paramnesic pleasures

Gecko on my window

2011-08-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories

2011-08-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

Artist's charcoal-studded helium balloon creates mysterious wall drawings

2011-08-11T04:52:00.000-07:00

Artist Karina Smigla-Bobinski has created an installation comprised of an enormous, helium-filled balloon with a hedgehog-like coating of charcoal sticks trapped inside a room.
The balloon floats around the room, leaving charcoal marks on the white walls as it bounces from wall to wall. The piece, called Ada, is being exhibited at the FILE festival in Sao Paulo.
Ada is a transparent PVC balloon with a diameter of 2.5 metres. The charcoal pieces are attached at 30 centimetre intervals. The balloon has just enough helium in it to keep it floating, as opposed to rising.
Smigla-Bobinski told Wired.co.uk that her sponsor Lars Schubert offered "technical support and know-how at the same time I was able to work freely on my ideas. His corporation became my second art studio."
Resembling some sort of molecular hybrid, the transparent globe bobs around the room seemingly autonomously. Visitors can push the sphere around the room and watch it react to the external impetus.
As art critic Arnd Wesemann wrote in German culture magazine Tanz: "Ada is reminiscent of Ada Lovelace, who in the 19th century, together with Charles Babbage developed the very first prototype of a computer. Babbage provided the preliminary computing machine, Lovelace the first software. A symbiosis of mathematics with the romantic legacy of her father Lord Byron emerged there. Ada Lovelace intended to create a machine that would be able to create works of art, such as poetry, music, or pictures, like an artist does."
Smigla-Bobinski added: "I think the biggest challenge for me was that I had to construct Ada in such a way, that it would stand up through the whole festival (July 18 - August 28, 2011) with its roughly 1000 visitors per day. It is not easy to make the charcoals stick to the balloons surface firm enough without damaging the PVC. It has to be flexible and solid at the same time."

From http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/27/ada-charcoal-sphere (more images here)

paraprosdokian

2011-08-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

"paraprosdokian. Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation." eg, "Where there's a will, I want to be in it".

1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.
3. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
4. If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.
5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
8. Evening news is where they begin with 'Good Evening' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
10. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.
11. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.
12. Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says 'In case of emergency, notify ...........:' I put 'DOCTOR.'
13. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut and still think they are sexy.
15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
16. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
17. I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
18. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
19. Money can't buy happiness but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
20. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.
22. You're never too old to learn something stupid.
23. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
24. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
25. Change is inevitable except from a vending machine.
26. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
27. A diplomat is someone who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.
28. Hospitality is making your guests feel at home even when you wish they were.
29. I always take life with a grain of salt, .... plus a slice of lemon and a shot of tequila.
Words of Wisdom "The early bird may get the worm but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese."

Chris Marker

2011-08-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

"The process of making films in communion with oneself, the way a painter works or a writer, need not now be solely experimental. Contrary to what people say, using the first-person in films tends to be a sign of humility: 'All I have to offer is myself'". Chris Marker, 1997.

I first saw what had to be a bootleg copy of 'La Jetee' in a stuffy lecture hall at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown more than 10 years ago. I never forgot it and have been searching for his name ever since, until a friend recently told me to look him up.

Sans Soleil

La Jetee (Part 1)

La Jetee (Part 2)

Green Architecture (Did I tell you I was moving...)

2011-07-14T08:22:00.001-07:00

Right. Next week. Its on the cards. I am moving into one of these right now. Who's joining me?

Like an enormous chrysalis, the Yellow Treehouse Restaurant in New Zealand is a network of poplar and redwood slats, high above a redwood tree.

These spacey spheres, designed by Tom Chudleigh, are handmade from fiberglass and local woods. Strung up from neighboring trees, each pod can sleep up to four, and can be hooked up to an electric line.

Visitors to Scandinavia can spend the night amongst the trees in one of Treehotel’s treehouse rooms. Along with a TreeSauna, Treehotel offers six private guest treehouses in winter or summertime.

Read more: 6 High-Flying Treehouses for the True Escapist | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

This "Ring Around a Tree" addition to an existing building celebrates a Japanese Zelkova tree at the Fuji Kindergarten in Japan. Designed by Yui and Takaharu Tezuka, the glass and wood structure wraps around the 50 year old tree, creating an interior garden and play space. The circular shape joins and complements the oval-shaped kindergarten.

Read more: Amazing Japanese Kindergarten Circles Around a Mythic Tree | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

The hand-drawn sounds of Norman McLaren

2011-07-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

An introduction to the hand-drawn sounds of Norman McLaren. Prepared by Don Peters and Lorne Batchelor. 1951.

Although I do not draw on celluloid, McLaren's technique fascinates me from the perspective of language philosophy and the construction of time. I have made some drawings influenced by this, for instance my graphic notation after a sound improvisation by Niklas Zimmer and James Webb. See:
http://kailossgott.blogspot.com/2010/03/infinite-coastline-drawings-after-sound.html

PURGATORIO, by Ariel Dorfman, directed by Clare Stopford, visual score by Kai Lossgott

2011-06-24T01:37:00.001-07:00

PURGATORIO

Award winning actor David Minnaar loses himself in a maze of memory for Kai Lossgott's experimental visual score for Clare Stopford's production of "Purgatorio", by Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman.

Working in his capacity as experimental filmmaker, Kai Lossgott has composed a sensitive visual track that complements, counterpoints and underlines Dorfman's complex script.

"Ariel Dorfman's riveting play Purgatorio deals with a Man and a Woman in purgatory - a stark and soulless waiting room. Their identities are fluid and as the drama unfolds it emerges that they are each other`s interrogators, searching for clemency and contrition. Their fates are bound together by a horrific past, and freedom depends on their willingness to sacrifice themselves, each for the other. Trapped in the resonance of their actions and with the roles reversed, the inquisition and the healing begins as each of the characters search for understanding, forgiveness and redemption."

National Arts Festival, Grahamstown
Graeme College
30 June 2011, 8 PM
1 July 2011, 4 PM, 8 PM
2 July 2011, 4 PM, 8 PM
Click now to book

Baxter Theatre Centre, Cape Town
Flipside
7 - 29 July 2011, 8 PM
Click now to book

PURGATORIO, by Ariel Dorfman, directed by Clare Stopford, visual score by Kai Lossgott

2011-06-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

PURGATORIO

Acclaimed actress Terry Norton braves the ocean at sunrise on a cold winter's morning to shoot Kai Lossgott's experimental visual score for Clare Stopford's production of "Purgatorio", by Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman.

Working in his capacity as experimental filmmaker, Kai Lossgott has composed a sensitive visual track that complements, counterpoints and underlines Dorfman's complex script.

"Ariel Dorfman's riveting play Purgatorio deals with a Man and a Woman in purgatory - a stark and soulless waiting room. Their identities are fluid and as the drama unfolds it emerges that they are each other`s interrogators, searching for clemency and contrition. Their fates are bound together by a horrific past, and freedom depends on their willingness to sacrifice themselves, each for the other. Trapped in the resonance of their actions and with the roles reversed, the inquisition and the healing begins as each of the characters search for understanding, forgiveness and redemption."

National Arts Festival, Grahamstown
Graeme College
30 June 2011, 8 PM
1 July 2011, 4 PM, 8 PM
2 July 2011, 4 PM, 8 PM
Click now to book

Baxter Theatre Centre, Cape Town
Flipside
7 - 29 July 2011, 8 PM
Click now to book

hahaha

2011-06-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

Haha, what does this represent? Haha, what do you represent? Manuel Ocampo. 2002. Oil on canvas.

See more on http://artradarjournal.com/2011/03/02/words-in-art-manuel-ocampo-doesnt-want-alphabet-soup/

guess who came for brunch

2011-06-02T03:01:00.000-07:00

This is what I love about living in Cape Town... When I got home from a shoot half an hour ago, Mr Squirrel had dropped by to raid the pomegranate tree in front of my cottage. This new camera is a total pleasure.

InnerScapes

2011-05-24T02:17:00.000-07:00

Curator: Manuela Lietti
Artist: Marike Schuurman

The Chinese notion of health is largely rooted in their distinct notion of the human body as an organic whole that mirrors the intimate connection between the outer world of nature and the inner world of the individual. Whether in biology, medicine or art, the body is regarded as an extension of the natural system, regulated by the same rules and subject to the same phenomena. This holistic approach is a central concept of Chinese culture: the unity of man and nature – tian ren he yi. Micro and macro experiences are linked: individual and world, private Self and public I. Merging with nature is necessary in order to preserve one’s physical and psychological health. This belief is embodied by efforts to bridge the dichotomy between man and environment, personal ego and public persona. Common people, especially the elderly, re-appropriate public spaces and the natural environment in a healing process for body and mind.

