An Introduction to Dasart

Artists

• Wim Botha
• Bob Cnoops
• Hugo Crosthwaite
• James de Villiers
• Sasha Fabris
• Gordon Froud
• Rookeya Gardee
• David Hlynsky (Canada)
• Ashley Johnson
• Nkosinathi Khanyile
• Ania Krajewski
• Michael Matthews
• Nhlanhla Mbatha
• Rankadi Mosako
• Margi Scharff (USA)
• Diane Victor

DASART shows

An Introduction to Dasart

Transmigrations - the show

Transmigrations Synopsis

Fokofo

Dasart Archives

Dasart was formed in 1992 by the South African artists Ashley Johnson and Michael Matthews. It is a collective of artists who consider the communication of a social message to be more important than the commercialization of the art product. Dasart encourages variety among artists and for our exhibitions we have always sought outside collaboration, from disadvantaged or marginalised artists to academic specialists or non-artists, since we believe that the incorporation of other views increases the tension and communicative power of the show. We see ambiguity and contradiction as positive forces that can lead to new insights.

Dasart feels an urgent need to communicate something incommunicable to the viewer. The purpose is to make art that relates to the human condition and that reawakens in the viewer a capacity to find new meaning in visual art. A reawakening in art means a re-birthing of the spirit. The Bushmen of Africa, for instance, related directly through their art to the spiritual world beyond. This was achieved by a heightened perception of reality brought on by means of a Trance Dance. The purpose of reaching the spirit world was renewal. The Dasartists feel that art should work for them as the ritual Trance Dance did for the Bushmen, to provide an avenue for renewal.

Renewal can be achieved by confronting the unknown in materials and situations yet with the goal being the expression of profound values linked to spiritual awareness. There is so much at the disposal of the contemporary artist from ancient stone to ultra-high–tech visual and computer systems, that the works which the Dasartists present may range from the two dimensional to the situational.

Creative endeavour has to challenge prevailing preconceptions of art with the goal of allowing the viewer to transform their experience of reality. The viewer confronts the artwork as a mass of potential energy. The work of art exhibits an imaginary passage of energy, which is now static in whatever aesthetic form it takes from conceptual art to classical paintings. The viewer gains new meaning by absorbing the imaginary traces, which are suggested by the artwork. The energies which are subsequently released in the individual are apprehended by other individuals who may not have seen the art work but contain within them patterns of understanding which correspond to attitudes expressed by the original individual. Thus the Dasartists do not see information as a commodity to be transferred. Rather information is energy in motion, which informs because it is already known. All humanity is already primed with the same patterns of understanding as a sort of ‘collective unconscious’ and it remains only to trigger the response.

When art becomes stale and stereotypical it is necessary to employ new metaphors to engage the imagination and jolt it from a static apprehension of reality. Dasart is striving to reflect a deeper sensibility of our time. The works are concerned with ideas of fragmentation and discontinuity, time and timelessness, loss and regeneration; the changing skin of Mother Nature. The spiritual essence of humanity is sought through the energies of change. Metamorphosis is the very energy of nature and this shape-changing is continuous. There is nothing immutable but change itself.

Full meaning in art can only be reached if the art experience is emotional. This is because human experience is emotionally based and all rationality is at root emotional. Our experience of reality is not exclusively located in the brain but instead the brain interprets emotional stimuli through the medium of the body. It can only do this in terms of cultural understanding, which is limited by the kinds of concepts which different cultures permit. To break through the impasse we need to have cross-cultural referencing and a style of communication that allows variety and discourages a reductionist approach.

Indeed, Dasart believes that Western culture in particular, delimits human expression by the nature of its philosophical definition of reality. We only see what our definitions allow us to see. Thus an idea like "Art for Art’s sake" can gain credence. Art becomes defined as a cultural activity separate from other activities and is self-referential. In other words, we are slaves to certain perceptions; a condition that has given rise to the consumer mentality which threatens to displace species, including humans, in the environment. Without the development of new philosophies that re-establish an understanding of the links between humans and the energies that pervade all things, we will be unable to act universally to combat poverty and the degradation of the environment.

