ARTISTS TALKING

# 30 [28 January 2010]

Stellenbosch

We visit Stellenbosch to see the University gallery, where we’ll be showing our work in March. It’s an amazing venue, in an old church with a beautiful vaulted ceiling and old chandeliers. There’s great potential in such a big space. But it also made us look at the calendar with a quiver of fear: despite Bergsonian philosophising, time is passing fast.

Walking around the sleepy streets of typical Cape Dutch architecture now filled with chichi shops and cafes, we spot a toy and miniature museum. We appear to be the only visitors, and get a personal tour. As I have just started to construct miniature stage sets, it seems optimal timing by the universe to drop this in our laps. We marvel at the tiny recreations of a basement garage (complete with crushed coke can). The curator has extensive knowledge of plants and shows us the museum grounds, explaining the origination of the trees and plants.

I am struck by the imposition of environments, so that the whole of Stellenbosch is really like one of the miniature models, a constructed world, an amalgamation of styles and mismatched objects, plants and trees, brought together to create a new version of place and identity for the colonists.  And our tourist experience is yet another veneer of artificiality, a reconstructed pastiche of this reconstruction of place.

At Stellenbosch University, we have a long chat with Kathryn Smith, artist, curator and lecturer in fine art. I notice her collection of minituare cameras, each offering views of famous tourist sites of the world. Somehow it is an apt ending to our day to look at technicolour views of the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal.

Katy Beinart

# 29 [28 January 2010]

Baking in Cape Town

Our culture has survived 26 days at sea, two weeks in a fridge in Cape Town, and a power cut. It was definitely high time to let it express itself in some loaves. At the weekend we decided to make our first batch of South African bread, and started the process in the kitchen at Alfred Street. The culture smelt ripe, and responded the warmth of unexpected summer with enthusiastic bubbling. On Saturday evening, the dough was ready and we baked three small loaves, which were enjoyed hot and buttery by our housemates.

# 28 [28 January 2010]

 Searching for clues

 I am looking for the Deeds Office on Plein Street. There’s a huge imposing building that looks official, so I go in through the rotating doors and the security check and ask if I’m in the right place. The man at the desk tells me to go to the thirteenth floor. There, I wait for my number to be called as a smelly gentleman talks incessantly to me about his claim on his late mother’s house. Finally, I am summonsed to the enquiry counter by the moustachioed Eugene. I tell him I am looking for ownership records of the farms around Darling from the 1930s. He tells me I must go to the Surveyor General office on the 11^th floor to find out the numbers of the farms. Downstairs there is more waiting as a guy uses a confusing computer program to try and match up the names I give him with numbers allocated to each plot of land. Finally I am equipped with the information and I head back to Eugene, to give him the numbers.

I am handed a huge heavy volume full of carefully handwritten deeds showing the ownership of the farms around Malmesbury & Darling from the 1900s-1950s. I go through each of the farms in the Kikoesvlei area, looking for evidence of the Beinarts. We thought that possibly Woolf might have owned some of the land where the Salt Pans are located. The documents are fascinating, but bear no Beinart fruit. However, I realise that Mr Basson, the farmer who kindly showed us the salt pans, is part of a family who has owned land in that area for over 100 years.

I leave the building with no further clues as to exactly which pan our Great-Grandfather would have harvested salt from, but with the satisfaction of feeling like a detective.

Rebecca Beinart

# 27 [19 January 2010]

Oh! Darling..

Visiting the State archives on Roeland St, we find our way through the many keys and locks to a bare room with empty desks and piles of brown cardboard boxes. Eventually we suss the form filling system and order up documents, pertaining to our great-grandfather Woolf Beinart and his business interests. We hit a goldmine: the Darling Salt Pans and Produce Company, Ltd., was evidentially a going concern circa 1929 and there are a multitude of polite letters back and forward in his scratchy handwriting on headed paper, assuring the planning department of the hygienic nature of skin-preserving. We also find a blueprint for a railway siding at Kikoesvlei, near Darling, where he had his salt stores...