The works of Dutch-born Berlin-based artist Marike Schuurman featured in “InnerScapes,” in particular the videos and photos shot in Beijing in 2008, reflect this practice, offering a lens through which to interpret the desire of contemporary Chinese people to integrate their lives in the natural order for their physical and mental health. Schuurman’s series of photographs and videos – shot in public parks, secluded woods hidden within the capital, green spots along the streets and other ordinary public spaces – portrays common people practicing taiqi, exercising and keeping fit by using what nature provides: tree branches, tree trunks, small patches of green. These natural elements function as props, helping people feel their body as alive and responsive. They help to reinvigorate it and reconnect one’s personal rhythm with the macro rhythm of nature. “InnerScapes” presents the kind of fitness equipment that can be found in Beijing’s public parks, streets, and other public spaces not necessarily conceived for fitness activities. With this equipment, “exercise stations” are created throughout the city. These provide not only an opportunity to exercise for those who cannot do so in natural spaces similar to those in Schuurman’s photographs and videos, but also an ideal platform that brings together the young and the old, preserving a sense of “neighborhood feeling of fellowship” that otherwise would be lost in the menacing concrete cityscapes.

from
http://www.synapse.info/projects/innerscapes/

KAI LOSSGOTT book launch & exhibition - Franschhoek Literary Festival 2011

2011-05-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Gallery at GRANDE PROVENCE

BOOK LAUNCH - 'talking to the tree outside my window while I sleep'
a collection of poems and plant leaf engravings by Kai Lossgott

11:00 AM, Sunday 15 May 2011.

After reading from the book, the author will be in conversation with the writer and poet Dawn Garisch.

FRANSCHHOEK LITERARY FESTIVAL SPECIAL EXHIBITION: FEATURING – KAI LOSSGOTT - 'lexicography of the heart' (Project Room), as well as SAREL PETRUS, CRAIG MULLER and LONI DRÄGER. 1 May - 1 June 2011.

Franschhoek Literary Festival 14 and 15 May 2011.

Contemporary art meets literature in May at Grande Provence during the Franschhoek Literary Festival. Contemporary artist and poet Kai Lossgott will be launching his intimate collection of poems – ‘talking to the tree outside the window while I sleep’ – during the festival, concurrent with his exhibition in the ‘Project Room’ at the gallery.

"Sometimes rarified. Sometimes rough. Exciting. Always Real. The urge to rub your face and body in the pages of this book, like you would with leaves in a pile of Autumn, rises—takes you over, allowing the beauty of the images and words to grow into you. The surrender is easy." (Tania van Schalkwyk, Ingrid Jonker Prize for Poetry 2010)

'talking to the tree outside my window while I sleep' can be purchased at the gallery, and also be paged through and ordered at www.kailossgott.com.

The book, which showcases a careful selection of three years’ work of engravings on plant leaves, has been praised for its intimate evocation of the personal element in green politics. Lossgott’s work embodies a global shift in identity towards finding intrinsic value in all living things apart from human gain. The artist connects intricate human biological processes to the greater ecology. He refers to similarities between plant and human anatomy, such as a light-sensitive ‘skin’, with branches and capillaries containing blood or sap. “Both plant and human skin scars, heals, remembers,” he says.

The following artists are also included in the exhibition: Sarel Petrus - sculptures , Craig Muller – sculptures, and Loni Dräger with an installation themed ‘Skins’. Loni will also be showcasing a selection of ‘stone succulents’ in the Courtyard.

In the Main Gallery, renowned artist Paul Boulitreau will be exhibiting 'The Mute Opera', a series of paintings. There will also be sculptures by Michaella Janse van Vuuren.

Gallery hours: Monday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00. For further information and images, contact The Gallery at +27 (0)21 876 8630.

conflux

2011-04-28T03:28:00.001-07:00

conflux. Kai Lossgott. 2011. Laser engraving on coral tree leaf (detail). Wood and glass lightbox. 60 x 30 cm.

KAI LOSSGOTT in the Project Room at Grande Provence

2011-04-28T03:26:00.000-07:00

The Gallery at GRANDE PROVENCE

FRANSCHHOEK LITERARY FESTIVAL SPECIAL EXHIBITION: FEATURING – KAI LOSSGOTT - 'lexicography of the heart' (Project Room), as well as SAREL PETRUS, CRAIG MULLER and LONI DRÄGER.

1 May - 1 June 2011. (The Franschhoek Literary Festival 14 and 15 May 2011.)

Contemporary art meets literature in May at Grande Provence during the Franschhoek Literary Festival. Contemporary artist and poet Kai Lossgott will be launching his intimate collection of poems – ‘talking to the tree outside the window while I sleep’ – during the festival, concurrent with his exhibition in the ‘Project Room’ at the gallery.

"Sometimes rarified. Sometimes rough. Exciting. Always Real. The urge to rub your face and body in the pages of this book, like you would with leaves in a pile of Autumn, rises—takes you over, allowing the beauty of the images and words to grow into you. The surrender is easy." (Tania van Schalkwyk, Ingrid Jonker Prize for Poetry 2010)

'talking to the tree outside my window while I sleep' can be purchased at the gallery, and also be paged through and ordered at www.kailossgott.com. (Date and time for the launch to follow.)

The book, which showcases a careful selection of three years’ work of engravings on plant leaves, has been praised for its intimate evocation of the personal element in green politics. Lossgott’s work embodies a global shift in identity towards finding intrinsic value in all living things apart from human gain. The artist connects intricate human biological processes to the greater ecology. He refers to similarities between plant and human anatomy, such as a light-sensitive ‘skin’, with branches and capillaries containing blood or sap. “Both plant and human skin scars, heals, remembers,” he says.

The following artists are also included in the exhibition: Sarel Petrus - sculptures , Craig Muller – sculptures, and Loni Dräger with an installation themed ‘Skins’. Loni will also be showcasing a selection of ‘stone succulents’ in the Courtyard.

The exhibition will be opened on Sunday, 1 May 2011 at 11h00 by Gordon Froud and will be on view until 1 June 2011.

In the Main Gallery, renowned artist Paul Boulitreau will be exhibiting 'The Mute Opera', a series of paintings. There will also be sculptures by Michaella Janse van Vuuren.

Gallery hours: Monday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00. For further information and images, contact The Gallery at +27 (0)21 876 8630.

dashboard cactus garden

2011-04-12T12:46:00.001-07:00

I'd love to meet the owner of this car. I briefly considered turning my car into a mobile greenhouse like him, except I don't want to be driving my cactus collection around in a collision. Parked outside Newlands Forest, Cape Town, he must have been taking his dogs for a walk.

the aperture of chlorophyll. Kai Lossgott. 2011. Video & plant leaf engravings.

2011-02-23T01:29:00.000-08:00

the aperture of chlorophyll. Kai Lossgott. 2011. Typewriter and laser-engraving on Lantana leaves, lightboxes with colour LCD screens, digital video. 2 min 15 sec. 20 x 25 cm.

In “the aperture of chlorophyll”, a fragment from a poem is typed on a small plant leaf, an intricate drawing laser-engraved on another. In the digital light and shadow of the colour LCD screens behind them, these perforations gleam and flicker. Kai Lossgott's latest work merges his plant leaf engravings with his experimental films - motion photography combined with the graphic qualities of drawing and animation.

Influenced by global evidence of climate change, we are currently re-defining our collective and personal identities. As we begin to realise we are part of a living system, we ask: what is the borderline of intelligent life? Plants, for instance, store and process information in sophisticated ways, communicating chemically with their environment. They are capable of learning, and plan for future environmental conditions. Their functions for respiration, digestion, cell growth, reproduction and immunity are comparable to ours.

With this meditation on photosynthesis, the artist revisits his idea that plants see with their skin. Like human skin, light sensitive film or paper, or a digital camera CCD, plants absorb light. They do this in the red and blue regions of the visible light spectrum through the pigment chlorophyll. (Green light is not absorbed but reflected, making the plant appear green.) Through this process leaves convert solar energy intro the nutrients and oxygen human and animal life depend on.

The light-sensitive pigment chlorophyll has in fact no opening regulated like a camera’s aperture stop or the human eye’s iris to adjust the amount of light or dark required for the perception of images as we know them. Although they perceive light, plants ‘feel’ more than ‘see’ it. Plants use the same molecules and pathways to drive their circadian rhythms as humans and animals. Lossgott explores the subtle changes in mood, heart rate, breath and mental activity that occur in humans with the coming and going of day and night. Awake or asleep, we have more in common with our distant evolutionary cousins than we know.

New artworks featured at Design Indaba from 25 - 28 Feb 2011

2011-02-23T01:05:00.000-08:00

One of the new works being featured at the the Design Indaba Expo 2011 this week.

sprout. Kai Lossgott. 2011. Laser engraving on poplar leaf. 25 x 25 cm.

Read more at: http://www.visi.co.za/News/News/8/Engraving-on-leaves/1196

CITY BREATH in Durban at the KZNSA Gallery

2011-01-25T06:35:00.001-08:00

CITY BREATH Festival of Video Poetry and Performance

4 South African cities. 20 short experimental films. 4 minutes each.

25 January 2011, 6:00 PM until 19 February 2010
Multi-media Room, KZNSA Gallery
116 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban

As screened in Cape Town, Johannesburg, London, Berlin, Edinburgh, Grahamstown, Vancouver, and Marseille

"Whichever film you watched, it's unlikely that you would have ever seen anything like it before." Cue, National Arts Festival, Grahamstown

http://www.kznsagallery.co.za

WATCH THE TRAILER by clicking here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95T6zKttECU

Botsotso poetry evening, Cape Town

2010-10-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Botsotso and AIDC present an evening of poetry : 6PM, Wednesday 13 October 2010
VENUE: LOBBY BOOKS, 6 SPIN ST, CENTRAL CAPE TOWN  

‎"a no holds barred and bared experience of the spoken/moaned/chanted/sighed/spat". I won't be spitting this time (anyone remember the Spier Contemporary 2007), and I've stopped writing those wrist-slasher poems (hard work, I tell you), so come and celebrate with me. :) You're bound to love something.

