Medialternatives

VERONIQUE, the closest thing South Africa has to a female conceptual pop artist, plundered everything from late 20^th century modern primitivism, to rock art feminism, literary theory, post-modernism and deconstruction.

It was this post-punk sensibility that first attracted me to her. Granted, she was one of the most striking creatures of her time with a European ramp modeling career under her belt, which had quickly been dumped for the off-beat allure of University of Cape Town’s Drama Deparment then still struggling to emerge out of the seventies and in a conceptual time-warp as far as the eighties were concerned.

V arrived suddenly at a house party I had thrown for an assortment of heads from UCT philosophy & classics. A truly bacchanalian event with a T. E. Lawrence 7 Pillars of Wisdom and Ecstasy theme which was meant to shock as well as enlighten the European sensibilities of the period. I had purposefully created an art happening in which a pastiche of ambient music, Brian Eno, and Psychic TV was interspersed with poetry recitals, astrological forecasts and food delivered by my younger brothers dressed as cheribum.

Needless to say, there was quite a bit of nudity. Diane George, my Latin tutor had taken the lead by revealing a breast or two. John Cooper (relative/non-relative of Cape Town anti-psychiatrist David Cooper) and Hume himself had taken off their kneck-ties and declaimed on Plato while Leonard Shapiro circulated manifestoes written up by the beatnik Sinclair Beiles.

Enter Veronique accompanied by playwrite Martin Jacklin and Camilla Kraft. She was like a women possessed and I was spellbound. The counterculture salon would continue along with a parade of boyfriends. I remember being invited to a V Christmas party the same year, which must have made it 1988. Not a single woman. Around a large dinner table sat 10 vaginocentric amorattas competing for V attention while we all contemplated the meaning of pumpkin fritters.

Bruce Wessels who would later become Fynn and then Serophin and I, we were all curiously involved in a publishing project along with Jonathan Garnham (Blank), a cultural precurser that had taken its cue from the missives of counterculture hero Tim Leary, the quixotically named Starseed Transmission after a cause which had began at Millbrook.

The exploration of consciousness in CT was inextricably involved in an underground movement that included anarchists, poets, classicists, conceptual artists, queers, draft-dodgers, pirates and mutineers. The late eighties and early nineties was a period of revolt and revolution for the RSA that would not settle down until the dramatic events of the first democratic election. Then Veronique moved to Johannesburg.

That same year I met Rehane Abrahams, a militant, performer and activist who would occupy the next ten years of my life. We hiked to Johannesburg in the summer of 1989 and, stopped by a commune in which Veronique was living. I remember the bizarre décor and a dog turd in the middle of a living room.

The next time I saw Veronique, was during the struggle apogee that gave us the myth of Yeoville and before the revolution that ended it. We immediately struck up a rapport and Rehane and I were, like so many Yeovillites, invited to one of Veronique’s many acid parties. Along with posters like “Men and Women were created equal, and Smith and Wesson keeps it that way”, the legend had begun. In between selling roses and raver-lights on Rocky Street, while lynching rapists, and crucifying yuppies, Veronique was busy doing her dissertation on Body Mutilation at Wits Art School.

I had given Veronique a stack of art magazines from New York, which contained work by Orlan and so on. One happened to be Mondo 2000. V voraciously plundered magazines for concepts and visual ideas, of the kind which were sneaked out of New York, London, Paris and San Francisco, along with garter belts and in a state of economic boycott, political struggle and cultural siege, she was considered a rare gift in South Africa.

Here is the controversial debate: Cultural Appropriation or Outright Theft? The new science of plunderponics, from hip hop to trash art. The ultimate mash-up – a global creative art collective featuring Theory or anti-Theory? The new anti-aesthetic including the rights of the creative agent versus capitalism, imperialism, Freud’s commodity fetish, the Shiva Lingam. As we all followed the new post-punk counter-cultural school, we were intrigued by news of the Negativeland U2 saga in which an SF band was sued for naming their album after megagroup U2. Burn Bono Burn.

