations of lead, mercury, thallium, hydrogen cyanide and PVC is, slightly alarming to say the least.  I particularly like the portraits of the Brahman Cattle.

Pieter Hugo - Untitled, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2010

I remain unconvinced by the video portraits. I am reminded of when painters started to get hold of a video editing suites and animated their paintings in order to be more hip. But the paintings were bad and the videos were worse. And they never showed in this town again. But maybe that is just because Bell-Roberts closed down.

We kissy-kissy some more.

I walk into an installation by Dineo Bopape. It’s kind of pretty and installationy and I am reminded of when Zen Marie used to make fun installations pre-Spier Contemporary-Perfect-Leader-videos. Bopape’s work demands a lot of attention and I am distracted by some meaningless conversations about meaning. I make a sweet escape and promise to return and am reminded of my favourite work shown in that very room a few moons ago…

I escape into a small darkened room only to find more video -a projection by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.  The work is beautifully filmed and cut and all a bit eerie and I leave in a panic to escape the crowds and conversations about you know what…

And as I puff on a fag I wonder why local video art always looks so bad.

Across the road I spot a small gallery. I walk over. It is a tiny gallery elegantly titled Blank Projects. Inside are some paintings by Mary Wafer. I meet Wafer for the first time and she is prettier that her paintings.

At the back are prints by Swiss legend Kerim Seiler. They are out of focus, which makes them more special. On the one wall is a nomadic description by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, which makes it even more special. Hanlie gives us some bread sticks with olives in them and some really nice cheese. How I do wish that Seiler would invite me for some fondue.

The Stevenson spillover arrives and we hop into the Blackmobile escaping post-exhibition dinners.

A lot has happened since my return from the land of LA. A lot of exhibitions and that Fifa World Cup™ thingy. Nothing to write home about really. We also had a little exhibition at our gallery.

Kendell Geers remade his 1993 piece titled Title Withheld (Brick), which was once made for the Market Theatre Gallery in Johannesburg and again at De Appel in Amsterdam for a show that Clive van den Berg curated I think. The work consists of a single brick through the gallery window.

But for our show Geers decided to destroy all our windows. Numerous bricks went crashing into the gallery including a hate brick someone had left for us the night before. The show went fine and we were all very happy. Blackman shed a tear and said that he was very happy.

A number of days later our landlord drove past our shop and was seemingly unimpressed. He went on this tirade which seemed to take him over and even the past few days’ worth of storm cannot compete with the spit and rage that came from his face holes.

Mr. M: “Art…? ARRTT…? It’s VANDALISM!!!!…

Manie (our actual landlord): “No it’s art.”

Mr. M. carries on swearing a lot.

We may not have our lease renewed so for some individuals who liked our gallery we take this opportunity to say fuck off and thanks for the tea.
M Blackman sheds another tear.

Whilst trying to ignore it all we head to the Kimberley and have a few pints and Jagermeisters. We watch the football on a small television as Real Artists who paint Real Water with Real Gallerists were all invited to the game post free drinks at La Perla.

Dan Halter, M Blackman and myself consume as much as possible as we realise that we can win stuff from the bar during the match. WhiteCross refuses to join us and retreats to Sexy George’s new restaurant, claiming he prefers a “civilised dining experience”.

We bet against Italy. Halter and I win 700 in bar tabs collectively. We now drink for free. Blackman is in the process of rediscovering his inner chav. Blackman and Halter make friends with real chavs. Halter shouts and spits a lot. The chavs back off and exit said pub.

It all gets pretty boring and Blackman drives me to Woolworths and buys me microwave dinners and cigarettes and tells me about his new chav BMW that we will use to drive up to Grahamstown for the festival and how everything is going to be alright.

I heat up a microwave dinner and fantasise about Real Artists and Real Galleries and Real Football matches.

After a heavy night at a house party and my first beer keg experience, I get up extremely early and messy and get my ass out of bed to attend a university graduation ceremony first thing on a Saturday morning.

I am left with the vague memory of eating puppies at Denny’s Diner the night before.