More from the organisors: "The poets (in order of their physical stature) - Andre Marais, Aryan Kaganoff, Kai Lossgott, Liesl Jobson, Deon Skade, Zizipo Mgobo, Suzy Bell, Liz Trew, Mark Espin, Cosmos Mairosi, Donald Parenzee and Allan Kolski Horwitz - have been instructed to leave the refreshments for the listeners - so come early and gorge yourself on home made briyani and gehakte herring (there will be special fynbos canapes for vegans and other lunatics).

Botsotso and AIDC present an evening of poetry which knows not the limits of taste or sense - a no holds barred and bared experience of the spoken/moaned/chanted/sighed/spat Word as delivered by a line up that features known felons and deviants, infamous purveyors of sensation and shlock, illiterates and philistines, unreformed stalinist misogynists, escaped slaves and enslaved slave masters, black diamonds and white pussy cats - you name it: they will all be there, not just in spirit but in techniclour flesh. (If you think this hype is in bad taste then you will definitely appreciate the subtleties awaiting your open ears).  

  Admission free - especially for children under the age of two ( a special kiddies poesy program will be provided by trained lion tamers and other New Age child minders)."

Moving Ferrofluid Sculptures

2010-08-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

You are looking at the 3D form of a magnetic field revealed by a Ferrofluid, a fluid with magnetic properties. A little search in the fine art world revealed "Morpho Towers: Two Standing Spirals", a moving mechanical installation by Sachiko Kodama and Yasushi Miyajima using electromagnetism and ferrofluid. Watch the video below. You have to see it to believe it. You can also see some of the real stuff and make it react to magnets at the Sci-bono museum in Newtown, Johannesburg, where I discovered it yesterday.

dead ducklings

2010-07-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

Dead ducklings on the pavement. What the ... ? Corner of the Methodist Church wall on Main Rd, Rosebank. Not roadkill. Someone must have put them there. Or did they wander here on their own? From where? Someone's garden pond?

I always get comments like "Yeah right, sure you found that." Well here it is.

my fish and fowl day. yes, really.

2010-06-21T12:00:00.001-07:00

Fish tail. Liesbeek River bank, Rondebosch, Cape Town. 11 AM.

Golden Weaver. Long Street, Cape Town central. 5:30 pm.

Matt Gone - the chequer man

2010-06-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

Matt Gone - a 100% tattooed man with a focus on black and white cheques. Matt lives in Portland, Oregon and is proud of his 100% tattooed body which includes his penis and anus (inked by himself using a mirror)

Featured in the December 2009 issue of Bizarre Magazine.

(Copyright - Mark Berry/Bizarre Archive)

www.bizarremag.com
www.bizarrearchive.com
www.mattgone.com

Kai Lossgott & Suzanne Duncan on Winelands VAN-guard

2010-06-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

coming. Kai Lossgott. 2010. Insect bite and laser engraving on geranium leaf. Lightbox. 60 x 60 cm. (Detail.)

KAI LOSSGOTT & SUZANNE DUNCAN
plant leaf engravings and hair knot sculptures

7 June - 24 July 2010
opening 18:00h, Oude Libertas Art Gallery, Stellenbosch
Curated by Gerhi Janse van Vuuren, Roena Griesel & Ilse Schermers Griesel

Oude Libertas, cnr Adam Tas and Oude Libertas Street, Stellenbosch. Tel 021 883 9742.
Gallery Hours: Tues to Fri 9:00 - 17:00. Sat 9:00 - 13:00.

Winelands VAN-Guard exhibition
spanning Durbanville Hills, Oude Libertas Gallery, Neethlingshof Estate, Uitkyk Wine Estate

The Winelands VAN-Guard exhibition is made possible by the generous support of Distell, BASA, The City of Cape Town, WC Department of Economic Development and Tourism, Durbanville Hills, Oude Libertas Gallery, Neethlingshof Estate, Uitkyk Wine Estate

burn. Kai Lossgott. 2010. Typewriter and hand engraving on poplar leaf. Lightbox. 30 x 30 cm.

From Gloves series. Suzanne Duncan. 2009. Lightjet print. 280 x 420mm.

Kai Lossgott and Suzanne Duncan persue the right to be sensitive in a hard and fast environment. "You are always vulnerable to harm and pain, just because you exist in a body," says Duncan, who channels her nervous energy into gauzy fabrics knotted and woven from her own hair. This therapeutic process of entrainment is an exorcism of anxiety resulting in symbolic skins like gloves, stockings or bandages, which nonetheless fail to remedy feelings of vulnerability.

Kai Lossgott engraves text and continuous line drawings into the living tissue of plant leaves. A poet and artist, he mediates between the branches of expression and ecology. Close to the body through buddhist meditation and performance art practises, his mark-making and symbolism seek to explore biophysical language patterns, and the vulnerable instincts which drive them - sensitivity, silence, and acts of sensing. His is a quest to glean the borderline of conscious life.

Both artists share an existential need to renew and repair their position in a broken web. For Lossgott this relates to a split between human beings and the living system they are part of, for Duncan it is psycho-social. In an effort to overcome the alienation and self-estrangement that comes from modern urban life, Lossgott and Duncan elevate ephemeral materials to objects of contemplation. This is a simple, powerful statement of life and of vulnerability for the times we live in.

The clarity of their work defies its intricacy. To this end, both work with qualities of fragility and lightness, with an understated presentation in box frames and lightboxes.

Directions to Oude Libertas Gallery

From N2 (travelling from Cape Town towards Somerset West)
Take Exit 33 (Macassar) R310 Baden Powell Dr
Turn left into Baden Powell Dr
Travel for 13km
Turn right at T-junction (Adam Tas Street)
Travel for 2.8km
Turn Left into Oude Libertas Street
The Oude Libertas building is on your right

find Oude Libertas Street on Google Maps

Joshua Allen Harris - Inflatable bag monsters

2010-04-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Litter lurking on ventilation grids inflates into fluttering plastic creatures

Infinite Coastline, drawings after a sound improvisation by Niklas Zimmer & James Webb

2010-03-25T01:44:00.000-07:00

Infinite Coastline: Friday 14:30h. Kai Lossgott. 2010. India ink on archival paper. 60 x 60 cm. (detail)

Infinite Coastline: Signal pass diagram. Kai Lossgott. Niklas Zimmer. James Webb. 2010. Lightjet on archival paper. 60 x 60 cm. (After a graphic by Kate Boswell, 2001.)

Infinite Coastline: Saturday 18:45h. Kai Lossgott. 2010. India ink on archival paper. 60 x 60 cm.

The work consists of three works on paper, two of which are graphic notations in india ink, each based on a listening instance of the live recording "Infinite Coastline: Two" by Niklas Zimmer and James Webb (2001, 11 min 39 sec). The third is a print of a signal pass diagram of the equipment used to create the sound. The drawings are a synaesthetic translation of the sound into a visual language of haptic and emotional impulses. Zimmer played a keyboard and percussion instruments. Webb treated these sounds with electronic effects pedals, adding samples from a dictaphone and a short wave radio.

The work was made for "Collateral", for which I was asked to submit a work that was the result of a collaboration. The curator, Elfriede Dreyer, cites the French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud's idea of the "altermodern" as her departure point for this show of collaborations, on at Fried Contemporary in Pretoria during March.

"Altermodernity is characterised by translation, unlike the modernism of the twentieth century which spoke the abstract language of the colonial west, and postmodernism, which encloses artistic phenomena in origins and identities."

Nicolas Bourriaud. Altermodern manifesto. Tate Modern. 2009.

The last two paragraphs of Bourriaud's text below neatly contextualise the impulse of the work.

"The artist becomes 'homo viator', the prototype of the contemporary traveller whose passage through signs and formats refers to a contemporary experience of mobility, travel and transpassing. This evolution can be seen in the way works are made: a new type of form is appearing, the journey-form, made of lines drawn both in space and time, materialising trajectories rather than destinations. The form of the work expresses a course, a wandering, rather than a fixed space-time.
Altermodern art is thus read as a hypertext; artists translate and transcode information from one format to another, and wander in geography as well as in history. This gives rise to practices which might be referred to as 'time-specific', in response to the 'site-specific' work of the 1960s. Flight-lines, translation programmes and chains of heterogeneous elements articulate each other. Our universe becomes a territory all dimensions of which may be travelled both in time and space."
Nicolas Bourriaud. Altermodern manifesto. Tate Modern. 2009.

back to alpha

2010-03-24T01:28:00.001-07:00

alpha. Kai Lossgott. 2010. Video installation, National School of the Arts, Johannesburg.

I was approached to exhibit at my old high school in Johannesburg, the National School of the Arts. I sent along 'alpha' as a video installation. In a very personal way, I was moved by how the installation site, a classroom, extended the film's metaphors of learning and erasure. They are implicit in this found address book that was thrown into the sea and became an experimental film.

I was trying to erase myself when I began to make this film, five years after high school. I hoped that I could forget so much that I would somehow become who I imagined I once must have been. The film, just over three minutes long, took four years to find its current shape. It was a long wait. In the artist's statement, I write about the search for the woman whose name was the only address in the book I had found. "I began to paint her with red food colouring, but she shifted her identities like a mutinous fantasy. It seemed to me as if she had only now begun to exist, not as a woman, but as a little girl. She was alpha, the beginning."

