The Freedom Charter Blues: Aryan Kaganof is accompanied by Zim Ngqawana playing tenor sax. Listen:
- This first appeared at UnlikelyStories.org
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The Freedom Charter Blues: Aryan Kaganof is accompanied by Zim Ngqawana playing tenor sax. Listen:
This is just a short note to encourage you to have a look at a documentary I have just edited called WELCOME NELSON which will be broadcast by etv on wednesday 10 february at 8pm.
This documentary takes a different angle on the 20th anniversary celebrations of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
The release is analysed in terms of Guy Debord’s theory of the spectacle and views the event as an entirely staged media coup for the Machiavellian F.W. De Klerk.
Instead of the customary portrayal of Dr. Mandela as a liberating Messiah he is shown to have been taken completely by surprise by his release, pleading with De Klerk to allow him to stay inside for longer, and tragically identifying with his white warders in what must be one of the most acute cases of Stockholm Syndrome in history.
The never-before screened behind the scenes footage of the press conference and first speech provides a fascinating glimpse into how the news media shape and manipulate our memories of the future.
The documentary is shot, produced and directed by CRAIG MATTHEW
sound design and original music score DANIEL EPPEL
sound recordist WARRICK SONY
theme song SIMONE WHITE
editor ARYAN KAGANOF
2010, 23 minutes
first broadcast wednesday 10 february 8pm on etv
more information on Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle is here.
I’m delighted to bring you the news that my film, Civilization and Other Chimeras Observed During The Making Of An Exceptionally Artistic Feature Film, has been named “film of the year” by Bad Lit, the journal of underground film:
Also, I wrote on the site recently that I didn’t know what types of films could truly be called “innovative” these days. “Innovative” doesn’t automatically conjure up a stamp of quality, of course. Plus, this past year I’ve seen tons of films that have been uniquely creative and have pushed boundaries. Many of the films that ended up as runners-up to this year’s “Movie of the Year” have totally shown me something new or unexpected or extraordinary or exceptionally ambitious.
But the most “innovative” filmmaker I can think of this year is South Africa’s Aryan Kaganof, whose Civilization and Other Chimeras Observed During the Making of an Exceptionally Artistic Feature Film is Bad Lit’s 2009 Movie of the Year.
I curated the 18th edition of Netfilmmakers, and was interviewed by Danish culture zine Kopenhagen on the show, called Noisewomb:
Why are you inspired by the writings of Theodor W. Adorno, Rainer Maria Rilke and Guy Debord?
Debord and Adorno describe beautifully the terrible condition of this modern, mechanized world, of the rigidly proscribed existence that we foolishly pretend is free. Rilke is a reminder that it can be different, that it was different once. Debord’s most powerful aphorism was his suicide – a single bullet through the heart. It was his most unambiguous statement.
What does the idea of the primal sound means to you?
I’m interested in alchemy, in the creation of forms that arise out of not-knowing, out of curiosity, out of seeking. The primal sound is for me that intuitive leap into the dark that I make every time I follow a hunch and somehow land up somewhere other than where I thought I was jumping. The primal sound is the voice within, guiding me to where I don’t know why I’m going. It’s the sound of intuition and the sound of trusting that intuition.
Is there a questioning of authenticity behind your choice of theme?
Unfortunately it really is too late for us to add anything meaningful to the authenticity debate. Everything artificial is real.
pravasan pillay’s tearoom books has published the chapbook of the year.
there’s no escaping it.
the moment you see gary cummiskey’s face you start screaming
because
there is fire in the enema of art
he put it there
poignantly
not yet free of the dream nor of the memory of when you came to me not wearing panties beneath your light summer dress
but the moment you got on top of me and you saw my face you started screaming
as far as south africa is concerned a reason for gary cummiskey’s neglect may stem from the fact that he spent almost 20 years in randburg, and by the time he returned to settle down in sandton, the political situation had changed and so cummiskey’s surrealist work seemed out of place. thus gary had become a marginalised figure as a result of poth psychogeographical and cultural factors.
he writes in “european writers” “some people became poets after corresponding with european writers. i became a poet after sleeping on a razorblade.”
and this means that gary is sharp.
he’s busy looking for a magic wand – no strings attached.
another problem that may account for the relative obscurity of gary’s work is the difficulty of placing it within the various ‘movement’ categorisations. while romancing the dead contains a number of poems dealing with the colonial city scene in joburg, the rest of his work does not particularly reflect the social context in which it was created.