Editor of Mondo 2000, the “ Ed Sullivan of Subversion”, R. U. Sirius, had masterfully created a “fake” band imitating the Sex Pistols but coded it Mondo Vanilli, in reference to the mainstream Italian pop “Milli Vanilli” incident in which a commercial success had turned out to be a gigantic fraud, this merely to pose a semiotic point.

Milli Vanilli did more than just lip-synch to Italian soap commercials, in fact they didn’t exist as a band, and had no instruments. The idea of non-existent bands scratched the psyche enough, to venture into outright neurosis. So I copycatted the idea, and plundered it wholesale. Along with Rehane Abrahams, who was in danger of being cast merely as a boy-toy, I created an all girl grunge act and quickly released a single that was banned before it could receive airplay.

In a censored country that had missed out on Nirvana, and was slowly emerging from racial stasis, the results were bound to be unusual. Nevertheless we informed the media that “Wider Than This”, at a vulva stretch, would be appearing at a Café in Hillbrow.

Before we could say protest march Rehane, a Capetonian and Linda de Klerk, a Durbanite are pulled into the vortex of SA show-business. Watch this band, they are about to be catapulted into the limelight. According to the Sunday Times this is “South Africa’s first Grunge Band”.

The Mail and Guardian, more hip to the act, feature a female “Theatre-band” which goes on to perform for five nights without any instruments. Roger Young does the lights. Beeld writes it all down as a truly magnificent example of a new import from America. I wave them on from behind the scenes and the audience lap it up, since, when they do “arrive” the imported internationally success, “the band” has been cancelled, What you get for R8 is real live theatre, a post-feminist intervention – the kind that eyeballs, and the chance to tell you children one day you have seen South Africa’s very own Negativland.

It would be some time before Veronique – Diamanda Galas and Nina Hagen rolled into one visual odyssey – actually worked together, despite being a member of my “extended family” and the daughter of my mothers teenage crush, the man I guess my mother never married.

In 1996 I find myself part of a collective experiment known as Gallery Mau Mau (M AUM AU). The idea is to send up the establishment, by creating an innovative contemporary art space – where all artists of all persuasions – can relate. Craig Parker, a true neurotic and emerging videographer at the time has the strange idea to throw an outdoor art happening. Lets wake up sleepy Cape Town?

The result is the Artists Street Assembly in Greenmarket Square which includes graffiti by South Africa’s own JP Basquiat, — Mustafa Maluka, as well as Sky One and Everon. Posters are supplied by Piet Pienaar, art works by Andrew Putter and Samten De Wet and of course, the lovely Veronique who is slowly morphing into the Virgin M (Our Lady of Observatory amongst other Latinate Godesses)

In 1997 Veronique invades the reconstituted Mau Mau Art Zone in Long Street and throws a tricky t-shirt exhibition featuring a naked woman with a penis. In return for my labour I am paid commission on the sale of the resulting mash-up — Bridget Riley-esque t-shirts made on the fly. Needless to say, we don’t make millions but succeed in delivering art to the masses.

Veronique proceedes to plunder the art world. She throws bricks at the establishment. Beats up yuppies. Her voice is ballsier than a Molotov cocktail, her perfumed cent worth more than a dime of Vivienne Westwood’s Malcholm McLaren. For instance, colloboration with Charles Fourie (words, images) at the AVA results in angry phone calls. I get one from Lien Botha, daughter of Pik instead of Sid Vicious. How could she do this? I explain Veronique’s point of view from outer space. Bridget Riley, Cindy Sherman, Deconstruction, Punkdom, Femdom, Sex Pistols, etc etc. Does she have to remain the disinherited daughter of the Afrikaner Nation?

But it’s the eve of Veronique’s first solo exhibition at Joao Ferrerra. I have made about 50 phone calls to people associated with “the network”. See, this show is going to be huge, yes, you can actually observe theory to action.

Sperm Halo. Breastlay Milk Chocolate, Virgin Mary. One does not need a publicist to imagine the consequences, However, is this piss art? Veronique has succeeded in writing a chapter in Angry Women, Modern Primitives of the 20th century Volume (2,) Semiotext(e) and Autonomedia Mash-up. A major breakthrough for a South African artist. You can see the rice krispies exploding, the gene ectoplasm, the “great pop-art idea” in all of its visual excess, amphetamine vanity and lysergic outpourings.