National School of the Arts Festival of Fame, 15 - 20 March 2010.

kiddie stuff in gutter

2010-03-20T05:17:00.000-07:00

A gutter in Mountain Rd in Woodstock decorated with bits of bright plastic. Dumped by a teenage dad who lost the custody battle, or a parrot crossed with a Magpie, or a kindergarten teacher spring-cleaning her boot. One object in particular was so beautiful, I bent down to pick it up. It was a weather wheel representing a rainy day, the space around the sun marked with tiny blue stipple lines on tiny printed drops. I was going to take it with me, but then I remembered the working chaos at home and the roadkill I used to dry out and press in my big green Atlas, and about how I can't walk around the room in the dark because I'll fall over or stub my toe or kill some living creature.

And how I'd vowed: no more clutter, ever again.

alive and dying, Iqonga Showcase, Out the Box Festival 2010

2010-03-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

For the site-specific live performance alive and dying in UCT's Rosedale Quad (23 March 2010), Kai Lossgott has worked with a range of quirky and fiercely independent talents, one of whom is made of sponge. The visual artist and director carved, cut, glued and stitched together four used mattresses to create the life-size foam puppet animated by enigmatic performance artist Penny Youngleson. Film and theatre actress Dominika Jablonska obsessively eats a sponge head. Dawn Garisch, better known as an acclaimed novelist, and John Cartwright, community activist and dancer, improvised for hours on the hard concrete floor. Sound designer Brendon Bussy rigged the fire escape with a live microphone. In the performance, it becomes an instrument registering even the slightest impact. The din of the first nine steps became the scale from which the soundtrack was composed. Visiting Dutch dance for camera trio Marieke Helmus, Yoka van Zuijlen and Femke Monteny contribute a subversively understated video for projection.

"The inhabitants of an inner city apartment block encounter a humanoid sponge puppet, fallen deity of a sublime and chilling urban ecology. It becomes both perpetrator and victim of their behaviour addiction rituals, survival and self-sabotage."

Out the Box Festival. 23 March 2010. 19:00 - 21:00h. Part of the selection for the Iqonga Programme - a series of 15 min performances. Arena Theatre, UCT Hiddingh Campus.

Book at Computicket under Iqonga.

The artists would like to thank UNIMA South Africa for technical assistance and the use of their workshop facilities.

Dawn Garisch and John Cartwright jive on hard concrete

2010-03-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

An intense duet on hard concrete between Dawn Garisch (recently shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize) and John Cartwright (known for his performances for Brett Bailey and Jay Pather). They are rehearsing for alive and dying, a short site-specific performance directed by Kai Lossgott for the Out the Box puppetry festival in Cape Town, South Africa.

alive and dying. Site-specific performance with experimental cinema, live interactive sound, movement and puppetry. Directed by Kai Lossgott. Out the Box Festival. 23 March 2010. 19:00 - 21:00h. Part of the selection for the Iqonga Programme - a series of 15 min performances. Arena Theatre, UCT Hiddingh Campus. Book at Computicket under Iqonga.

Penny Youngleson breathes life into sponge puppet

2010-03-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday 14 March, 12 pm, inner city Cape Town. Enigmatic performance artist Penny Youngleson animates for the first time the finished life-size sponge puppet by visual artist and director Kai Lossgott.

alive and dying. Site-specific performance with experimental cinema, live interactive sound, movement and puppetry. Out the Box Festival. 23 March 2010. 19:00 - 21:00h. Part of the selection for the Iqonga Programme - a series of 15 min performances. Arena Theatre, UCT Hiddingh Campus. Book at Computicket under Iqonga.

Complete list of phobias

2010-01-24T05:13:00.000-08:00

Achluophobia Fear of darkness.
Acousticophobia Fear of noise.
Acrophobia Fear of heights.
Agoraphobia Fear of open spaces or of being in crowded places.
Ailurophobia Fear of cats.
Alektorophobia Fear of chickens.
Alliumphobia Fear of garlic.
Allodoxaphobia Fear of opinions.
Altophobia Fear of heights.
Amaxophobia Fear of riding in a car.
Ambulophobia Fear of walking.
Ancraophobia or Anemophobia Fear of wind.
Androphobia Fear of men.
Anglophobia Fear of England, English culture, etc.
Anthrophobia Fear of flowers.
Antlophobia Fear of floods.
Anuptaphobia Fear of staying single.
Apeirophobia Fear of infinity.
Aphenphosmphobia Fear of being touched.
Apiphobia Fear of bees.
Apotemnophobia Fear of persons with amputations. Arachnephobia/Arachnophobia Fear of spiders.
Arithmophobia Fear of numbers.
Arrhenphobia Fear of men. Arsonphobia Fear of fire.
Astraphobia/Astrapophobia Fear of thunder and lightning.
Astrophobia Fear of stars/space.
Ataxophobia Fear of disorder or untidiness.
Atelophobia Fear of imperfection.
Athazagoraphobia Fear of being forgotton or ignored or forgetting.
Atychiphobia Fear of failure.
Aurophobia Fear of gold.
Automatonophobia Fear of ventriloquist's dummies, animatronic creatures, wax statues
Automysophobia Fear of being dirty.
Autophobia Fear of being alone or of oneself.
Aviophobia/Aviatophobia Fear of flying.

Bacillophobia Fear of microbes.
Bacteriophobia Fear of bacteria.
Bathmophobia Fear of stairs or steep slopes.
Batophobia Fear of heights.
Batrachophobia Fear of amphibians (like frogs)
Belonephobia Fear of pins and needles.
Bibliophobia Fear of books.
Botanophobia Fear of plants.
Brontophobia Fear of thunder and lightning.

Cacophobia Fear of ugliness.
Cainophobia/Cainotophobia Fear of newness, novelty.
Caligynephobia Fear of beautiful women.
Carnophobia Fear of meat.
Catagelophobia Fear of being ridiculed.
Catoptrophobia Fear of mirrors.
Cenophobia / Centophobia Fear of new things or ideas.
Ceraunophobia Fear of thunder.
Chaetophobia Fear of hair.
Chionophobia Fear of snow.
Chiraptophobia Fear of being touched.
Chirophobia Fear of hands.
Chorophobia Fear of dancing.
Chrometophobia/Chrematophobia Fear of money.
Chromophobia/Chromatophobia Fear of colors.
Chronomentrophobia Fear of clocks.
Cibophobia/Sitophobia/Sitiophobia Fear of food.
Claustrophobia Fear of confined spaces.
Climacophobia Fear of stairs.
Clinophobia Fear of going to bed.
Coimetrophobia Fear of cemeteries.
Coulrophobia Fear of clowns.
Cyberphobia Fear of computers.
Cyclophobia Fear of bicycles.
Cymophobia Fear of waves.
Cynophobia Fear of dogs.

Demophobia Fear of crowds.
Dendrophobia Fear of trees.
Dentophobia Fear of dentists.
Didaskaleinophobia Fear of going to school.
Dipsophobia Fear of drinking.
Dishabiliophobia Fear of undressing in front of someone.
Dromophobia Fear of crossing streets.

Eisoptrophobia Fear of mirrors.
Elurophobia Fear of cats.
Emetophobia Fear of vomiting.
Entomophobia Fear of insects.
Ephebiphobia Fear of teenagers.
Epistaxiophobia Fear of nosebleeds.
Equinophobia Fear of horses.
Ergophobia Fear of work.

Felinophobia Fear of cats.

Gamophobia Fear of marriage.
Geliophobia Fear of laughter.
Genophobia Fear of sex.
Gephyrophobia, Gephydrophobia, or Gephysrophobia Fear of crossing bridges.
Gerascophobia Fear of growing old.
Glossophobia Fear of speaking in public or of trying to speak. Gynephobia/Gynophobia Fear of women.

Haphephobia/Haptephobia Fear of being touched.
Harpaxophobia Fear of being robbed.
Heliophobia Fear of the sun.
Hemophobia/Hemaphobia/Hematophobia Fear of blood.
Hierophobia Fear of priests or sacred things.
Hominophobia Fear of men.
Hylophobia Fear of forests.

Iatrophobia Fear of doctors.
Ichthyophobia Fear of fish.

Judeophobia Fear of Jews.

Keraunophobia Fear of thunder and lightning.
Kymophobia Fear of waves.

Lachanophobia Fear of vegetables.
Ligyrophobia Fear of loud noises.
Limnophobia Fear of lakes.
Liticaphobia Fear of lawsuits.
Lockiophobia Fear of childbirth.
Logizomechanophobia Fear of computers.
Logophobia Fear of words.
Lygophobia Fear of darkness.

Macrophobia Fear of long waits.
Mageirocophobia Fear of cooking.
Maieusiophobia Fear of childbirth.
Megalophobia Fear of large things.
Melissophobia Fear of bees.
Methyphobia Fear of alcohol.
Microphobia Fear of small things.
Misophobia Fear of being contaminated with dirt/germs.
Monophobia Fear of solitude or being alone.
Motorphobia Fear of automobiles.
Musophobia/Murophobia Fear of mice.

Necrophobia Fear of death / dead things.
Neophobia Fear of anything new.
Nosocomephobia Fear of hospitals.
Numerophobia Fear of numbers.

Ochlophobia Fear of crowds or mobs.
Ophidiophobia Fear of snakes.
Ophthalmophobia Fear of being stared at.
Ornithophobia Fear of birds.

