KEEPING COMPANY(13th - 15th August 2024)

KEEPING COMPANY

Sven Christian

It’s the first day of the ARAK Writing Workshop¹, co-facilitated with Dominic Muwanguzi and held in partnership with 32° East, Kampala, from 13 – 15 August 2024. We are gathered by Nicole Remus’s Submerge (2024), which sits at the bottom of a gentle, ripe, leafy slope just off Salaama Road. To one side, a modest body of water, and at our feet, an open-air bath, cracked and mended. Above, fruitflies converge on a showerhead packed with herbs. Created in response to this year’s theme for KLA ART ’24, “Care Instructions”², the artist points out how absurd it is that something as widely practiced as open-air bathing should be touted in glossy pages as a novel, edgy experience.

‘Forget your perfect offering,’ concludes the inscription on the side. The words belong to Leonard Cohen³, but they remind me of a short text by Es’kia Mphahlele, “The Unfinished Story”, written in 1949 but published in 1967 as part of his coveted collection In Corner B, in which he poses a series of self-reflective questions about the who, what, when, how, and why of writing:

I want to write; I must write; I should write; I am going to write. This is what I said to myself one moonless night under an inky black sky. I was standing on my stoep, looking out into the darkness before me. Below my house in that darkness were masses of houses where I knew life was throbbing fast. Away in the distance a cluster of city lights twinkled softly. Now and then a wave of singing came to my ears from down there.⁴

A few weeks prior, sitting in the semi-darkness on my own stoep in South Africa, laptop in hand, I’d read Mphahlele’s text to the group I was now with — a cohort of artists, art historians, journalists, poets, psychologists, playwrights and lawyers⁵, bound by a mutual love of art and the written word, but who, at that point, weren’t quite sure what they’d signed up for or what sort of expectations we might have of each other.

Write what? you ask me. That’s partly my difficulty. What shall I write? Why should I write? So much has been written on the Bantu, but I have always felt something seriously wanting in such literature. I told myself there must surely be much more to be said than the mere recounting of incident: about the loves and hates of my people; their desires; their poverty and affluence; their achievements and failures; their diligence and idleness; their cold indifference and enthusiasm; their sense of the comic; their full throated laughter and their sense of the tragic with its attendant emotional sobs and ostentatious signs of pity. The singing continued. Its sound came floating wave on wave through the darkness. How could I begin? What medium of writing could I use? The essay? No. My feelings would perhaps overstep the limits of that form. Drama? Verse? No. The short story or the novel? Worth trying, I thought. Now, what could I say to the world?⁶

At this point, I began to wonder about the what and why of arts writing, too, knowing full well the dangers of writing about the work of others, and the attendant risks of interpretation. What is the place of words, when it comes to art? Or, for that matter, the responsibility of arts writers to artists? Is it not often said, by artists, that if they had the words to say what they were trying to communicate, then there’d be no point in making art? How much of art’s magic stems from this gnomic space, and how can arts writing, rather than explaining it away, inspire that same sense of curiosity and wonder? For Susan Sontag, the answer lies in our physical encounter with art. She writes that, in contrast to the project of interpretation, ‘What is important now is to recover our senses,’ and that the task of the arts writer ‘is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there,’ but rather, ‘to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.’ Rather than ‘a hermeneutics’, she proposes ‘an erotics of art’⁷ — less excavatory, with a pulse.

Like Mphahlele, who found something ‘seriously wanting’ in the extant literature written about his community — the awareness of there being ‘much more to be said than the mere recounting of incident’, or in Sontag’s case, an artwork’s imagined ‘content’ — Our Literal Speed’s Matthew Jesse Jackson once commented on how, within the arts, it’s as if we’re ‘sharing a language, but in some way we know that the language is inadequate,’ and that ‘so much of what surrounds art today doesn’t feel very much like art — it feels like publicity, or fear-mongering… How can we find something that feels like art?’⁸

Although Jackson is based in Chicago, my sense is that this is particularly true of arts writing in countries like South Africa and Uganda, where the ongoing legacies of colonialism and the imposition of Western art historical ideas and terminologies — Cubism et al — have at times misled, at others obscured, the influence of the very same traditions that inspired and gave birth to them.⁹

At the same time, one could argue that the legacies of colonialism in art and the subsequent sense of indifference felt by the general populace towards it go hand-in-hand, and that the former has, if not stripped the latter of its vitality, then at least made one look elsewhere, leaving in its wake an overly-sanitised and elitist pursuit — the white cube.  As note the organisers of this year’s festival — Teesa Bahana and Darlyne Komukama — in their introductory text, KLA ART was founded in 2012, with the view to ‘making art accessible to a general public, rather than the domain of galleries and private spaces.’¹⁰ Spaces in which, Elena Filipovic writes, ‘Windows were banished so that the semblance of an outside world — daily life, the passage of time, in short, context — disappeared’, where ‘noise and clutter were suppressed’, and where ‘a general sobriety reigned.’¹¹

Given this year’s focus on care, the public nature of the festival, and the related desire on the part of its organisers to create a space for ‘artists and audiences to engage with indigenous / local knowledge’¹², Remus’s Submerge felt like a fitting antidote; the words of Cohen bleeding into those of Mphahlele — a meeting of worlds, a muddying of waters. What kind of writing might convey the vitality that the work of the other twenty-seven participating artists inspired?¹³ And what sort of form might best convey the sights, smells, and sounds of the city — that larger, noisier nexus that is Kampala? Much like the context through which we were experiencing each work, was it just the words that matter, or the environment in which they’re accessed, too?