Kim and I arrive somewhere in Orange County and the graduation takes place in a kind of American Mega-Church. We walk into the auditorium and there is a lot of clapping, singing and love going around. The venue seats over 3 000. There are two massive screens included in the state of the art AV equipment, a stage, a preacher, a band, a choir and always that one fucking soprano soloist that can’t hit that fucking note.

I feel the devil working inside of me and luckily there are no more seats available. We watch most of the ceremony on a smaller monitor in the bookshop while browsing through popular titles such as ‘Put Jesus back into you sex life’, ‘How to turn your man in five days’, as well as ‘Jesus Junkies: Why poor people are bad’.

I should go to an art museum.

After graduation we have some tacos and beer and head for the beach. It’s all very pretty.

We arrive back in LA to meet some friends at La Descarga. I find it peculiar that we have reservations for a bar.

We arrive at a small door. Vladimir, the well-dressed Caribbean doorman is wearing a good scarf and stares straight ahead. He looks at his reservations list and after a minute or so and replies in slow monotone: ‘You are late… You are very, very late.’
He gives me the up and down and points at my David West shirt. He says: ‘No…’ He points at my jacket and says: ‘Let’s see how that looks on you…’ A very concerned Vladimir disappears up a tiny staircase. I should have gone to an art museum.

Vlad arrives back downstairs with an equally puzzled looking concierge wearing a polka dot dress. She administers the up down and utters: ‘You are unaware of the code’. I get ready to be blindfolded and be led upstairs. She makes an exception and zips up my ZAR150 Mr. Price jacket and says it would be ok if I keep it like that.

We are led up the tiny staircase and into a small room. We are given very detailed instructions: ‘You will not exit the same way you have entered’. She opens a double closet door, pushes the clothes away and in the usual Narnia manner we enter said bar. The wooden finishes are absolutely lovely. We have a few drinks with rum in them, including one called ‘Tapping the Admiral’.

We exit in a different way than entering.

Blackman meets me at the Kimberley for a beer and we head for the airport. We say our goodbyes and we are very happy that we don’t have to see each other for the next few weeks. I board a plain to Dubai having neglected to purchase nicotine patches.

They put me in the wrong terminal of Dubai International and I miss my usual Irish Bar experience. After a full body cavity search I board a plane to LaLaLand. I struggle to sleep and end up watching endless romantic comedies. After a few hours our captain announces that we are now flying across the North Pole. He drops down low and provides us with a guided aerial tour of the local happenings.

“If you look to your left you will see a neon sign for Ho Ho Ho’s, the local pub and strip joint where Santa spends most of his down time of the year, preparing and conceptualising production which will should in full swing by September. Mrs. Clause is off course, taking time out at their Malibu estate, researching contemporary cosmetic procedures. To the right…”

I stare blankly at the tiny screen in front me and conceptualise work of my own. It does not work. We head back South.

I try to sleep. I pop one of the sleeping pills, which That Fucking Whore had bestowed upon me at the time of my departure. I stare blankly at the tiny screen. I watch a movie called Couples Retreat, and am sure this marks the end of Vince Vaughn’s staggering career.

After 34 hours I arrive at LALA X. We get onto the freeway and it looks like the movies. I spend the next few days recovering, eating gourmet hot dogs and staring at palm trees.

It starts on a Tuesday. I arrive back from a small holiday with That Fucking Whore. I have a small lunch at La Perla and a fairly productive time at the workshop. I arrive home and unpack my belongings, now and a Shoprite bag and call Zen Marie for a meeting. He explains that he is almost at his auntie’s place. I tell him to turn around and meet Blackman and me at the bar. He says ok.

I arrive at the bar and Marie phones to say that he is not coming, as he does not drink and that all the Coca-Cola is making him fat. Blackman arrives and we are all very happy. A few beers later Wayne Barker enters said bar. I have not seen him since his SMAC show. I don’t think he has either.