Pedophobia Fear of children.
Peladophobia Fear of bald people.
Phasmophobia Fear of ghosts.
Placophobia Fear of tombstones.
Plutophobia Fear of wealth.
Pogonophobia Fear of beards.
Potamophobia Fear of rivers or running water.
Pteronophobia Fear of being tickled by feathers.
Pupaphobia fear of puppets.
Pyrophobia Fear of fire.

Rhytiphobia Fear of getting wrinkles.
Rupophobia Fear of dirt.

Scolionophobia Fear of school.
Selachophobia Fear of sharks.
Sesquipedalophobia Fear of long words.

Tachophobia Fear of speed.
Technophobia Fear of technology.
Telephonophobia Fear of telephones.
Testophobia Fear of taking tests.
Theophobia Fear of gods or religion.
Trypanophobia Fear of injections.

Venustraphobia Fear of beautiful women.
Verbophobia Fear of words.
Verminophobia Fear of germs.
Vestiphobia Fear of clothing.

Xenoglossophobia Fear of foreign languages.

Zoophobia Fear of animals

[source unknown]

I almost jumped off the moving train into the sea

2010-01-24T04:53:00.001-08:00

Trekking out to Simonstown, where the irreverent poet Tania van Schalkwyk hides out these days, the heat was stifling, until we began to move. The British tourists in the compartment were shocked. A train running without a door. Welcome to Africa, I said, grateful for the breeze. The old man opposite me told me stories about his youth. It was very boring. I made the mistake of being polite, but he would not stop. Then I pretended to read my book. Over and over he told me the same mundane family anecdotes, even though I blatantly ignored him. Sweat ran down my sides. The seat was sticky. When we came past Fischhoek, I almost jumped off. I took a picture instead.

Phantom Canyon - Stacey Steers

2010-01-24T04:42:00.000-08:00

Phantom Canyon. Stacey Steers. 4000 collages, 6"x8", Xerox and mixed media. Film still.

"Phantom Canyon explores a woman's fantastical journey through memories. Meticulous collages incorporate figures from Eadweard Mubridge's "Human and Animal Locomotion", first published in 1887. Music and Sound by Bruce Odland." Click on the link above to watch.

Dublin artist investigates biodiversity in the city

2009-09-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

(image from Space is the Place curated by Conor McGarrigle & John Buckley, featuring among others the Tresspass project)

Seoidín O’Sullivan is an artist based in Dublin, Ireland. Her art practice investigates sociopolitical and ecological narratives, which she represents in critically engaged and poetic ways.

"TRESPASS (with Aiofe Desmond) is a collaborative project that engages research and action with forgotten urban space, abandoned landscapes and sites under transformation. TRESPASS is a multi-disciplinary project including photography, film, research and socially engaged practice. ... TRESPASS questions the inherent value of wasteland sites. ... The role of nature in wasteland sites is examined in tandem with their human usages. These delicate and interconnected issues can best be examined through a multifaceted collaborative process focused on ecological biodiversity in the city."

"TACTIC (with Ralph Borland) is a cross-national laboratory for tactical art making: TACTIC aims to work cross-nationally between South Africa and Ireland. This work across two countries will reveal the connections between local and global concerns in each place, bringing artists from the two countries together to develop projects and share ideas."

Everything was Alive and Dying

2009-08-18T03:57:00.000-07:00

Sarcastic behind her sunglasses in a lumo-green forest preserve, hints of hysteria and grief bubble to the surface as American performance artist, musician and poet Janet Kuypers reads her 1995 poem "Everything Was Alive and Dying".

the poem concludes:
-----

in the wild
you have no power over anyone else

now that we're civilized
we create our own wild

maybe when we have all this power
the only choice we have
is to destroy ourselves

and so we do

----

go to http://www.janetkuypers.com for more poetry, information and details.

"Take Care of Yourself" - Sophie Calle

2009-07-11T05:15:00.000-07:00

From MomentEmagazine.com
TateShots Issue 5

When a boyfriend broke-up with her by email, French artist Sophie Calle asked 107 women to read the letter and to analyse it according to their professional interest. more>>

Diana Al-Hadeed

2009-06-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Spun of the Limits of my Lonely Waltz
Diana Al-Hadeed
2006
Mixed media
183 x 164 x 164 cm

See more of her work at http://www.al-hadid.wsdia.com/

5 Psychological Experiments that expose humanity's dark side

2009-06-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

by Alexandra Gedrose
Source: cracked.com

Psychologists know you have to be careful when you go poking around the human mind because you're never sure what you'll find there. A number of psychological experiments over the years have yielded terrifying conclusions about the subjects. We're talking about you.

Credo - Pablo Neruda

2009-06-25T07:54:00.000-07:00

“I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations of nature. And no less strongly I think that all this is sustained... by an ever-wider sense of community, by an effort which will forever bring together the reality and the dreams in us because it is precisely in this way that poetry unites and mingles them....
“All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.”

Pablo Neruda, Credo, from his Noble Prize speech

for the full speech (in Spanish)

unkonventionally Kathryn

2009-06-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

Oh God. I thought they had been eaten by a darkroom somewhere, back in the day when darkrooms still existed. I saw these recently for the first time.

In the grand postmodern tradition of the footnote, comes, well you guessed it. The sincerest form of flattery. A little plot on Kathryn Smith and her exhibition "Euphemism", as winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award. Grahamstown Arts Festival 2004. Emma Taggart. Avri Spilka. Kai Lossgott. Photos by Mathew Rudenberg.

See the full album on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3157563&id=740885169&ref=mf#/album.php?aid=125285&id=740885169

Makes me wonder. Maybe Avant Car Guard is referencing us.

Hello Hokusai

2009-06-01T15:52:00.001-07:00

Taxi rank, Cape Town Station, car-wash water, hint of ocean, urine, drainpipes, rotting chicken bones. Hello Hokusai.

The Great Wave at Kanagawa (from 36 views of Mount Fuji). c.1829. Katsushika Hokusai.

Badilisha! (to celebrate - Swahili)

2009-05-31T04:21:00.000-07:00

Here I am, all smiles with Seni Seneviratne, a poet and folk singer from the UK whose poetry engages with women's testimony and trauma. For a poet she's a real sunshine person.

Badilisha Poetry Xchange 2009. To be in the company of like-minded people. To witness them as cultural workers and activists in action, on the continent our identities are rooted in. Their shows cut to the heart of what it is to be human. "This is the most African I have ever felt in Cape Town," said performance poet Phillippa Yaa De Villiers, commenting on this city divided by class and racial lines. It was a statement that quickened our hearts and was often repeated. I was left feeling exceptionally priveleged to have been part of this gathering of dynamic personalities.

enough. video poetry performance at Badilisha! Poetry X-Change

2009-05-30T03:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you’ve had enough. And sometimes you have enough. A fusion of sound and light, Kai Lossgott’s and Mbali Vilakazi’s authentic and intimate multimedia poetry performance "enough" takes you into the dream cycles of obsessive behaviour and uncomfortable truths in the search for wholeness. It is about the breakdown of society, and people at breaking point.

In a lyrical conversation of experimental music and cinema, the poets draw their self-portraits only to erase them, through testimonies that become ciphers in the round-trip between abundance and gratitude, lack and self-pity. Through spoken word, dance, and gesture, they journey with the audience through breathing rhythms of take and give, where insecurity comes up for air and we open like blossoms.

Music by Niklas Zimmer ("here, now") and Mandla Mlangeni

Badilisha! Poetry Xchange website

Mbali exploring a tentative moment during rehearsals at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Observatory, Cape Town.

Communication breakdown during the performance, with Mandla Mlangeni on jazz trombone in the background.

The World Outside
by Mbali Vilakazi

what? oh. a cup of tea.
please.
that would be two sugars. a slice of lemon? mmmm. yes. thank you. that would be nice
nothing quite like bitter sweet
oh but to dream
two left feet
that take to the floor
an exquisite masquerade
top hats
foxtrots and what nots
the band plays on
it is a song of pandemonium
and we dance
we dance to the sounds of oblivion
life is a fancy dress party
youll see us all smiles
the world is but outside
this afternoon. we sit inside and shelter our dreams
a cup of tea? yes. that would be nice
in porcelain cups that feign they can contain
when they shatter
we mind our manners and play composure
the world is but outside
phuck it. pass me another crumpet

Buddha Jesus take my lust / no matter how many gold stars I stick onto my forehead / I'll never know enough

if knowledge was power
by Kai Lossgott

if knowledge was power
you wouldn't always be on tv
starring in porn flicks
in your electric chair,
and checking your e-mail
no constant query
to leave you neurotic
if you’re not prepared.

trashed by telepathic touch
pressing, clicking
plugging, unplugging. contact. nothing. nothing.
check check check check
socket check, cable check, adaptor check, wall plug check
nothing nothing nothing.
migrate like a blinking spaceship
laptop plugging in the kitchen
pressing, clicking. nothing, nothing, nothing.

on facebook I will never die
I survive on
two-minute noodles
memory is not required
who needs god when you've got google

trashed by telepathic touch
things I do that didn't
have a name before
grew to be
the most important things I do

fiddling and jiggling
pressing and clicking
two pin plug number two
switchboard. Check. all thumbs up.
test another thing. Ping! green light.
plug computer in. no such luck.
trouble, shooting shooting through my fingers
into every socket.

Trashed by telepathic touch
knowledge is
the child of fear.
headlessness is bliss.
I will sit
I will drink
the sweet fat peace of ignorance.
Let my laptop gather dust.
Buddha, Jesus, take my lust
no matter how many
gold stars I stick on my forehead
teecher teecher
I'll never know enough.

