Synopsis by Ashley Johnson |
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Artists
DASART showsTransmigrations - the showTransmigrations Synopsis FokofoDasart Archives |
The euphoria at the birth of the Rainbow Nation has long since subsided and the reality of the lack of communication between South Africans has reasserted itself. Diverse cultures and ideas sorely need a point of convergence where an exchange can take place. DASART is an artist's collective which strives to express social meaning through a variety of artistic forms. We believe that contemporary art has to engage the broader social organism through presenting ideas and forms that stimulate. We are against an exclusive art for art's sake approach. The theme of this proposed exhibition is transmigration. This term has an interpretative range that extends from physical immigration to reincarnation. We wish to project the concept of ideas being seeded and cross-pollinated in an exchange between artists and their audience. To accomplish this, DASART invited a diverse group of 14 artists to collaborate within the broad rubric of rituals and items. The works could take any form, from sculpture through installation to digital. Thematically the works deal with rituals which include domestic, gender, Christian, pagan, historical and any other chosen. Artists have both collaborated with others and worked singly. All ideas are documented and presented along with images of artists' work. Ritual is a universal activity that indicates a human method of interpreting and affecting so-called reality. There is an underlying similarity of procedure that is timeless and can be observed in both pagan customs and orthodox religion. For instance, the idea of sacrifice permeates both, as does the idea of transmutation, whether this is shamanic entry of the spirit world or Eucharist conversion of bread and wine into body and blood. |
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James Frazer, in his book, THE GOLDEN BOUGH, notes two differing attitudes1 linked with ritual. Firstly, there is the king who is inspired by divinity in order to become the oracle and bodily form of that divinity. In Maya custom, this obliged the king and queen to let their own blood regularly so as to propitiate the favour of the gods. Secondly, there is what he terms sympathetic magic, wherein the ways of the natural world can be influenced by imitating their effects. Thus elaborate rituals evolve to coax nature to rain. Frazer (circa 1890) notes the Zulu custom2 of killing a "heaven-bird" and throwing it into a pool. Then heaven would bring forth tears of remorse. Rituals permeate both modern and ancient cultures and have a living function within the human psyche. On a more mundane level, the hierarchical structure of the family and by extension, government, still express the ritual principle of vested authority. Many customs persist to help sweep the spirits of the dead into a position where they will not trouble the living. Christian burial rites like sprinkling sand into the grave also symbolize the release between life and death. Our Western way of seeing causes us to accept what is culturally familiar and reject as superstitious that which is culturally other. In the South African context, we need to learn about one another and project our state of being. Ultimately, one would hope that a culture of learning about one another could help us over the divide. At present, Western cultural perceptions are paramount but gradually Western science is demonstrating the power of subjectivity upon observable reality. The 1997 convention on quantum physics in Copenhagen3, concluded that at a sub-atomic level, the movement of electrons was affected by the observer's subjectivity. This implies that the actions and reactions of the natural world may be affected at a very deep level by human subjectivity. Thus, what we deride as superstitious may have a basis in experience. It is time that Western cultural perception opened itself to the multiplicity of experience that other cultures present. It is interesting to read books about folklore written at the beginning of the 20th century, not so much for the enumerated rituals of so-called 'rude' peoples but for what these books imply about our Western culture. We are a century further down the line and it is bizarre that we are now actually closer to the beginning. Science and technology were supposed to prove the hypothesis that the world could be comprehended as a mechanistic phenomenon. Instead, the most recent scientific findings suggest that humanity needs to develop a new paradigm - a new perception of reality. Philosophical explorations by such notables as Sartre and Wittgenstein have shaped perceptions of how the human mind works. Sartre emphasizes the consciousness of imaging rather than the immanence of the image4. Wittgenstein draws distinctions between imagining and seeing, denying that imagining calls forth mental pictures in the mind5. Recent neurological experiments6 contradict their ideas. Imaging does indeed take place and a remarkable similarity exists between stimulus and brain image as registered by neural activity. New philosophies are needed for the 21st century, not least to bind humans within the matrix of nature and to refute the concept that we are in any sense alienated. We need to get the whole picture. Art is very close to ritual in that it is a re-enactment of reality. On a neurological level the human pattern of registering information and resurrecting it later also has much in common with art. An exhibition of rituals and items thus promises to explore a variety of issues both visually and intellectually. As we prepare for the next century, the environment depends on us to develop a new manner of coexistence. To this end , we have recourse to ideas that have gone before, derided perhaps as 'primitive' or 'unscientific'. DASART has been concerned with developing a new perception of reality since its inception in 1992. We see this issue as more important than the posturing of the latest art-world trend. However, we are not opposed to technology or art-world manifestations but rather use any means convenient to express a message. We anticipate that this exhibition, TRANSMIGRATION: RITUALS AND ITEMS, will be an exciting and valuable experience. End Notes
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