Embodied encounters: a performative, material reading of selected contemporary artworks by

246 Pages·2014·20.72 MB·English

Johannes Frederick Thom
PHD Thesis: PhD in Fine Art
Slade School of Fine Art
University College London (UCL)
2013

Embodied encounters: a performative, material reading of
selected contemporary artworks by Santu Mofokeng, El
Anatsui, Willem Boshoff and Johan Thom
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Declaration of originality

I, Johannes Frederick Thom, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where
information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the
thesis.
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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following individuals and institutions for their support in making this study
possible:
The Cannon Collins Trust for believing in my initial proposal and putting it forward for the
consideration for a Commonwealth Scholarship Award.
The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom - an organization that has
supported numerous young scholars in making a difference across the world. I will forever be
pleased and thankful that, on this occasion, they supported the work of a visual artist.
My family, including my wife and son (Mika and Luca Thom), my parents (James and Berna
Thom), my brother and his family (David, Liezl, Liam and Ethan Thom) and my parents-in-law
(Thinus and Heleen van Aarde).
A particular word of thanks must also go to the following individuals for their support
throughout the completion of this study: Annemathi van Staden, Susan Roberts, Abrie Fourie,
Harrie Siertsema, Guy Du Toit, Prof Ingrid Stevens, Jan van der Merwe, Ian Redelinghuys and
Benji Liebmann from the Nirox Foundation.
Lastly I wish to thank my supervisors Prof Sharon Morris, Prof John Picton and Gary Stevens. I
truly believe that their critical insight and constant words of encouragement have made a crucial
difference - not only in this study, but also in my life. (I shall miss our conversations deeply and
count myself lucky for having had the opportunity to learn from them). To wit, the staff and
students from the Slade School of Fine Art where I have had the incredible opportunity and
pleasure of being a student whilst completing this research.
Thank you.

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Abstract:

This dissertation is underpinned by two related materialist positions. Firstly, following in the
analyses of Darwin (1871/ 2004, 1859/ 2009), Barash (2012), Miller (2001), Dunbar (1999,
2009), Donald (2009), and Grosz (2008, 2011) artworks are understood as being the material
embodiment of context-specific ideals of beauty. That is to say artworks fulfil a performative,
evolutionary function, one that is responsive to the corporeality of the body and the cultural
and artistic values at stake in the specific material context to which that body belongs. Secondly,
my body is not something I have but, rather, I am this body. However, following material
readings by Barad (2007, 2009), Butler (1990, 1993), Foucault (1967), Deleuze and Guattari
(1980/ 2004) and West-Eberhard (2003), like the artwork the body is also understood to be a
socio-culturally, economic and politically constituted entity: the corporeal body does not exist
pure and independently from the values of discourse and culture, for the latter is always already
materially inscribed in it. Accordingly neither bodies nor the artworks they encounter are
postulated as isolated ‘objects’ but, rather, are understood as being relationally founded material
phenomena that weave in and out of one another even as they (re)configure historically specific
boundaries between them and the world they inhabit. In this dissertation I apply this
performative, materialist approach and the methodology implicit therein to the interpretation of
selected contemporary artist’s works including ‘The Black Photo Album/ Look at Me 1890 -
1950’ (1997) by Santu Mofokeng, ‘Man’s Cloth’ (1998-2001) by El Anatsui, ‘The Blind Alphabet’
(1991 – ongoing) by Willem Boshoff, and ‘Every Sentence draws blood’ (2012) by Johan Thom.
Throughout the dissertation I will show how a performative, material reading provides for an
interpretive framework constituted as much by the form, subject matter and context of the
artwork, as by the viewer’s embodied experience thereof. To this effect I have employed two
voices throughout the text: a first-person account of specific moments in my life that have
particular relevance to my meaningful encounter with - and interpretation of - specific artworks;
and secondly, a questioning, analytic voice that attempts to map theoretically the deeply
nuanced performative interrelationship between the material bonds and boundaries at stake in
therein.
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction p10
1.1 Beginnings p10
1.2 Beginnings (reprise) p16
1.2.1 Materiality as framework for art p22
1.2.2 Writing (about) the artwork as material entity p24
1.2.3 Material beauty and material boundaries: the artwork p26
1.3 On art and method p29
1.4 Material culture and material concepts: the artwork as ‘phenomena’ p35