Mbali Vilakazi and Kai Lossgott in the official publicity photographs.
All photos courtesy of the Africa Centre and Cecile Mella.
The Africa Centre's Video channel

home. A performance by Art Pays, Golden Acre, Cape Town

2009-05-29T04:14:00.000-07:00

home. A performance by Art Pays coinciding with the Cape 09 Biennale in Cape Town.

A powerful rite of passage. A game of paper houses. And four performance poets speak their hearts on home, to the sound of a jazz violin. Into the rush of Cape Town's largest inner city shopping mall, the Golden Acre, comes a performance about land ownership and forced removals. One performance only.

Daya Heller asleep in the centre of the circle. In the run of the performance she cut off all her hair bit by bit, finally wrapping herself in white cloth and rising in a white dress which she designed and sculpted.

home
by Daya Heller

where the heart is
beneath layers
and painted projections
where i seek. and build
change and become
the place no-one can move me from
home

Ilverse Senteni (above) and Jeisie Bassie improvised in the hip hop style around the theme 'home', Wanelisa Albert sang and read her poem 'she is home', and Khululeka Rulumeni performed in the traditional Xhosa imbongi (praise poet) style, speaking about forced removals and unfulfilled government promises, to much acclaim from the audience.

home
by Ilverse Senteni

im trapped i cant move an inch
my soul is underneath i can smell it
can i still breathe? am i still alive?
is this earth? man its hard to believe
but my legs are packed with fullforce my soul
feels theres a need for my body after all
because my strengh and mind fight in ominous ways
and my soul and i we like 1 2 faced
you cant beat the flesh beat the soul you on a loosing race
yow ill defeat the evil and reach my point
so im ready to face life and ill never get caught
because my soul my heart speaks through lyrical base
and my legs will take me to the maximum wage
im such a sickness to be on air i have to mingle with others
and make life what its suppose to be, so out of that ghetto.

Matchbox houses were arranged patiently in patterns by Rampedi Molefe across the semi-circle of the arena.

Occasionally appearing out of the audience in shades and dinner jacket, Kai Lossgott kicked the houses in all directions, ticking them off on his clipboard as he goes along, only for them to be ordered again by Rampedi, only for them to be kicked away again. This provoked violent outrage from the mostly working class audience, most of whom travel long distances from the slums they live in into the city every day. This is their story, part of the legacy of apartheid carried by millions, of being forced into township life in a country where race still is mostly synonymous with class. These actions are only too resonant in recent government efforts at sanitation and gentrification, moving people out of their homes to rural wastelands without running water, only to build houses they will never be able to afford to live in. It is the rising cost of rent everywhere. It is the old story of the rich taking the land and forcefully removing the poor, and the social and psychological consequences of this displacement.

300 matchbox houses were made, each containing a poem, and given away to the audience at the end of the show. This was a whimsical wish to fulfil the dream of millions of South Africans to have their own house with running water and electricity.

Rampedi, Ilverse, Khululeka and Daya cleaning up after the show, saving some of the houses for the discussion session to be held at the District Six Museum.

Artists: Rampedi Molefe, Kai Lossgott, Daya Heller, Bulelwa Basse; Violinist: Lara Sadler; Lyrical Base Poets: Wanelisa Albert, Ilverse Senteni, Jeisie Bassie, Khululeka Rulumeni
Production Manager: Shamila Rahim

Lyrical Base, an initiative managed by Bulelwa Basse, empowers young people from previously disadvantaged backgrounds through poetry, fostering self-expression and an alternative income through performance.

All photos: Nathan Heller
See full photo album on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/album.php?aid=100895&id=670252326&ref=mf

double changers

2009-05-10T15:37:00.000-07:00

One big heart stopper. Two miniature chameleons in my lavender bush, pretty much the size in the photo. Change change change is coming fast!

LucyandBart

2009-04-24T18:23:00.000-07:00

"LucyandBart is a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess described as an instinctual stalking of fashion, architecture, performance and the body. They share a fascination with genetic manipulation and beauty expression. Unconsciously their work touches upon these themes, however it is not their intention to communicate this. They work in a primitive and limitless way creating future human shapes, blindly discovering low – tech prosthetic ways for human enhancement." The images above are from their project "Grow on you". from http://www.lucyandbart.blogspot.com/

click here for more

Death and the Virgin

2009-04-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

She likes to cut off people's heads, at least when they're Barbie's sister. New-York based photographer Alison Brady photographs the white female body in stylish, sardonic and often morbid setups, playing on the ambiguous meanings of hair, related both to eroticism and death. By blotting out the identity of these faceless women, she emphasises the aesthetics of their perfect physique, anonymous victims of the whodunnits in which the photographer herself is cast in the role of murderer. for more images click here

Reminds me a bit of some early work by South African artist Kathryn Smith and the history of death, forensics and romanticism she has engaged with.

"alpha" with choreography by Jay Pather

2009-03-31T02:31:00.000-07:00

I was intruiged by the dialogue happening between my video alpha and Jay Pather's choreography at the VANSA / PANSA stall representing the arts in the Western Cape during the annual Design Indaba in February. I had always envisioned it as part of a performance, but this one came as a surprise.

Daya Heller in "Nature Lover". Infecting the City 09.

2009-02-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

Daya Heller, the original tomboy sculptor, in my performance "Nature Lover". The pick up truck will drive through the streets of Cape Town's inner city on Tuesday 24 and Friday 27 February 2009, as she sprays herself with water and seductively munches a lettuce, spitting pieces of it into the street.

This is part of "Fleet of Art", initiated by Brett Bailey for this year's Infecting the City festival. Each of the collaborators in the main performances were asked to creative their own live performance installation on the back of a "bakkie", a pick up truck. Thanks to the help of Mike Lister, the British water genius, it all worked out. Thanks also for the photo.

Limbo. Infecting the City 09.

2009-02-23T07:09:00.000-08:00

"Limbo" is finally out on the streets of Cape Town. Viewers have told me that they found the performance very moving, and were deeply touched by the issues of xenophobia and South African administrative incapacity it adresses. Here are some pics by the festival photographer Sean Wilson.

The dancers in the climactic sequence of the piece, the attempt to pull down the dominating forces of government authority, represented by the statue. Choreographer Brian Geza doubling up as a performer.

Pulling down the statue, with Tossie van Tonder as the Spirit of Migration.

Five dancers were professionals, the rest were paid volunteers. The majority of them were foreign African nationals, refugees themselves, who had personal experience of many of the issues the production deals with.

The aerial dancers, who had five days to learn the art from the master, modern aerial dance pioneer Fabrice Guillot.

Our producer, Themba Stuart, in his role as the man who falls down the building, ending the show.

Infecting the City 09: Kickoff!

2009-02-02T10:01:00.001-08:00

Soon to be seen on Church Square, cnr of Parliament and Spin Str, Cape Town (Pic: Fabrice Guillot)

LIMBO - "A New Collaborative Work about today’s foreigners that dangles breathtakingly above the square where white slave-owners bought foreigners."

by Brian Geza, Fabrice Guillot, Kai Lossgott, Julia Raynham

For performance dates, biographies and more on Church Square, click here

Infecting the City 09
HOME AFFAIRS

The Spier Performing Arts Festival
21 - 27 February 2009

pretty pollution

2009-01-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

Irridescent colours in the car park, rain and dripping oil. outside Gallery Seippel, Johannesburg.

Working at The Nirox Foundation

2009-01-20T10:48:00.000-08:00

Working on a new video at the Nirox Foundation. It was meant to be a sequel to cull'tivate, but it looks like its a sequel to alpha. I'm trusting the process, knowing that it never does what I expect it to do. That's my sister Nadja. She said I shouldn't be in all my films, but she knows I usually just do it because when the idea comes I want to shoot, not mess around with pre-production. She volunteered herself and her boyfriend Neil. So I shot them, both super-pretty and looking like models, and I prayed the work wouldn't get slick and glitzy. She's been very businesslike about it. Guess who got dizzy to the point of nausea recently hanging upside-down and headbanging. There are, after all, benefits to not doing all of this stuff myself.

"you can read the roads in me like rivers". One of nine new drawings for my plant leaf engravings. I've been wanting to get started on these for months, fascinated by the Dada poet Tristan Tzara's statement "the thought is made in the mouth" and my usual exploration of metaphors of life-centredness.

"diving" showing in "Water Preserves", curated by Jan Kather, NY

2009-01-04T00:09:00.000-08:00

See my video diving in Water Preserves, curated by Jan Kather at the State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca, New York.

Wednesday, February 4, through Sunday, March 1, 2009
Opening reception: Friday, February 6, 5:00-8:00 pm

"Water Preserves" explores our complex and sometimes precarious relationship with water by visually and aurally examining its beauty, magic, terror, and poetry. The photo/video installation includes a special invitational collaborative piece created from the work of ten international video artists:

Michael Chang, Denmark
Simone Stoll, Germany
Marty McCutcheon, United States
Kika Nicolela, Brazil
Niclas Hallberg, Sweden
Alicia Felberbaum, England
Kai Lossgott, South Africa
Brad Wise, United States
Stina Pehrsdotter, Sweden
Junichiro Shindo, Japan

Diving. 2008. Kai Lossgott. Experimental film. 2 min 24 sec

post Las Meninas

2008-12-19T01:01:00.000-08:00

Video Still from “89 seconds at Alcázar” by Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation. Photo: Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation

"Eve Sussman & Rufus Corporation’s 89 Seconds at Alcázar, inspired by the Western masterpiece Las Meninas painted in 1656 by the Spanish painter Diego Velasquez, is a fluid choreography that brings together visual atmosphere, performance and process. Shot in high definition digital video, a 360º Steadicam take reveals the entire scene in the salon of the Alcázar (Palace of the Hapsburgs). Fluid camera motion and choreography bring together an ensemble of visual atmosphere, performance, and a process. The work allows the eternal moment depicted in the painting to exist as a fleeting gesture, and continue as if the movement had occurred in daily life."