It does not take Damien Hirst or a brain scientist to realize Veronique has pilfered high art outright, written the book on local conceptual creativity and in so doing, parady-ed/paradied the world of fashion, women’s magazines, the obsqueious media, while struggling with the aorta and bleeding heart of feminism, the inevitably rape by the system.

Don’t pluck this nightingale’s wings because she sings. Videodrome I want to vomit: From burn-your-bra, to fuck-up make-up to Love-less lipstick and lipgloss and back again. South Africa is not ready for the double-take, the triple entendre, a negative dialectic, the resulting fashion/music/new-wave fiasco discography.

When the idea for the non-existent band – remake, culture clash concept re-emerged (no relation) in all its postpunk and grunge self-referential excess, somewhere along the path from success to total annihilation, Veronique had turned it into a 50 member global creative circus and personal Escheton. I am still recovering from knee replacement surgery after a dancing accident with V (the Gell), high on morphine and a patient struggling with gravity, begging to be dragged off to the South African National Gallery. What if the bands turned out to be real? What if the next century was Jesus?

Natalie: I called Rehane to find out what happened, you know, between the two of you.

David: And?

Natalie: She put down the phone.

Veronique: David can’t get over her.

The afternoon of YDETAG we make guerilla posters and t-shirts. A demonstration against the fascist state I guess. A statement anti-(anti) the perceived prudery of the (1\=@#$%) of this world, those mothersuckers who have gone from fashion photography to a new age hippy rock art spot in one foul swoop, without hitting the g-zone, without paying their dues. Yes, there is videotape of Veronique and Natalie Berry/Trinity Diva coming to blows in the olde State gallery of nationalistic nazis, colonial traditions and new age emperial ambitions – doubtless an extravagant lesbian lover affair? A failed visual arts marriage, doomed in divorce and no prenup, with 50 dysfunctional kids and who gets to keep the real kid, and what if YOU kids are an entire generation of converts?

Diva is starkers in a bath in the SANG. Soft-focus of Tracy Rose, she unconsciously imitates the digital be-in broadcast from SF (Cybersafari). A wonderful piece of nature in the round, environmentally-sensitive modernism and commentary about going naked for a sign. The public and the event is awash with art. V shouts – How could you do it with Tristan (or somebody else). A security guard grabs V and drags her out of the antechamber. What I see is V being assailed by a large man. I intervene.

Am carrying an Anarchy poster and wearing a Harmony T-Shirt. The security guard and Ego thus come to blows. To our surprise, we know each other. I am the Hundertwasser-inspired anti-artist who demanded access to the gallery during the Johannesburg-Cape Town Bienalle. This after Ego was accused of “dirtying” the space, contaminating the sterile floors with sand. The fight is pointless. We break.

5000 art lovers are gathered outside on the lawn. There is a commotion in the inner sanctum of the SANG. V Art and Art V and I are leaving. An almighty thud. Dead weight. I go down like a bag of marble statues on the steps of SANG. Am brought back from rectilinear, fauvist unconsciousness, situationist surrealism and dadaesque angst. The security guard has attacked my head whilst I was leaving. Superego/Brute has kicked in my ribs with one of his boots. My last frame of reference is the whiter-than-white face of Bridget Baker, an Ambulance and then September 911.

What does I all say? The Diva-Veronique saga is illustrated like a bad piece of writing for the Daily Voice, in which images suffice for editorial detail. The two oddballs at first have teamed up, and Ego is cursed. As can be expected, Trinity doesn’t get the art theory, What she gets is the post-punk aesthetic, the parody, the prose. The resulting apogee of entertainment, pop-illusion, all really first year psychology — results in a massive fallout – a cataclasmic seismic event nevertheless the images deserve to be published in a luxury Swiss Art Book.

Jealousy. Overcompetativeness between two intersexed, genderbiased subjects?Veronique comes from money but has been disowned. Trinity has had to struggle to get it, and consequently has more of it. Inevitably they fall out, for reasons that are no longer important. The tryst is too complicated to relate here.