So on Saturday we set off to Darling, and firstly visit the Darling Museum, home of South Africa's foremost Butter-making artefact collection. There we find more evidence of Beinarts in the area, as there was a Beinart tailors in Darlings' early days. From Darling we head north down a dirt track to Kikoesvlei, which consists of a railway siding and a sign. We look for evidence but find nothing, and so we head to the nearby farm. The farmer turns out to know the local history, and takes us to the site where he says the salt stores were, in his 4 x 4, past the Ostrich farm. There we find some remains of foundations, and a house on a pole, which he says is an owl house. They encourage the owls to live there to eat the mice that eat the wheat. Organic pest control.

Then we drive past a huge dairy farm (not so organic) to Koekiespan, another farm, and the site of a salt pan. It is an eerie, uncanny place, a vast stretch of white emptiness under the blue sky. You walk onto it and it feels like desert, but also like ice, and you feel it could give way at any moment. I take photographs and the light is blinding. I feel a bit like I have landed on the moon.

We collect the salt and add to our collection of envelopes, started with salt from the decks of the ships where sea-water has pooled and evaporated, leaving white crystals in patterns on the green paintwork.

Katy Beinart

# 26 [19 January 2010]

Homecoming

From the immigration office, we were picked up by Robyn, a friendly tour guide who drove us to our new home in Observatory, a quirky suburb west of the city centre. We arrived at the house in Alfred Street where we met two of our fellow visiting artists: Emmet (from London) and Evelyn (from Holland). This is to be our home for the next three months. In the front garden, an old hammock hangs under a Frangipani tree, but it looks like it might collapse if you were to actually sit on it. In the back yard, an avocado tree overhangs the wall, with promising green fruit that we hope will ripen before we have to leave.

On Monday we went to Greatmore studios, to be welcomed by Mishkaah and given the tour by Aunty Yvonne. There’s a lot to take in, especially after our confinement on the ship, but it’s great to finally be here. We start to occupy our studio, filling the walls with ideas, drawings and texts. We meet some of the other artists and Kim arrives from Namibia, also staying at Alfred Street. We have a house excursion to an opening at Joao Ferriera gallery, for a show by Leon Botha and Gordon Clark, which is an intense introduction to the South African art world. Or perhaps one facet of it.

Katy & Rebecca Beinart

# 25 [19 January 2010]

Arrival

On Sunday 10^th January 2010, twenty-five days after leaving Antwerp, the Green Cape docked in Cape Town. Our arrival faithfully imitated the journey: nothing was going to happen in a hurry.

On Saturday, Table Mountain appeared, distant and hazy on the horizon. We watched all day as it grew larger and more solid, the city eventually becoming visible at the base of the mountain. We dropped anchor in Table Bay and spent twenty hours waiting for a space in the harbour. We had a fantastic view of Table Mountain and watched as the sun set and the lights of Cape Town gradually twinkled into life. I was reminded of the writing of a Jewish migrant who had made this journey in the 1900s:

“ We were more than pleased when our wandering had come to an end. The ship now lay peacefully in the harbour and our wonder grew as we looked at Table Mountain with its tremendous tablecloth of cloud. It was one of the most magnificent sights I had seen in my life...” Moishe Levin¹

At 2pm on Sunday, the ship docked in the harbour, and we lined up our bags, ready to disembark. As soon as the Captain allowed it, we triumphantly left the ship, skipping down the rickety steps to stand on South African soil. Several hours later, we were still sitting on the harbour-side, waiting for a mythical taxi that was supposed to take us to immigration. Eventually, the second mate appeared, and explained that our ride wouldn’t arrive until 6pm due to mysterious circumstances involving paperwork for drivers entering the port. He persuaded us to get back on board and have a final drink with the crew. We started to feel like we’d never leave: that we were a permanent fixture of the Green Cape. We sat in the kitchen drinking a vodka-based beverage with the cooks, half-laughing half-crying at our predicament. But at 6pm we were finally put in the back of a pick-up truck and taken to a decrepit, imposing 1970s building that houses the immigration office. Our passports were checked and stamped, and we were officially in South Africa.