From Alicia Felber's MOMENTe magazine

Cinema Sim - Narratives and Projections
Itau Cultural, Sao Paulo, December 2008

Designer Anna The Red plays with her food

2008-12-17T13:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, its all made of food. A rabbit of rice on a bed of lettuce, a mouth of ham, meatballs with eyes. Imagine opening your lunchbox now...
See more at http://www.baekdal.com/design/art/dont-play-with-food/

Diving into the Wreck

2008-12-13T03:13:00.000-08:00

by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

dust&scratches on St Mark's Square, Venice

2008-12-13T02:57:00.000-08:00

Swiss / Italian performance collective dust&scratches plunder the storehouse of performance art, Romanticism and Classical mythology for a contemporary feminist twist on marriage and more. They almost got arrested this time.

Nirox Artist's Residency

2008-12-13T00:38:00.000-08:00

Last night in the dead quiet it dropped down beside my chair. I lay next to the tiny bat on the cement floor and stroked its back. It was tough and hairy. I was anxious not to startle it. The bat's nostrils twitched. It had tiny black eyes.
Two bats live in the rafters. They squeak and flutter through this extensive house at night, hunting flies that have sought refuge here from the swallows in the heat of day.

From the website:

The Nirox Artists Residency is part of a secure estate within 45 minutes drive from central Johannesburg. Accommodation comprises a large principal residence, a separate cottage and 3 large studios set in extensive gardens and waterways.
Resident artists enjoy the inspired gardens of the complex and access to the Khatlhampi Private Reserve offering extensive walks and game trails through unspoiled grasslands, valleys and woods populated with indigenous game including rhino, zebra and antelope.

Art Pays collective launch

2008-12-06T03:35:00.000-08:00

"2 dollars for Bokaap. Do I hear two dollars for Bokaap?" Khanyi Mbongwa auctions off Bokaap, Woodstock and District Six to a street audience on the steps of St Georges Church, while Mary Faragher and Kai Lossgott forcefully remove and displace them between circular zones on the pavement. A performance on the ownership of public space and gentrification in the city of Cape Town, this was the launch of the Art Pays collective, in association with Sessions eKapa. Daya Heller was a bride black-facing herself and handing out kisses on serviettes to passers-by. In conclusion, everyone was offered a rolled-up note printed with a dream for the city from one of the performers, and a drawing by the artist Rampedi. Thanks goes to Arts Administrator Shamila Rahim, whose dedication and insight made this possible. Photos: Daya Heller. Click to see more.

Why "Art Pays"

2008-12-06T03:05:00.000-08:00

On naming our new artist's collective
by Mary Faragher

The concept of art paying is a positive one for artists and for consumers of the arts. Many people, artists especially, have an idea that in order to produce art you have to suffer in some way. ‘That you have to pay for your art.’ My idea is that art pays you. It pays you to make art and to have art.

People also believe that art is not a necessity and therefore it should be free. But every society needs the healing and building and social commentary that art provides. The positive impact of art cannot be underestimated, and that if we want to make art for society we need to make sure that art is treated as an investment. A personal, financial investment for a buyer, a social investment for a creator, or an investment in yourself as a creator.

Naming our collective "Art Pays" is a positive act. We are putting a positive concept out into the world and making ourselves and others think of art in a positive way.

Chicken fight - fire sculpture, Brendhan Dickerson

2008-12-04T03:35:00.000-08:00

Launch of The Gordon Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts (GiPcA), University of Cape Town, 3 December 2008
wait for the whole video to load, then watch it all the way as the chickens spar and burn to cinders

Screening at Klyr Szyft in Warsaw

2008-11-30T02:21:00.000-08:00

Armed and Ready. Kai Lossgott. 2004. Video for installation.
screening at KLIR SZYFT! (that's almost-polish for QUEER SHIFT)

27-30.11.2008 Warsaw
A queer, radical, anarchafeminist community building event. An open, friendly, safe space for folks of all sexualities, gender identities, shapes, sizes, ethnic and economic backgrounds. All are welcome to help build a creative and independent environment beyond the norm. The four-day schedule includes d.i.y. workshops, a zine fair, films, concerts, and drag shows

Sunday November 30, UFA, 12:00-22:00, free entrance

A presentation of short films from the archives of Bildwechsel Berlin.

My thanks to Chris Regn and Eva Kietzman!

The day the circus came to town

2008-11-26T06:26:00.001-08:00

Here I am sticking up stained glass windows in preparation for the recent Nieu Bethesda Art Day. The event was held on Sunday, 9 November 2008 with the people of Pienaarsig, the township in Nieu Bethesda in South Africa's Great Karoo desert landscape. Nieu Bethesda is where South African outsider artist Helen Martins built her famous Owl House. The event was the result of "The Road to Nieu Bethesda", an intercultural symposium organised by Swiss artists Andrea Saemann and Monika Dillier and made possible with funding from Pro Helvetia. 10 Swiss artists worked with 9 South African artists on ironing out inter-cultural conflicts and conversations and planning an event that incorporated performance art, singing, dancing and storytelling. I have no doubt that despite the ideological challenges of such an undertaking, we created an event that will long be remembered in a remote rural town still very much divided by the legacy of apartheid. Photo above: Monika Dillier. Photos below: Daya Heller

Khanyisile Mbongwa (of the Gugulective) and Bongi Dhlomo brought the crowds out from Pienaarsig. Here Khanyi is singing a song with the kids that she taught them on the way there.

Bongi Dhlomo takes part in a re-enactment of Alison Knowles' performance "Song of My Shoes", in which audience members tell the story of their shoes. The performance was initiated by Andrea Saemann.

I was covered in "tattoos" handing out juice from the bar and participating in the 'food dances' in which we acted like exotic dancers, offering bowls of rice balls to eat.

German artist Chris Regn (co-director of the Hamburg video archive Bildwechsel) alias gallerist Helga Broll in yet another disguise. She later sang an ironic operatic song wearing the wig.

Sus Zwick and Muda Mathis from the Swiss all woman multilingual punk and performance art band Les Reines Prochaines take a break from the action after performing various hilarious songs.

Kids ghosting through the dark during the lantern procession on the way to the township, which ended with storytelling. The lanterns were designed by Daya Heller. At top speed and in record time, she also made large lanterns, the height of some of the smaller kids who were later carrying them.

See more photos at www.daya-art.blogspot.com

find abandon play destroy

2008-11-25T04:49:00.000-08:00

For the KAP newsletter: collaboration in the Karoo landscape between performance artist Kai Lossgott and Sus Zwick from the Swiss women only multilingual punk band "Les Reines Prochaines".
click to enlarge.

Interview with Kai Lossgott

2008-11-24T07:28:00.000-08:00

Check out this interview with me about my filmmaking practise by German media artist Agricola De Cologne at

http://vip.newmediafest.org/?page_id=130

Perpetual Heros

2008-11-22T08:53:00.000-08:00

Perpetual Heros. Paul Birchall. 2008. Ceramic and mixed media assemblage. Edition 1/24.

A large field of cut-outs from old photographs turning on invisible clock parts at the Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town.

Truth Is Both Spirit And Flesh

2008-11-17T23:36:00.000-08:00

by Malika Ndlovu
(excerpt published with permission of the poet)

It is the hotel bill or photograph discovered in a pocket
The open mouth saying nothing in defence
It is the fact splattered across the courtroom
Exposed to cameras, microphones and strangers ears
It is the addict at the brink of suicide
Frozen between picking up a fix or the telephone
It is the vibration in your chest and stomach pit
That hits when you read or hear a real guru's words
…It is the written and the unwritten
The space and the line
It is different
It is the same
It is buried
It is the silence before
Beneath and beyond
The lie
It waits for you and I
It will not die
Truth is both spirit and flesh

All Malika's books can be ordered at www.lotsha.co.za

Nkuli sleeping in the bus

2008-11-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

Cape Africa Young Curator Nkuli Mlangeni sleeping on the long trip back from Nieu Bethesda to Cape Town. I've tried doing that with my hair, but forget it. It just doesn't work with white people's hair.

Nominated for Audience Prize at Platforma Video 8, Athens

2008-11-07T23:53:00.000-08:00

21st Annual Dallas Video Festival

2008-11-06T23:41:00.000-08:00

Dried Frog, Nieu Bethesda, Great Karoo

2008-11-04T08:30:00.000-08:00

INVIDEO XVIII, 12 - 16 Nov 2008, Milan

2008-11-02T02:56:00.000-08:00

"Experimental cinema, theatre and electronic art".

Kai Lossgott. alpha, Sudafrica, 2007, 3' 19''

I have always wanted to show at INVIDEO. Its an amazing event which I hope to attend some day.

Go see a still of 'alpha' on their main site, chosen out of the official selection of 63.