Prior to arriving at Salaama Road Farm, the first stop of a full day’s bus ride through the city, from site to site¹⁴ to see the work, breathe in the city, and engage the artists — participants were prompted to write down at least one word to describe each of the senses — one for each installation.

The following day, our bodies and minds still humming with the encounter, we wrote down our prompts on small paper cut-outs, tacking them crudely to the red-brick corridor that adjoins the residency studios at 32° East. Grouped from left to right, according to site, we then played a game of association, pairing visuals and words with each artwork before discussing why we felt they might resonate.

      Red… alarmed… vaguely… citrus… sun… heat… pricks… sour… bright

 But also

      Dust smell mingle dapple light push pinch print crush soil sticky ink press repeat saturate sweet.

      Moist… chalky… melting on one’s tongue

On the last day, it came time to write. But what? If the previous two days were intended for reflection — an opportunity to draw from the deep well of our individual and collective experiences, to talk about the work of each artist, and begin putting pen to paper — what soon became apparent was the underlying, at times outspoken, desire for “structure” when it came to the writing process; some kind of blueprint to lead the way.

‘Forget your perfect offering,’ was the response. And then again, Mphahlele:

It’s useless — this effort to write. How many books lie idle and dusty on the shelves of the world’s libraries? And in the bookshops? Yet I keep telling myself, I must write, if only because one day I shall find something to say, and will need to have had some practice in the way to say it.¹⁵

Mphahlele may have chosen the short story, but had he intended it be read out loud, I wondered? What sort of accent did he imagine his reader might have? That afternoon, encouraged to just write, no matter the outcome — writing as exercise; practice — Muwanguzi and I asked each participant to read out loud the work of their peers, and to follow-up the reading up with a short reflection on what they found most striking about it, so that when we returned to our texts later we could push those aspects. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the anxious, furtive glances gave way to impassioned, hearty readings — all unique in approach, distinctly singular, rich.

Seated across from one another in 32°s atmospheric library, the large wooden doors and windows outstretched to embrace the world, I listened as Bengi Rwabuhemba began to read my own contribution, her voice slowly warming to its idiosyncrasies, rhythm and flow; as she found her way in, and then, to my surprise, took ownership of it, steering the story in ways gentler and more enchanting than I could have imagined. But it was her own text that set the tone for the rest of that afternoon. Read by Jay Malaga, I thought I could hear that ‘much more’ of Mphahlele’s intuition — that sense of the loves, hates, desires, poverty, affluence, achievements, failures, idleness, indifference, and enthusiasms of the group; our ‘sense of the comic,’ ‘full throated laughter’, and ‘sense of the tragic…’:

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     I am thinking about the meaning of art,

     I am thinking about the meaning of culture,

     I am thinking about where one ends and the other begins.

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      I am thinking about art

      and the resilience it demands,

      expects,

      insists upon,

      in the name of truth.

      Ego, the price.

      Magic, the reward.

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      I am thinking about an air-conditioned bus and a dust-coated city,

      I am thinking about colonial mindsets and decolonial discomfort,

      I am thinking about Indigenous knowledge and its enduring traces

      in the hands of Langi women harvesting shea,

      in the names of plants whose healing potential is not found

      on a prescription bottle

      but in stories and songs known to the Acholi,

      in owino markets amongst urban youths spurred by an unrelenting curiosity,

      and restless urge,

      to know themselves,

      to know themselves,

      to know themselves,

      beyond what they have been told.

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      I am thinking about loss and alienation,

      estrangement and wandering,

      constantly wondering.

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      I am thinking about restoration and reclamation,

      mending and making anew,

      all of it a never-ending spiral,

      and not, a linear experience.

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      I am thinking about time

      and our demand for a past we were restricted access to

      in the name of civilisation

      then modernisation

      then capitalism

      and so on and so forth.

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      I am thinking about justice

      and its silent, poetic afterlives

      in the creative minds of those who were told and encouraged,

      brainwashed and whitewashed,

      into indifference

      and impatience

      and disgust

      and shame

      of themselves.

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      I am thinking about justice,

      and its silent, poetic afterlives

      at a festival

      in a city

      of careful refusal

      to be anything other than itself.