Barker brings his UCA Monkey and demands a drink. I buy him one. I am sitting with Blackman and Jonathon Garnham going through some useful diagrams for his show. Barker and UCA Monkey demand another drink. I buy them one. Garnham’s drawings become more useful. Barker’s UCA Monkey calls me a cunt and demands another drink. I buy them one. Garnham’s drawings become more useful.

Barker scribbles over Garnham’s drawings and we all get a bit upset. UCA Monkey calls me a cunt. Barker tears up Garnham’s Drawing and politely acknowledges it as shit. I take Barker’s hand and tell him that it is rude and reminded him of the time when Brendon Bell-Roberts threw orange paint on his painting. UCA Monkey calls me a cunt. Dan Halter tries to beat up Barker. Barker says he is not gay. Dan Backs off. Barker tries a donkey punch and lands on a dirty floor. Barker screams: “ Kick me! Kick me! Kick a great artist when he is down!”

I do. Barker gets up and vomits on himself. UCA Monkey calls me a cunt and takes Wayne outside and somewhere else.

Dan tries to beat up everybody else. No one really cares.

Once again, I have not really been writing too much. That is because I was not feeling particularly funny. Or maybe I was. But the festive season, as always, brought with it its usual plethora of troubled emotions and tears and blood and poo and tiny shrews.

But it all starts one starry night at the Kimberley Hotel after the Dada South? exhibition. Kim had just arrived from LA. Lisa Brice was in town and we all went out for a small drink. That Fucking Whore is also with us. We are all very happy. Upon arrival the mood is disrupted by a fairly not so elegant bitch fight. Fun to watch but hard to stomach. An overseas visitor decides that this was not cool and leaves for Camps Bay instead where it is less African.

We lost a bit of interest and carried on with our conversation. Moments later, one of the troublemakers heralds herself back in said bar. Screaming a bit loud she clutches a Black Label bottle, smashes it on the counter and the bottle explodes. Our hero girl grabs a wine glass smashes it on the counter and runs out. I sort of get the feeling that something is not right and run after her.

I enter the passage and our barman Dion is restraining the poor lass with half his face hanging off and some blood gushing from where it used to be. I politely put his face back and hold it up for him while he and Welly restrains the girl. She gets sent to prison for a few days. We call emergency services and Dion is being tended to at the back.

Emergency services arrive and I ask them where the medics are.

Emergency Service Guy: Dey arr not herre.

Ed Young: I know. Where are they. Please call them.

ESG: Ah can’t. Ah haves to sees de victim firrst.

EY: Well go see him. He is in the back. His face is on the floor and he is possibly bleeding to death.

ESG: Firrst yoo haves to tells me what happeneds. Whah did you stabs him in de face.

EY: I didn’t. Can you please call the medics.

ESG: Ah can’t. Ah haves to sees de victim firrst.

EY: Well he is in the back. Please go quickly and call the medic.

ESG: Ah needs a statement from yous firrst. Ah fink…

I sort of leave at this point to call an ambulance. Dion goes to surgery and I work the bar for a bit with the Romanian guy who does not speak English. It’s all very Dada.

And Robert Sloon has taken to wearing a Wayne Barker hat.

I spent the most beautiful night after my murder under the Grolsch Fluid. But as the Spiritus Mundi slips into my soul and I slowly begin to realise that I had complete access to all of the art world’s thoughts. Blackman: “I realise that an art work’s value is directly relational to the looks of the gallery’s gallerina and that all things considered that made Art South Africa the most valuable work at the fair’. Linda Stupart: ‘I am exactly like Ed Young’. Sloon: ‘ART HEAT, ART HEAT, ART HEAT, EDIT ART HEAT or if I suck my third left molar all week I will have better thoughts’. Justin Rhodes: ‘I hate Art Heat’. Art Heat: ‘We love Justin Rhodes’. Baylon Sandri: ‘I am the gallerist with the hottest wife because Jonathan Garnham is not here.’ Joao: ‘Why, why, why, god oh why’. Wayne Barker: ‘If I got a chin strap for my hat I could actually sleep in it without it falling off.’ It is all super boring and my soul begins to die and my body comes alive.