Exquisite Corpse Video Project at VANSA 20:20

2008-10-27T02:57:00.000-07:00

Kai Lossgott will introduce the screening of The Exquisite Corpse Video Project, an online video art collaboration between 26 artists from 16 countries which was started on artreview.com. The project is named after the semi-blind surrealist game of folded paper and drawn body parts, and the videos were produced sequentially in a similar way. Kai is one of two South African artists who are involved.

The screening will round off the 20:20, a VANSA (Visual Arts Network of South Africa) Networking session. Thursday 30th October 2008 at 19:00. 8 Spin Street, Cape Town.

If you miss it, watch the videos on the YouTube channel.

The other presentations for October include:

Esther Ernst

Jörg Laue

Julia Rosa Clark

Myer Taub

Mwenya Kabwe

Dave Scadden

To discover

2008-10-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

To discover, there must be no fear of not surviving.
- Krishnamurti

see more drawings fom Kai Lossgott's series somatosenses, available for purchase as prints

To live with honour

2008-10-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

- Socrates

see more drawings from Kai Lossgott's series somatosenses, available for purchase as prints

Green Porno with Isabella Rossellini

2008-09-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

An interview with Isabella Rossellini about her new project on bug sex called Green Porno.

PANSA 48h Festival

2008-09-25T02:36:00.000-07:00

Soft. Kai Lossgott and Steve Bandoma. 2008. Performance with video projection.
Photo: PANSA & Hannah Mentz

THE PANSA 48 HOUR FESTIVAL – IT’S BACK AND IT’S BIGGER!
PART OF PANSA’S MONTH OF PERFORMANCE
SUNDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER 2008

What do you get when you put 64 of Cape Town's hottest artists together, throw in some crazy ingredients, and allow to simmer for 48 Hours? You get five brand new plays, four totally original music pieces, four mind boggling dance pieces, and four eye watering pieces of visual art.

Starting on Friday 19 September, writers, choreographers, composers and artists will gather to hear the rules for this year's festival. With talent like last year's winners Nicholas Spagnoletti, Louise Coetzer and Nkosinathi Mgweba, along with interesting new entrants like Steve Pillemer and Fiona Du Plooy, we're sure the results will be worth watching. At 6pm on Saturday 20th, they hand over to directors, get joined by actors, dancers, designers and musicians for another crazy 24 hours. This year's talent includes Thoko Ntshinga, Jaqueline Dommisse, Floyed de Vaal, Gideon van Eeden, Thami Mbongo, Brent Palmer, Erica Glyn-Jones, to name but a few.

And then, on Sunday 21st September at 6pm, the magic begins, as all of the weekends pieces are played out in one crazy night. It's fast, it's fun, it's not for the faint-hearted - PANSA 48 Hour Festival 2008.

Theatre in The District, Chapel St, Woodstock
Tickets R40, available through www.webtickets.co.za
PANSA MONTH OF PERFORMANCE - PLAY YOUR PART www.pansa.org.za
Enquiries: PANSA OFFICE, 0214483513

Kai Lossgott in "Intervention" at the UNISA Gallery, Pretoria

2008-09-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

View my plant leaf engraving dyptich "at once its opposite" at the UNISA Gallery in Pretoria until 17 October 2008.

you're changing

2008-09-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

Chameleon. Durban Harbour. August 2008.

Amelia love Morne? Forever, so what

2008-09-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

fatuous prophecy in Cape Town Station

Ryan Treetin dahling

2008-09-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

clip from New York artist Ryan Treetin's supercool over the top feature-length video art piece "I-Be Area"

Kai Lossgott nominated at flEXiff 6 in Sydney

2008-09-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

flEXiff 2002-2022 (The First and the Last Experimental International Film Festival)
6th Edition, September 19-21, 2008

BEST SHORT FILM AWARD nomination
Bawo Thixo Somandla Kai Lossgott Animation 4’26” S Africa 2007

SPECIAL FLEXIFF AWARD nomination
Alpha Kai Lossgott Experimental 3’19” S Africa 2007

Kai Lossgott screenings at the 11th annual Antimatter Film Festival

2008-09-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

Dedicated to the exhibition and nurturing of film and video as art, Antimatter has grown into the premier showcase of experimental cinema in the west. Encompassing screenings, installations, performances and media hybrids, Antimatter provides a noncompetitive festival setting in Victoria, British Columbia, free from commercial and industry agendas.

Autoportrait
Monday, Sept 22, 9pm at Open Space
Aggregate and fragmentary simulacra from the caprices of [mis]communication, fate and desire.

Alpha
Kai Lossgott | video | 2007 | South Africa | 3:19 | N American Premiere

Burlesque
Sunday, Sept 21, 9pm at Open Space
Unflinching sidelong glances at impropriety, debasement, politics, obsession and decay.

Bawo Thixo Somandla (Almighty Father God)
Kai Lossgott | video | 2007 | South Africa | 4:26 | N American Premiere

Shield

2008-08-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Shield. Bright Eke. 2008. Mixed Media Installation. Dirty plastic water bags.
Experimental Frontiers : South Africa through the eyes of South African and Nigerian Artists. VANSA, Cape Town.

Dawn Garisch on 'talking to the tree outside my window while I sleep'

2008-08-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

talking to the tree outside my window while I sleep. Kai Lossgott. 2008. Artist's Book. Laser engraving on plant leaves and pergamano paper, spruce and glass light table.

"They need light behind them in order to be witnessed, yet at the same time that harsh light will cause them ultimately to disintegrate into darkness - the words and figures created out of lines of nothingness blurring, crumbling and merging with voidness. It is in this sense difficult to speak about Kai Lossgott's artist book 'talking to the tree outside my window while I sleep'. It is a reminder that we hold our human shape for such a brief time on the earth."

Dawn Garisch, South African writer and medical doctor
Author of the novel "Once, Two Islands", nominated for the Booker Prize 2008

2008-08-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

talking to the tree outside my window while I sleep. Kai Lossgott. 2008. Artist's Book. Laser engraving on plant leaves and pergamano paper, spruce and glass light table.

page through this translucent luminous book at > >
Print '08: Myth, memory and the archive, at the Bell-Roberts Gallery.
Ground Floor of Fairweather House, 176 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, Cape Town
opens Wednesday, August 13, 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM
on weekdays 9:30 - 5 pm, until 22 September 2008

add it up

2008-07-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

many many many people. Michael Chang. 2008. Artist Book.

High Voltage

2008-07-14T13:49:00.000-07:00

Stephen Hobbs, Bank Gallery, Kwa Zulu Natal
15 May - 7 June 2008
Originally conceived for the former high voltage transformer room at the WITS Substation

Starlings eat Prestik

2008-07-14T13:44:00.001-07:00

UCT Campus, Cape Town
its obviously not for the taste
darn students could clean it up themselves

Squashed snake on the road

2008-07-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

hot road
Ficksburg, Freestate, SA
one of my morbid moments
poison pressed flowers

Flowers for my Flesh, Joburg Art Gallery

2008-05-20T01:31:00.000-07:00

Peter van Heerden in "Flowers for My Flesh" at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, 18 May 2008. (Photo: Christo Doherty) click for Flickr page

Spier Contemporary Opening, Johannesburg

2008-03-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

Braving the pouring rain and biting cold, Anthea Moys and Kai Lossgott performed their piece "Unsaid" on a narrow slippery ledge at the top of a fountain in the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Johannesburg audiences had gathered for the opening of the Spier Contemporary 2007. The travelling exhibition arrived in the city in March 2008 as part of the first annual Art Week. visit www.kailossgott.com/unsaid.html for more about the performance

Chuma backstage

2008-03-16T00:07:00.000-07:00

Chuma Sopotela getting ready for the performance "uNyawo Alunampumlo (The foot has no nose)" with Mwenya Kabwe and Kemang WaLehulere. Spier Contemporary Art Awards opening, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 15 March 2008. Spier Contemporary Website

Transports Exceptionnels

2008-03-03T07:39:00.000-08:00

"Transports Exceptionnels", a "duet for a dancer and an excavator", was performed on Cape Town's Grand Parade by Dominic Boivin from the French dance company Beau Geste. It proved to be a great public favourite at the Spier "Infecting the City" performance festival, which ran in the Cape Town CBD from 26 February - 2 March 2008. Spier Performing Arts Festival "infects the city"

Infecting the City

2008-03-03T07:16:00.000-08:00

Performance artist Leila Anderson (front) shows her skill at comic characterisation in the whimsical "22 Minutes & 37 Seconds", directed by Lara Bye at Thibault Square in Cape Town. The performance was part of "Infecting the City", a site-specific performance festival sponsored by the Spier wine estate which ran the city from 26 February - 2 March 2008. Curated by Brett Bailey and Jay Pather, the festival showcased diverse performances in squares, fountains, museums and theatres in the inner city of Cape Town. Spier Performing Arts Festival "infects the city"

Unsaid

2007-05-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Kai Lossgott and Anthea Moys on the roof at WITS University in "Unsaid", a tragi-comic performance about the failure to communicate. "Fear 'chokes us up'," they write. "We 'get a frog in our throat'. This performance is about communication or lack there of - what is said, what can be said, what cannot be said, what we are afraid to say, what bottles us up inside. What we say and how we say it has a ripple effect on the people and the environment around us." Seen at the Spier Contemporary Art Awards 2007 in Stellenbosch and Johannesburg. visit www.kailossgott.com/unsaid.html or www.antheamoys.co.za for more