Rebecca Beinart

1From Eastern Europe to South Africa: Memories of an Epic Journey 1880 – 1937, Gwynne Schrire

# 24 [19 January 2010]

Bread and Salt

Reading the accounts of Jewish migrants who made this journey over 100 years ago, we are struck with their apparent obsession with food. They describe the barrels of pickled herring and potatoes that sustain them through the journey, and sometimes complain of a lack of understanding for their dietary needs. We add a category to our daily logbook, recording the food we eat each day, and pretty soon we start to understand what an important part of the voyage this is. Meal times on the boat are strictly timed, and we must eat what we’re given or not eat at all. The meals in the officer’s mess offer us our main daily interaction with other people. The menu is Polish, and heavily based around meat and potatoes, which is challenging for me as a vegetarian. On one occasion I am presented with a plate of potatoes accompanied by a large boiled carrot, proudly presented to imitate a steak. It makes us realise what a fundamental part of our culture and identity food is.

We have brought with us the bread culture we started a few months ago. It was transported in the bread-making suitcase that Katy created and since our arrival on the ship it has sat in a tupperware in the fridge of our cabin, smelling distinctly. It is perhaps our most unusual piece of luggage. Artist Eva Bakkeslett writes about bread culture as a physical and metaphorical model for culture. She writes: ‘The word culture comes from the Latin words cultura – meaning to cultivate – to prepare the ground for something to emerge out of… It is interesting that the word culture is used both for human culture and fermented foods, which have been a vital way to preserve and enhance food for centuries. Culture is alive. It breathes and moves and develops a structure, given the right conditions and a portion of TLC.’¹

On Christmas day, we decide to make some of own sourdough bread. We are given permission to use the ship’s galley, and Katy mixes our dough whilst I record her. The strip-lighted stainless steel room is a strange backdrop for this domestic process, and the bread-making begins to look like a soviet-era instructional video. We leave the dough to prove, and return later in the day to bake the bread. As usual, Niko offers advice on what we should do and how we should do it. But the loaves come out perfectly, and the crew are happy to have fresh bread with dinner.

Spending three weeks aboard a ship makes us aware of the importance of food preservation. Before huge freezers could be loaded with as much meat as a Polish chef desired, salted food would have been a necessity. Mark Kurlansky writes of salt’s ability to preserve: it’s ability to protect against decay, as well as to sustain life, has given salt a broad metaphorical importance – we associate it with longevity and permanence.’² He writes about rituals that use bread and salt: ‘Bringing bread and salt to a new home is a Jewish tradition dating back to the middle ages.’³ We create our own bread and salt ceremony to mark the thresholds we cross on our journey. When we cross the equator, we take our Lithuanian black bread down to the deck, and each eat a piece, dipped in salt, to quietly celebrate ‘crossing the line’. On our long-awaited arrival at Cape Town harbour, we repeat this ritual, sitting on suitcases at the harbour-side watching cranes unloading cargo from the ships.

Rebecca Beinart

1 Cultural Fermentation: A talk by Eva Bakkeslett, 2008

2 Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky

3 Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky

# 23 [12 January 2010]

Movement and Containment

The limiting nature of the space aboard ship has affected our energies and our physical and mental capacities. We have both slowed down. But the slowing down is necessary: a coping mechanism without which we might go crazy. Our bodies respond appropriately to the situation, they rest and wait. As the weeks pass, Katy and I react differently to the new world we are in. Katy allows herself to relax into it – to enjoy retreating into novels, and her internal world of thoughts. But I become increasingly energetic, and that’s when cabin fever set in. The ship becomes a prison. A pleasant one, where we have comfortable beds, plentiful food and our own (limited) entertainment. But it is nonetheless a space of confinement, entrapment. We cannot leave.