in the end it boils down to the “painting”:
i am hungry and dirty.
my feet stink.
i want to brush my teeth.
however, it can also not be ignored that cummiskey’s illness sometimes made him an extremely difficult person, and most publishers and editors were reluctant to deal with him. for this reason alone pravasan pillay must be commended. despite there being no physical attraction pillay liked cummiskey as a friend.
gary was aware of his outsider status, and openly declared that he did not wish to fit in with any particular group or category. but there is a difference between being an outside and being marginalised to the point of neglect – and cummiskey’s work is neglected. (although stephen gray would probably not agree).
romancing the dead is a funeral ceremony and all gary’s sleeping relatives sit on the floor of the bathroom around the bath where his corpse is laid. once the sleepers have been given the pills to swallow when you left you took them out from your handbag and slipped them back on.
some people become poets after sleeping with european writers. gary cummiskey is a razorblade. very sharp.
aryan kaganof
Book details
this post originally appeared at kagablog
stephen gray, in his review of “who was sinclair beiles” implies that sinclair was “some sort of impostor? a scam?” gray’s egregious insinuation is further developed in the article: “in the classic accounts of the period, james campbell’s the beat generation and barry miles’s the beat hotel, “our boy” merits only a footnote or two, and no listing of his works, if there were any, in the bibliographies.”
in fact sinclair beiles was co-author, along with william burroughs, brion gysin and gregory corso of the hugely influential “minutes to go”, published by two cities editions. here is some information about this book by jed birmingham of reality studio: “one book in my collection highlights the important role of the independent bookshop in burroughs’ social and creative life. kaddish, naked lunch, soft machine, and bomb were all written in part at the beat hotel, but the book that most captures the spirit of 9 rue git-le-coeur is minutes to go. in his editor’s note to brion gysin let the mice in, jan herman describes the beat hotel atmosphere as like a “laboratory,” and minutes to go is certainly the most representative result of those experiments in lifestyle and literary technique.
i want to focus on the community of bookstores involved with this cut-up collection. in fact independent bookstores made minutes to go a pubished reality. minutes to go was issued by two cities in 1000 copies on april 13, 1960. a limited edition of ten copies included a manuscript page. this reminds me of the limited edition for the c press time. i have never seen the limited time or minutes to go for sale on the rare book market. the john hay library at brown possesses a copy of the minutes to go and displayed it prominently at their burroughs exhibition years ago.
two cities was a bilingual (french and english) magazine edited by jean fanchette, a young doctor. fanchette published expats like henry miller, alfred perles, and lawrence durrell. the first issue was dedicated to durrell. years later, the correspondence between fanchette and durrell from this period would be published by two cities as well. anaïs nin was a correspondent for the magazine. with gysin designing the covers, fanchette fashioned minutes to go to mirror the magazine.”
“minutes to go” is a legendary text; a bible of avant-garde literary cut-up technique. kathy acker, j.g. ballard, lesego rampolokeng, paul wessels, the list of writers influenced by this work could go on and on… furthermore the book has exerted influence on a wide range of industrial culture outside of literature, most notably cinema (peter whitehead, derek jarman, bruce conner etc) and music (john zorn, throbbing gristle, einsturzende neubauten, henry cow, etc). it would not be hyperbolic to describe the entire digital sampling culture of today as being prefigured in this ur-text of experimentation.
perhaps stephen gray is unaware of these trends and tendencies in the culture of the last fifty years? then he shouldn’t be exposing his ignorance in the mail & guardian. he describes sinclair beiles as a “demented con man” but in fact it is stephen gray who is the con man, pretending to be a literary connoisseur whilst in fact writing well shy of the facts. shameful
aryan kaganof
ps. sinclair beiles was also the editor of william burroughs’ “the naked lunch”, he organised a lot of the book into its published sequence, even re-typed many of the pages for burroughs. this is information that can be found in various biographical resources and interviews with burroughs. the imputation that gray makes in his scabrous article, namely that beiles invented, lied about, or exaggerated these facts, is simply disgusting.