Chapter 2: Haptic perception, collaboration and the work of Santu
Mofokeng p44
2.1 A visit to the Deutsche Guggenheim p44
2.2 Towards a haptic reading of ‘The Black Photo Album/ Look at Me 1890-1950’ p51
(1997) by Santu Mofokeng
2.3. Haptic space: the ‘smooth’ and the ‘striated’ P60
2.3.1 Haptic contexts: on Riegl p65
2.4 ‘The Black Photo Album /Look at Me 1890-1950’ (1997) by Santu Mofokeng p73
2.4.1 Haptic images: weaving in and out of visibility p76
2.4.2 Text, materiality and collaboration P82
2.5 Looking at the archive p87

Chapter 3: Darwinian reflections on sex, beauty and art. On the work p93
of El Anatsui
3.1 The oversized bangle p90
3.2 Beauty, art and boundaries p111
3.2.1 Art and sexual selection: on the evolutionary function of beauty p115
3.2.2 Beauty and the moral good? p119
3.2.3 Primordial beginnings and complex ends p124
3.3 Art and natural selection: the adaptive payoff hypotheses p126
3.3.1 The complex case of a broken kettle: beauty as by-product p131
3.3.2 Art and social grooming p134
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3.4 Art by night play by day? p139

Chapter 4. The strange graveyard: Willem Boshoff’s ‘Blind Alphabet’
(1991 - ongoing) as a material apparatus p143
4.1 Bottle, bone and ashes p143
4.2 Willem Boshoff’s ‘Blind Alphabet’ (1991 - ongoing): ‘heterotopic seeing’ and p147
the ‘apparatus’
4.2.1 Challenging the sighted norm p150
4.2.2 The heterotopic space p151
4.2.3 Materiality and the heterotopic: the sensory and spatial p153
4.3 The apparatus: materiality, performance, boundaries p159
4.3.1 The agency of the apparatus p161
4.4 Encounters with the ‘Blind Alphabet’ p164
4.4.1 Encountering the apparatus: the sighted viewer p171
4.4.2 Encountering the apparatus: the blind viewer p185
4.5 Tactile problems and hermeneutic ends p187

Chapter 5: Conclusion p192
5.1 Language, art and the body p194
5.1.2 The body as surface for inscription p198
5.1.3 The map and the tracing p206
5.1.4 Writing the body p208
5.2 The instrumentality of language: the body and its memory p213
5.3 Unruly origins: pleasure and the boundary p218
5.3.1 The transformation of the boundary: concluding remarks about the apparatus p225
5.4 Concluding remarks regarding the politics and pleasures of identification p229

Bibliography p233

Appendix A: ‘Catalogue of artworks, Johan Thom’ (Separate volume
presented as part of this PhD thesis)