Anarchic Harmony makes the Mail & Guardian 2002 annual roundup. Next to the death of Baroness Leoness von Cleef, the spat between Diva, Malherbe and YDETAG (Putter and Weinek) is apparently news.

**********

Today: V’s house in Woodstock is totally trashed. Most of her furniture is sitting on the lawn. “They came twice” she said. “In waves.” It’s an artistic statement about 911, coincidence, or revenge? Sperm Halo has been destroyed. Bringing up Baby no longer exists. Some Long St Goons no doubt.

It is pointless arguing with women over money. I spend a good few hours, trying to persuade V that the way forward out of the YDETAG spat is to emphasise the value of the image as commodity fetish. Putter contra Weinek. The copyright issue: the acquisition of modern art is no longer via the sale of prints or canvas, but the image itself, which if one thinks of it, can never be owned. What is it that you are selling in the age of electronic manipulation? Take them all to task for not giving a damn about the language, the art and remember, we don’t have a patron like Charles Saatchi in SA.

Later there is a paper note under my door. Veronique has done it again but this time, she has outfoxed Putter and Weinek, and scored an exhibition at Bell Roberts. The Swiss art book is all over the walls. In graphic detail, Veronique’s journey from the circus as entertainment to the entertainment as theory. One problem, she is totally broke. Scanshop won’t give her any prints until the images are sold. A reporter from French Magazine, appropriately enough, Jalouse is doing the rounds.

Despite this, the YDETAG feud hangs in the air. We arrange a meeting, V doesn’t pitch. Yet the entire conceptual body of work has been threatened with annihilation like the Twin Towers. The antigravity of the counterculture is fast disappearing. Life is one big drain hole.

Despite having my face in several “Anarchic Harmony” posters, despite interceding with the press, offering to write a foreward to the book of the movie, or giving V an Adbusters Magazine with the line: “Have you considered a career in total revolution”, I am brushed aside by the Bell Roberts’ YDE cabal as a cultural has-been. Nightmares never cease.

But Veronique’s art defies human imagination. Of course, she is a plunder-artist who rarely acknowledges sources and when push comes to shove, claims sole authorship over the planet – the whole 57 inch thick stiletto of silicon deep, highhealed, industrial-shallow, earth spewing, deconstructed feminine magma. She is a semiotic volcano, while using adjectival larva and verbal anti-matter to promote her work, thus negating whatever claims have been made by others regarding the art collective as a functioning whole. Has the revolution gotten out of hand? Should we revisit the war of the sexes?

I am literally flattened by a Hummer, a giant SUV that has tried to drive right over my head. My sin is not having any money, no expensive German sedan, no body-guard and what have you. Despite the fixation, Veronique is now in convoy with a host of male acolytes who she has never met in her life, escorted on the way to her birthday party, from which I have by token of not having any money, been excluded. The Bell Roberts have also been kicked aside, (not rich enough to love, not broke enough to despise).

I am woken up the next morning by one of the escorts, a new-urban professional wannebe demanding I replace his daddy’s windscreen which according to daddykins, has been “damaged” to the tune of R4000. A mere scratch on an SUV and nothing compared to the Printshop bill.

I start reading books on the joys of eating roadkill and how to avoid angry gallerists and women artists. Never again will I understand modern art or the so-called artworld. There is no point to art. Art is a luxury item and should remain a luxury item. If one creates art, it should be under license from a large corporation

Consigned to a soviet-era gulag, or Stalinist Construction Camp, I now find myself ceremonially excommunicated from Anarchic Harmony (membership: 50 non-existent band members), airbrushed out of history. As the cultural throng invade the ever-expanding, lifelong group exhibition that is Veronique, nobody stops to contemplate, or cares about the result of such exposure, a visual arts orgy, or what happens when it all just stops? The parody of the real thing has turned into the real thing which in turn is being parodied. Veronique is nothing more than MTV without glue, without bodyguards, limousines, rhinestone gansta rappers and Cubana-smoking accountants.

A drama like this means heavy karma.