Book details
This post originally appeared at Kagablog
guy debord on writing and speaking
Those who wish to write quickly a piece about nothing that no one will read through even once, whether in a newspaper or a book, confidently extol the style of the spoken language, because they find it much easier, more modern and direct. They themselves do not know how to speak. Neither do their readers, the language actually spoken under modern conditions of life having been socially reduced to a mere representation of itself, as endorsed by the media, and comprising some six or eight constantly repeated turns of phrase and fewer than two hundred terms, most of them neoligisms, with a turnover of a third of them every six months. All this favours a certain hasty solidarity. In contrast, I for my part am going to write without affectation or fatigue, as the most natural and easiest thing in the world, in the language I have learned and, in most circumstances, spoken. It’s not up to me to change it.
panegyric 1
a new nabokov
This November, Vladimir Nabokov will have a new novel out. It’s quite an achievement, you might have thought, for someone who died 32 years ago. But then Nabokov died and reinvented himself many times, and one could be forgiven for wondering if he just staged his death in 1977, and slipped off into another identity, like Elvis in the popular imagination; or like Sebastian Knight, John Shade, or any of the other escape artists who populate Nabokov’s own novels. And perhaps The Original of Laura, the novel that he left unfinished, when his heart supposedly gave out, is not really unfinished at all, but a non finito, that is, an art work that feigns incompletion. And so, perhaps to justify its aesthetic, Nabokov had to pretend to die. After all, …Laura is subtitled ‘Dying is Fun’, and tells the story of an ageing novelist, Philip Wild, who is trying to erase himself, using the rubber at the end of his pencil, starting from his toes and working upwards. To call …Laura, as Penguin are doing, A novel in fragments may be to do more than state the dull fact that it is unfinished.
fernando pessoa – this is extraordinary!
the art of effective dreaming for metaphysical minds
the best way to start dreaming is through books. novels are especially helpful for the beginner. the first step is to learn to give in completely to your reading, to live totally with the characters of a novel. you’ll know you’re making progress when your own family and its troubles seem insipid and loathsome by comparison. it’s best to avoid reading literary novels, which tend to divert our attention to the formal structure.
i’m not ashamed to admit that this is how i started. strangely enough, detective novels are what i instinctively read. i was never able to read romantic novels in any sustained way, but this is for personal reasons, i being romantically disinclined even in my dreams. let each man cultivate his particular inclination. let us never forget that to dream is to explore ourselves. sensual souls, for their reading matter, should choose the opposite of what i read.
Collaborative works 2003 – 2009 by Michale Blake and Aryan Kaganof. Colloquium at SUN today. Still time to get to this – click the flyer for more.
417
i know no pleasure like that of books, and i read very little. books are introductions to dreams, and no introductions are necessary for one who freely and naturally enters into conversation with them. i’ve never been able to lose myself in a book; as i’m reading, the commentary of my intellect or imagination has always hindered the narrative flow. after a few minutes it’s i who am writing, and what i write is nowhere to be found.
…
fernando pessoa
the book of disquiet
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eventually one has to love gary cummiskey. he does not give up. he’s the kind of irascible soul that always draws trouble. something about his pugnacious nature attracts difficulties. if it can go wrong at a printer it will. twice. gary’s often stuck in traffic. the waiter dusts more flies into his soup. but unlike most people you’ve ever met who share this streak of disaster-attraction – cummiskey hasn’t got it in him to throw in the towel. you would have thought after years of publishing small press editions to little or no acclaim from the precarious south african literature “establishment” that gary would see the light and stop bothering. thank the gods he’s not that sort of bloke. gary persists. his persistency is the stuff of local literary legend. green dragon 6 is the best edition of his literary journal to date. and this volume about the late yeoville beat poet sinclair beiles is worth its weight in genetically modified stem cells. it keeps beiles alive. a collection of essays by the likes of alan finlay, fred devries, co-editor eva kowalska and gary himself, the book sheds shards of splintered, diffused and hazy light on the figure of beiles whose reputation is based largely on memories of his surly frame sitting truculently outside coffee society in rockey street, chain smoking irritably – has anyone ever read any of his poems?
in yeoville in 1994 to film “nice to meet you, please don’t rape me” i was introduced to beiles by my co-screenwriter peter j. morris, himself an equally taciturn, sour-bellied type. the two of them found things to grumble about. it was impossible for me to talk to beiles. he just seemed too far gone in a vinegary disposition exacerbated by the brutal disappointment of never having ‘made it’ (whatever that means to a poet). but this volume opens the man up. dawie malan’s exquisite essay “the trouble with sinclair beiles” resuscitates the poet, gives him a fragile, vulnerable soul – and reveals librarian dawie to be one of our most sensitive writers.
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