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List of Figures:
Figure 1: Aerial view of Boksburg, Johannesburg, South Africa p10
Figure 2: Documentation of the performance ‘The theory of gravity’ (2006),
Johan Thom p17
Figure 3: Composite view of ‘The theory of flight’ (2006), Johan Thom p20
Figure 4: Detail from ‘Memory’ (2008) by Anish Kapoor p46
Figure 5: ‘Memory - Edition 45.’ (2008) by Anish Kapoor p48
Figure 6: ‘Eyes wide shut, Motouleng cave, Clarens, Free State’ (2004), Santu p55
Mofokeng
Figure 7: ‘Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X’ (1953) by
Francis Bacon p64
Figure 8: Painted Egyptian relief with human figures, goats, cattle and seed
from the Fifth Dynasty (ca. 2450 - 2350BCE) p67
Figure 9: Image from the ‘Rainbow series #9’ (1996) by Candice Breitz P70
Figure 10: ‘Unidentified subjects’, Slide 27 from the ‘Black Photo Album /Look p73
at Me 1890-1950’ (1997) by Santu Mofokeng
Figure 11: ‘Ouma Maria Letsipa, nee van der Merwe, with her daughter Minkie’,
Slide 7 from the ‘Black Photo Album /Look at Me 1890-1950’ (1997) P80
by Santu Mofokeng
Figure 12: “What was the occasion? Who is gazing”, Slide 9 from ‘The Black
Photo Album /Look at Me 1890-1950’ (1997) by Santu Mofokeng p83
Figure 13: ‘The brothers Moeti and Lazarus Foeme’, Slide 10 from ‘The Black
Photo Album /Look at Me 1890-1950’ (1997) by Santu Mofokeng p84
Figure 14: ‘The Bavenda. A Venda mother and child at Sibasa’ (1928) by Alfred
Duggin-Cronin P90
Figure 15: Installation view at the British Museum of ‘Man’s Cloth’ (1998-2001),
El Anatsui p95
Figure 16: Side view of ‘Man’s Cloth’ (1998-2001), El Anatsui p97
Figure 17: Detail, ‘Man’s Cloth’ (1998-2001), El Anatsui p98
Figure 18: Young sitting Ndebele woman dressed in golwani and related
apparel P101
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Figure 19: Young standing Ndebele woman dressed in golwani and related
apparel p110
Figure 20: ‘Blind Alphabet’ (1991-), Willem Boshoff p144
Figure 21: Installation view of ‘32000 Darling little nuisances’ (2003), Willem
Boshoff p167
Figure 22: Video still from ‘Challenging mud (after Kazuo Shiraga)’, (2008), Johan
Thom p169
Figure 23: Installation view of ‘Challenging mud (after Kazuo Shiraga)’, (2008),
Johan Thom p170
Figure 24: Selection from the ‘Blind Alphabet (Dacryoid - Drusiform)’, (2007),
Willem Boshoff p172
Figure 25: Detail from the ‘Blind Alphabet (Dacryoid - Drusiform)’, 2007, p174
Willem Boshoff
Figure 26: Nine wooden forms from the letter ‘B’ for the ‘Blind Alphabet’ (1991 p175
- ongoing), Willem Boshoff
Figure 27: Detail from the ‘Blind Alphabet’ (1991 -), Willem Boshoff p176
Figure 28: Installation view of the ‘Blind Alphabet’ (2011), Willem Boshoff p184
Figure 29: Sculptural rendering of the term ‘baribigerous’ from the ‘Blind
Alphabet (Dacryoid - Drusiform)’ (2007), Willem Boshoff p185
Figure 30: Detail from the ‘Blind Alphabet (Dacryoid - Drusiform)’ (2007),
Willem Boshoff p189
Figure 31: Detail showing a blind person interacting with the ‘Blind Alphabet’
(1991 -) at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1995 p191
Figure 32: Proposal for ‘Every sentence draws blood’ (2012), Johan Thom p193
Figure 33: Photographic documentation of ‘Every sentence draws blood’, (7 p195
September 2012), Johan Thom. (Photographic credit: Abrie Fourie)
Figure 34: Photographic documentation of ‘Every sentence draws blood’, (7 p201
September 2012), Johan Thom
Figure 35: Photographic documentation of ‘Every sentence draws blood’, (7 p203
September 2012), Johan Thom
Figure 36: Photographic documentation of ‘Every sentence draws blood’, (7 p204
September 2012), Johan Thom

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Figure 37: Photographic documentation of ‘Every sentence draws blood’, (8
September 2012), Johan Thom p205
Figure 38: Photographic documentation of ‘Every sentence draws blood’, (7
September 2012), Johan Thom p217
Figure 39: Photographic documentation of ‘After Linnaeus’, (2013), Johan Thom p218
Figure 40: Photographic documentation of ‘ Every sentence draws blood’, (8
September 2012) p223
Figure 41: Photographic documentation of ‘ Every sentence draws blood’, (11
September 2012) p223
Figure 42: Photographic documentation of ‘ Every sentence draws blood’, (21
November 2013) p231
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Beginnings

Figure 1: Present day aerial view of Boksburg, Johannesburg, South
Africa. This is the suburb where I grew up as it appears today. Most
of the larger mine dumps such as those near the Elsburg Tailing
Complex are in the process of being erased from the landscape by
way of large-scale industrial recycling projects. (Source:
http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=-
26.256781&lon=28.220873&z=15&m=b&show=/7094592/ERPM-
Gold-Mine, Accessed: 1 August 2013)

James, Paul and I are peddling away on our bicycles. It is quarter past one in the afternoon and
like most of the other primary school children pouring from the open school gate we are
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