Aboard this Container Ship, I start to think about what ‘containment’ means. In the absence of a dictionary I check Microsoft Word’s synonyms. It suggests: ‘repression, suppression, control, restraint, or inhibition’. I think of the way we speak of a person being ‘contained’, not revealing their emotions. I associate containment with a lack of freedom, and yet sometimes it’s useful to contain yourself, it’s a form of protection. Containing something can mean keeping it safe. Katy says one of its meanings has to do with being full of something, for example ‘containing wisdom’, so it’s not always negative.

The reality of being contained in the world of the ship is a limiting of our movement, of company and of stimulus. Although we are moving all the time, covering thousands of miles and passing by numerous different countries, our bodily movement is contained within the limits of the boat.  Each day, the same movements are repeated: walking down four floors to the officer’s mess where we eat; walking up one floor to the bridge to watch our progress; walking to the front of the boat to watch the waves.  As I grow more frustrated with the lack of anywhere to go, I invent challenges for myself. Each day I ride the rusty exercise bike, pedalling furiously as the bike stays obstinately on one spot. We work out that a total circuit of the deck is 200m, and we walk five times around, to make a kilometre.

The only real means of escape is in the worlds of our imagination: we create new worlds to overlay on the world of the boat. We fancy-dress, draw, read and watch films. We discuss philosophy – altering the way we see this experience by trying out different theories as a series of different lenses to look though.

Tim Ingold describes all living creatures as Wayfarers. He writes: ‘Wayfaring is a movement of self-renewal or becoming… Making their way through the tangle of the world, wayfarers grow into its fabric and contribute through their movement to its ever-evolving weave.’[1]  There’s an important difference between being a wayfarer and a transported passenger: where you take no responsibility for your own journeying through the world, and don’t engage with the environments you encounter.

On this journey, I feel like we are transported passengers: gliding across the surface of the sea, our means of locomotion totally in the control of Polish sailors. We are transported, carrying our inner worlds with us. We can switch off from the world we are moving through if we choose. We are not completely disengaged from the environment of the sea, nor the environment of the boat. But we are not engaging as ‘wayfarers’: we are not really a part of the world we pass through. The deck is too high for us to touch the sea with our hands; we only feel it through the constant movement of the ship. Our dialogue with our environment is limited. The sea offers limitless horizons, but the boat prevents us from reaching them.

In Walvis Bay, after two and a half days of waiting at anchor, we finally go into the harbour. We are allowed off the ship for an afternoon’s freedom to roam this strange desert town. It’s a pleasure to walk, to eat what we please, to see different people. But I also have a strange feeling of having become so familiar with life aboard ship that the real world is a bit challenging. We are glad to return to the safety of the ship, to scuttle into the cabin and lock the door. We have become familiar with our own containment.

Rebecca Beinart

[1] Ingold, LINES: A Brief History Routledge, 2007, p116

# 22 [12 January 2010]

Identities Part 2

We became very aware of our gender on board ship. From before we arrived we were repeatedly warned of the Polish seamen. We were told again and again how unusual it was for two young women to travel in this way. So things haven't changed that much in 100 years.

Victorian Lady explored a fictitious idea of a genteel past of sea travel, where lady travellers in full dress would paint careful watercolours. Perhaps a more accepted version of what a woman artists should be? In contrast, for Dangerous Cargo we printed our bodies with the words Dangerous Cargo and posed on the bridge; playing on the fact that we had been told that passengers were the most ‘dangerous cargo’ on board ship, as they could move, ie. fall overboard. The sub-text to this was the danger we presented as women, a danger of temptation? In No Name, (Wilkie Collins, 1862) Magdalen takes on different roles through a series of disguises. Arguing with her servant over the servants' lack of willingness to swap roles with her, Magdalen says: “Shall I tell you what a lady is? A lady is a woman who wears a silk gown and has a sense of her own importance.”

Cross-dressing was suggested as one solution to our gender issues, and for Sailor Suit, Katy wore a sailor suit and moustache to take on the typical male role of seaman. The experience wasn’t one of integration, but it did make her feel more in sync with the ship, and the male-ness of the spaces we inhabited.