The motive for the TRANSMIGRATIONS project was to bring together artists who view art-making as an activity deeply rooted in humankind’s biological origins. Dasart believes that it is vital for contemporary art to step outside its parameters and relate to the greater whole. This means that art should convey universal meaning, which links it to the environment as a whole. The TRANSMIGRATIONS project encompasses a variety of artistic approaches from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The show presents installations incorporating painting, sculpture, constructed environments, digital images alongside video. A very important component of the concept is the joint participation of other artists or groups drawn from other countries or areas. The guiding principle is one of dialogue and exchange. The artists who are working with Dasart on the TRANSMIGRATIONS project all have something to say, and they use their art to convey this spiritual essence.

Dasart believes that art is a biological expression before it is a cultural expression generated by a social environment. The biological function of art is to mirror our state of being metaphorically. Art is not seen as separate from other cultural manifestations like language or religion. Instead, we see all these expressions as creating metaphors for existence. The metaphor is an imaginative substitution for the truth, which is unknown. Interpretation of these metaphors leads to a conception of reality upon which we base any actions we take. Experienced reality is therefore dependent upon what we allow ourselves to think or imagine. The concept of the Individual is based on the idea that we are capable of independent thought and can identify ourselves as separate from one another. Dasart would challenge the existence of the individual as we see all humanity linked in mysterious ways with energies emanating from the cosmos. Individualism is an ideological construct; it is also a peculiarly Western idea that is not shared by African cultures and Eastern cultures.

Art, for the Dasartists, is not a self-referential system launched on a mysterious trajectory through history. Instead, they see it as an intimate form of communication between individuals and their times. In a spiritual sense, all ideas are in a state of flux and the artwork functions as a point of coagulation or timelessness for these. The viewer gains new perspectives by acknowledging what they already know yet have not considered. Human behaviour and knowledge are predetermined from the beginning of time, with the original explosion implying that that generative energy continues to affect us. Our beings are not separate from the energies that pass through us and define us. The waxing and waning of the moon affects the sap in all of us, just as cosmic electro-magnetic pulses affect growth patterns.

The kernel of the Dasart vision is that a new (or very old) perception of reality is needed for the 21^st century. This requires the development of a new philosophy of space and time, aimed at integrating humankind with environment. We see the destruction of the environment as the biggest problem humanity will face in the 21^st century. It will be impossible to stem the tide of destruction through education and we believe that only a new, universal belief system that permeates the unconscious of all peoples will suffice. An ancient precedent for the kind of philosophy we would identity with would be Aboriginal Dream Reality where the distinction between fact and fiction, time and space, becomes blurred into an experience of flux. Reality is layered and interpreted mythologically as a gradual movement towards manifestation.

Recent philosophies stemming from theories of Relativity in Quantum Physics by physicists like David Bohm add an uncanny resonance to these ancient ideas. He uses the metaphor of the hologram in motion to explain his theory of implicate and explicate order. A property of the hologram is that each part contains enough information to reconstruct the whole. Implicate order is not visible but is contained within explicate order, which is visible reality. To understand reality more clearly, it is necessary to engage the implicate order. The relational matrix model of space-time itself has an intrinsic holographic quality in that each relational part contains the pattern and existence of the whole.

Dasart is therefore opposed to ideas of individual selfhood or the hegemony of dominant cultures, where these are object-based and exclusive. We are against definitions and systems that separate and are reductionist in nature. We prefer the complexity of experience and interpenetration of systems. Dasart seeks for a mode of perception that would allow all humankind to identify innately with one another and with the environment. Reality is a product of cultural interpretation and is mutable. Human vision and self perception is orchestrated by the brain in conjunction with experience and is cued by cultural assumptions, some of which need to be addressed if we are to create a sustainable living environment. One method of beginning this process is cultural exchange, which offers the possibility of intercommunication of different cultures and ideas.

by Ashley Johnson

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