Interview: Aryan Kaganof

Why are you inspired by the writings of Theodor W. Adorno, Rainer Maria Rilke and Guy Debord?

Debord and Adorno describe beautifully the terrible condition of this modern, mechanized world, of the rigidly proscribed existence that we foolishly pretend is free. Rilke is a reminder that it can be different, that it was different once. Debord's most powerful aphorism was his suicide - a single bullet through the heart. It was his most unambiguous statement.

What does the idea of the primal sound means to you?

I'm interested in alchemy, in the creation of forms that arise out of not-knowing, out of curiosity, out of seeking. The primal sound is for me that intuitive leap into the dark that I make every time I follow a hunch and somehow land up somewhere other than where I thought I was jumping. The primal sound is the voice within, guiding me to where I don't know why I'm going. It's the sound of intuition and the sound of trusting that intuition.

Aryan Kaganof at the Noisewomb artist talk. Aryan Kaganof: Noisewomb, 2004.

Is there a questioning of authenticity behind your choice of theme?

Unfortunately it really is too late for us to add anything meaningful to the authenticity debate. Everything artificial is real.

Is it a coincidence that its only women that you have invited for the Noisewomb exhibition?

Actually Annette it was you who pointed this out to me. I chose the three artists concerned because they make interesting art, not because of their gender.

Can you tell us a little bit about each artist - i.e. Kerstin Ergenzinger, Isabelle Schiltz, and Catherine Henegan?

Kerstin Ergenzinger makes very playful work that questions our unflagging belief in science, in the illusory promise of a redemptive category. Her seemingly strict methodologies never prevent her from relying on her intuion, on her gut, and for this reason her work is extraordinarily vivid, alive. Isabelle Schiltz makes these wonderfully mysterious little performance videos that are quite shocking. She seems to be looking for moments of uncontrol, moments that could be described as "outside". The magic of these liberated moments is carefully foregrounded by the very strict framing she does in these works that really are contemporary inheritors of the Flemish painting school tradition. And Catherine Henegan in all her works in different mediums (theatre, video, performance) is battling with the problems of being a so-called white African. Her work is strongly political and deals with race and identity in a techno-magicalist way. She uses the art to radically interrogate the staging of myths of identity and memory.

Kerstin Ergenzinger at the Noisewomb artist talk. Noisewomb artist talk. From the left: Catherine Henegan, Isabelle Schilzt, and Kerstin Ergenzinger.

How do you see art today?

In the past thirty years or so art became everything, absorbed everything. Nothing isn't art anymore. So it's very difficult difficult to have a position on art now. That would be akin to having a position on "everything". Everything sucks? I don't know. Certainly the meltdown of identities between art and the art market, between the jargon of the critics, the curators and the artists, has been deplorable. Art education might be at fault, where the theoretical jargon chains are locked in place and young would-be artists have to conform in order to be allowed to perform. The model of the art world is a chilling reminder of how un-free we are becoming, how rigidly proscribed life is in this period.

Do you see yourself as an artist or a filmmaker?

I suppose I am an artist whose medium is film. I approach filmmaking as an artistic practice and not necessarily as a mass medium. But I also work a lot outside of film, for example my Writings On The Wall graffiti series or the African Noise Foundation performance series which feature Kendell Geers, Stelarc, Ron Athey, Matthew Barney, Zim Ngqawana, Mantombi Matotiyana and other rotating guest artists.

How come you work with the meeting of classical cinema and new media - i.e. camera vs. use of remix, mobile phones?

The new media have provided cinema with a means to stop repeating herself. Whenever something happens that you "don't know what it is, do you Mr.Jones?" - that's a good thing. Classical narrative cinema has suffered from the over-analysing of the academy, of the film schools. The films have become too self-conscious. Fusing with new-media challenges this prissy, knowing tendency. It allows for fresh ways of narrating the world, for the possibility of discovery.

Aryan Kaganof: Mirror, 2009. Aryan Kaganof: Walls, 2009.

You directed the first feature film made with mobile phones called "SMS Sugarman" - why did you choose this media type to work with on the film?

The mobile phone is a narrating instrument that we all have access to. It seemed logical to me that it would be incorporated into the narrating factory, into the industry of moving images. It wasn't a huge leap, I just did it first. Please have a look at the results on www.smssugarman.com.

Tell us about your work in South Africa? In Cape Town?

I am currently making a documentary film about the Eoan Group; an organisation that performed grand Italian opera in the fifties and sixties, without any of its members speaking a word of Italian! It is an extraordinary story, a microcosm of how apartheid worked its poison on a daily basis. The documentary is being produced in partnership with the University of Stellenbosch.

Your writings on the internet - are they part of your expression as an artist?

I have been using the blog form as an addendum to my artistic practice for a few years now, and find that increasingly it IS my art practice. Posting new work on the kagablog (www.kagablog.com) obviates the need for gallerisation, the blog is the gallery. In this way I am able to work away from the conditioning of the market and its gauleiters, the curators.

Thank you.