THE CHIMURENGA LIBRARY - RECLASSIFIED

PY-TV emerges parched from one of the Chimurenga Sessions currently on at the Cape Town Central Library (the old Drill Hall next to the old City Hall if you don't know) with a clutch of questions posed to the design and production coordinator, Cape Town based artist Douglas Gimberg.

Nothing is ever what it seems in the work of art-pranksters like Mr. Gimberg, and in true art-prankster style, Douglas has agreed to grant this interview on the basis that PY-TV radically alter one his responses. The cheek…!

So which of Douglas’s answers was changed dear colleagues? First correct answer submitted to PY-TV will win a one-night midweek stay at the Richard’s Bay Protea Hotel. (Transport and expenses excluded – special conditions apply)

PY-TV Was it fair for the Mail & Guardian to call you a "a bookish, soft-spoken, hobbit-like creature"?

DG Ah, this question I am able to dodge easily: we live in a capitalist society; there is no room for fairness. I will say, though, that my mother had a good laugh at the description and asked exactly how it was that Matthew Krause was able to see my hairy feet?

PY-TV You have a reputation for rather impenetrable conceptual work. Why don't you just make pretty stuff that sells?

DG That’s a bit of a tricky question, so many options.

Why do you do what you do? You have no choice. From one moment to another you have no choice: you only have one option because your situation is a product of all your previous situations, the longer you deliberate the more you only have the one choice. There are consequences, you know this, you might not know what they are but you know THAT they are. You believe in freedom? Your desire is your duty.

I suppose I make the things that I do because I have a desire to communicate. Also I have had enough of boredom. I spent years at sea as a child, times when a week’s highlight was seeing a bird go by, changing tack, seeing another vessel, eating condensed milk, lumps of Milo. I’ve had enough of it. As an artist I can do anything (that I want to). And I will! I’ll chop the arms off those crosses! I’ll burn down bridges! I’ll point and laugh! I’ll shit and eat at the same time.

I am not interested in selling anything except maybe to prove that somebody will buy it, like Manzoni selling his shit for it’s weight in gold. I am not a grocer. I work a lot helping other artists manifest their work so that I don’t have to sell anything I make. It is not function of the objects that I make to earn me money. I do not believe one should adapt one’s practice to suit a client. I don’t even believe in clients, I mean I believe that they exist, but not that they should. Besides, who am I to say that anything I produce is worth buying? Although, considering the value of money, maybe everything I produce is worth buying.

The form the work takes is dictated by the content and the intent, and perhaps what resources are available at the time when it needs to be made. The work is not conceptual art, there just is not yet the correct term for what it is. The work should not be able to be quantified; if it cannot elude language then it should probably just take the form of a note, a letter.

How many things are there already in the world? Billions. I think it’s best to be very careful what one adds. Especially seeing as those things will most probably represent you once you’re dead.

PY-TV That one got you going! So what was The Chimurenga Library exhibition all about?

DG It’s all about content. The function of the exhibition was to formalize the Chimurenga library, which consists of an archive that had until now only existed as a bibliography online. Most of the material is from writers that have contributed at some stage to the Chimurenga magazine or events, as well as the work of others who are deemed to be relevant or significant authors that have been sidelined by main stream publications and who have ideals similar to those of Chimurenga. Fortunately much of the content of the Chimurenga library already existed within the City library so it was just a matter of marking those particular items and brining in and displaying all the additional material. In order to be able to navigate the new library we devised a method of tagging books that were part of our library and attaching a list of the predominant themes of the book/journal/dvd/cd. The library consists of about 850 items that are each part of between four and fourteen “routes”. In addition to the reading routes Stacy and Ntone made a selection from the Chimurenga library of the best sex scenes which have been re-printed and are exhibited for the reading in one of the study spaces. Additionally there are the Sessions, which occur each Wednesday night of the show, these consist of discussions, music, poetry readings and conversations.

PY-TV As a very Anglo-Saxon looking fellow, what was it like working with the "anti-colonialists" at Chimurenga?

DG I think that the only thing that the people at Chimurenga are prejudiced against is narrow mindedness. Besides we are all products of colonialism one way or another. It has been great working with them; Chimurenga is comprised of a group of smart and very driven individuals.


PY-TV Aren't they foreigners anyway? or does the whole Pan African thing absolve that?

DG The idea of the Foreigner is not really useful: this is South Africa; everyone is a foreigner in this country. There are people that have been here a long time but how many times has the “here” changed since then? Besides, in the realm of literature, forms of knowledge and power (those “objects” that the people of Chimurenga deal with) what would define a foreigner? An imbecile? A mongoloid?

PY-TV Does the exhibition actually work from a literary perspective or are the "connections" and categorisations random?