While in Antwerp, we happened upon an exhibition which included Helio Oiticia's Parangoles (Made-on-the-body-cape), and it seemed a strange coincidence that the name of our ship was Green Cape. During the journey we embroidered and printed a piece of fabric as a “Green Cape” and then filmed Rebecca wearing the cape and dancing to unheard music on the fore of the ship. This work took on Oitcicia's philosophy of non-theatre, non-ritual, non-myth; process not display; not-nostalgic but rather concrete action. (Helio Oiticica, 1972, Synthesis-Parangole) The identity became not about the photograph or document, not about the past or our history, but about our being on the journey, on the ship at that very moment; it felt liberating. In another unintentional performance, the Crossing the Line ceremony, an event orchestrated not by us but by others (the crew) also spoke more about a moment in time and space than about an attempt to define identity.

Katy Beinart

References:

Rachel Garfield, Towards a Re-Articulation of Cultural Identity; problematizing the Jewish Subject in Art, Third Text, Vol. 20, Issue 1, January, 2006

Helio Oiticica, Synthesis-Parangole, 1972

W G Sebald, Austerlitz, 2001

Art Speigelman, Maus, 1996)

Wilkie Collins, No Name, 1862

# 21 [12 January 2010]

Identities Part 1

We set off on this journey with a pile of books and texts and a suitcase of assorted costumes, unsure as to how these would coincide on the journey to unravel the myth of identity we were trying to explore. In Austerlitz, (Sebald, 2001), a search for lost identity, the main character explores narratives of place to re-find memories of self:

“And might it not be, continued Austerlitz, that we also have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time, so to speak?”

Being on this journey, we hoped to somehow keep these appointments, to touch moments our ancestors had experienced in their migrations Southwards. But we became more and more aware that our identities were performed, invented ones, constructing an idea of a fictitious past based on our own (recent) histories.

We reconstructed family photographs taken on board ship, and dressed in the original garments belonging to grandparents and great-grandparents. What was curious was the change in sense of self, as Rebecca felt herself filling out the enormous dinner jacket and shoes of her Granddad Ben, and Katy felt herself taking on the airs and graces of her Great-grandmother, Edith. The photographs themselves are a deliberately unhistorical reconstruction, a hotchpotch of times and places; the setting is a ship constructed in the 1980s, the clothing dates from the 1930s and 1950s. But perhaps this is a more honest attempt to explain our confused identities than a deliberately accurate reconstruction of the past.

After all, surely our family, by leaving behind their home and community, were trying to create new identities. The idea of the diaspora can suggest either a clinging to memories or liberating from the past, either a feeling of homelessness or an unreal sense of rootedness in a fictional homeland. Garfield (2006) writes: “Jonathan Boyarin suggests that nostalgia is a denial of the state of sustained rediasporisation, which is the nature of Jewish history”; why attempt to reconstruct a past which most Jewish families have for one reason or another been forced to leave behind?. “Diasporic subjectivity offers the contemporary world a way of understanding community without statehood or attachment to territory..the emphasis is not on where you are from, but where you are going.” This makes sense in the context of our journey – we are not seeking a complete identity, a return to the past, but rather like our ancestors perhaps more of a disentanglement from narratives of orthodoxy; acknowledging the complexities of heritage, with Jewishness as a part of our identity but not all. 

When his father says “I don't want you should write this in your book. It has nothing to do with Hitler, or the Holocaust”(Maus, 1996), Art Speigelman, argues  “But Pop, it's great material. It makes everything more real – more human.” It is precisely the details and handed down elements of disaporic existence and of migration that constitute the human identities of our family. So for us, it's not the archetypal traditions but rather a family recipe that allow us to reconstruct an identity.  And its the changes in these elements that capture the sense of that diaspora as temporal rather than territorial/geographical. No place better to realise that than on board ship, a no-country, non-place – so identities can be constructed, without actual adherence to rules or nations.

Katy Beinart