DG The list of routes or themes were claimed in an entirely subjective manner by Stacy Hardy, who has been extremely instrumental in choosing and connecting the content that comprises the Chimurenga Library over the last two years. What the “routes” have in common is that all relate in some way to content that has appeared or been referenced in the various issues of Chimurenga magazine.

PY-TV So would one actually get real content that matches the themes with every book referenced?

DG As close as real as is possible. Obviously there are cases where the addition of a book to a route has been a conceptual move in order to create meaning between various otherwise un-related texts, and because of the subjectivity of the routes it is possible to stretch texts to fit. Having said that though if one looks at the list of routes on the tag of an item or in the exhibition catalog one would get a very good sense of the content of the book/dvd/cd/etc.

PY-TV I noticed there isn't a "GAY" theme per se? Did it get meshed in with Pride and Sex?

DG I can tell you that there’s pretty gay content in some of the texts from the “Why must a black writer write about sex?” show. I can’t tell you why there was no specifically gay route, but I suspect there are a bunch of ‘manne’ out there that would think the whole damn project was gay if they’d read past the sport section in the paper and they didn’t need no tags to tell them so either.

PY-TV Is gayness not African?

DG I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that gayness doesn’t have a lot to do with continental drift or geography generally, although I don’t really know enough to be able to say. I think that there is far greater persecution of gays and lesbians within black communities in South Africa than within white communities, at least if the work of Nicholas Hlobo or Zanele Muholi is anything to go by, and what one occasionally sees in the media.

PY-TV What did you think of the Drill Hall as a venue in which to intervene?

DG It’s about as rigid as a bread stick, which makes it pretty hard to work with in a way that suits the space but also very easy to change in a way that is immediately noticeable. It’s a strange space, because of the predomination of the sensibilities of the grid as a design concept, any change one makes to the space that does not conform to the rigid horizontal/parallel/vertical nature of the construction immediately attracts ones attention. I especially like the hand made signs and posters that the librarians have made in order to try and make the space more humane. It’s like farting at thunder.

PY-TV Helen Zille : Idiot or saviour?

DG Just the two options? Great; then I don’t have to feel any guilt for choosing idiot.

PY-TV Have you ever made a public artwork you regretted?

DG In 2007 I did a performance where I ran circles around Kendell Geers. I spotted him at lunch in Basel and bounded around him and a very attractive lady he was with, I was dressed in a football costume that had been in a collision with art fair camouflage. It may come back to haunt me but I don’t regret it as such.

PY-TV If you could do something other than conceptual art as a vocation, what would it be?

DG A bus driver or maybe a barman.

PY-TV What was the last book you read?

DG The last book I’ve read cover to cover is “For they know not what they do” by Slavoj Zizek. (philosopher, psychoanalyst, sociologist cultural critic -ed)

PT-TV Was it any good?

DG It is excellent. He is exactly as smart as he says he is.

PY-TV Who goes to Libraries these days?

I’ve seen a very diverse mix of people while I’ve been at the Drill Hall; young black entrepreneurs, middle class - middle age white women, students from the nearby tech and college, a fair number of Zimbabwean emigrants, homeless street people, a coloured man around my age who spends days looking through body building books. All sorts. The security barriers count about 1800 people moving through per day, but they can’t tell if they’ve entered once already of course…

PY-TV Do you buy into the "anti-colonial" agenda of Chimurenga?

I think it’s very valuable work that Chimurenga is doing, people desperately need alternatives to what the main stream media provide as content, there is not a publication out there that does not come with it’s agenda, and as far as agendas go I think Chimurenga’s is much more relevant than most. Besides, Chimurenga aims to deal not only with problems of oppression and suppression facing this continent but the lack of freedom of people generally.

PY-TV Do you buy anything?

Occasionally, with a pinch of salt.

PY-TV What's next?

Building a Rat-Rod with Christian Nerf and growing my mullet (the beard is doing fairly well), walking for good, turning some things on their heads. Making art. Collaborating, corroborating.

PY-TV Thanks Douglas!

[In the above image sequence Douglas opens the "suggestion box" placed in the bedroom installation to find a lone note requesting that the library include "A DRINKING PLACE"...]

Douglas Gimberg graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2006 and collaborates with many people, but mostly Christian Nerf. Other contributing artists to the Chimurenga Library include Aryan Kaganof and Dawie van Vuuren.

http://www.chimurengalibrary.co.za
http://www.chimurenga.co.za/

and

http://www.onemoredaytoregret.blogspot.com
http://www.actingonorders.blogspot.com
http://www.mentalpicturesandphysicalspaces.blogspot.com/
http://www.southafricannationalgallery.blogspot.com/