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‘How do I metabolise my sense of injustice?’ Mildred asks at the front of the bus, as she explains the systemic, gendered inequities of land ownership in Uganda. Sixteen of us writers and artists are packed in a bus headed for Kamwokya to see three artworks on display at the Tresor Life Center. I overhear Dominic explain to Nina the coloniality inherent in the art field, wherein particular ideas of contemporary art, curatorship and exhibition are enforced and limit what is possible. The words ‘limited’ and ‘mindsets’ ring in my ears. Embarrassed, I think about how I crave the white-walled, air-conditioned space of a gallery and I realise, viscerally, the sun-burnt, sweat-drenched, loud discomfort of decolonisation. That it is not just a metaphysical concept theorised in academic journals, or a word spoken coolly by woke-sounding youths; decolonisation as lived, practiced, embodied. It is an arts festival stretched across the bustling, restless city of Kampala. It is at the fringe, on the boundary, along the edge where the impossible becomes possible.¹⁶

Endnotes

_{[1] The first two iterations of the ARAK Writing Workshop were held in Windhoek, Namibia (led by Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti) and Johannesburg, South Africa (led by Ashraf Jamal), respectively, with another, led by Thembinkosi Goniwe, which is scheduled to take place at the Lusaka Contemporary Art Centre (LUCAC) in February 2025.}

_{[2] Citing Bernice Fisher and Joan C. Tronto’s “Towards a Femist Theory of Care”, organisers Teesa Bahana and Darlyne Komukama of 32° East chose a restorative definition of care to set the tone for this year’s festival, encompassing ‘everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our “world” so that we can live in it as well as possible,’ including ‘our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.’ They add that, ‘with oral tradition breaking down due to globalisation and rural-urban migration, we explore how the festival can be a space for artists and audiences to engage with indigenous / local knowledge as care instructions and apply them to the concerns of today.’}

_{[3] The full quote, which stems from his song Anthem, released as part of Cohen’s ninth studio album The Future (1992), reads: ’Ring the bells that still can ring / forget your perfect offering / there is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.’}

_{[4] Es’kia Mphahlele. 2006 [1967]. “The Unfinished Story” In In Corner B. Johannesburg, London, New York: Penguin Books, 11.}

_{[5] Participants included Mildred Apenyo, Muhirwe Dorothy ,Liz Kobusinge, Kinya Nina, Bengi Rwabuhemba, Bwogi Patra Leoney, Jay Malaga, Gor Soudan, Edna Niinsiima, Kinya Nina Gitonga, as well as participating artist Catherine Lie, who ensured we were all nourished, and Stefanie Koemeda, who created drawings for the forthcoming publication.}

_{[6] Mphahlele, “The Unfinished Story,” 11.}

_{[7] Susan Sontag, 1964. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. London: Picador, 1–11.}

_{[8] This quote is drawn from an unpublished transcript of a panel discussion titled “Alternate Voices: Our Literal Speed”, held at Zeitz MOCAA on 8 January 2018, with artists Mitchell Gilbert Messina and Emily Robertson, in conjunction with the travelling exhibition Publishing Against the Grain, conceived and produced by Independent Curators International, New York.}

_{[9] To quote Olu Oguibe at length: ‘The encounter between African art and European art, especially at the end of the nineteenth and the turn of the twentieth centuries, stripped the latter of its pretentious and often misinformed allusions to classical Greek and Roman art, especially in sculpture. And, while leading European artists directly modelled their new forms after objects and traditions from Africa, the most significant change was that those objects and traditions from Africa liberated European and eventually all modern and contemporary artists globally, and gave them license, as it were, to think of art and form and colour and concept in entirely new ways and without inhibition or limitations on the imagination. Looking at objects and art traditions from Africa and realising that a sculptor did not have to hew stone like Michelangelo did or like Phidias was mistakenly supposed to have done, or create formulaic bronze figures and groups narrating or approximating romanticist, neo-classical allegories along stiflingly narrow and often repetitive parameters, but instead, could break out and re-imagine form and discard singular perspective and use or incorporate hitherto decidedly non-sculptural materials going by European academic standards, and create assemblages and collages and animated situations once consigned to puppetry or the circus, and recombine these with dance and theatre like West or Central Africans do, and bring it all under art with or without delineations.’ See Olu Oguibe, “The Question of ‘Africanness’ and the Expanded Field of Sculpture.” FORM Journal 1(1), Time. Available online}

_{[10] Introductory text by Teesa Bahana and Darlyne Komukama, published in KLA ART ’24 Booklet (2024) by 32° East: Kampala, 3.}

_{[11] Elena Filipovic. 2014. “The Global White Cube”. OnCurating 22 (April: Curating: Politics and Display), 45–63.}

_{[12] Introductory text by Teesa Bahana and Darlyne Komukama, published in KLA ART ’24 Booklet (2024) by 32° East: Kampala, 3.}

_{[13] Participating artists included Mercy Ajatum, Gor Soudan, Claire Balungi and Jim Joel Nyakaana, Birungi Kawooya and Rebecca Khamala, Fatuma Hassan, Monica Ahairwebyona, Maria Olivia Nakato, Seyi Adelekun, The Secret Society of Publishers (comprised of Londiwe Mtshali, Philiswa Lila, Pebofatso Mokoena, Fouad Asfour, and Phumulani Ntuli), Sixte Kakinda, Brogan Mwesigwa, Lyndah Katusiime, Rachael Ndagire, Evans Akanyijuka and Kevin Murungi, Maganda Sakhul and Wasswa Jovias with Nilotika Cultural Ensemble, Sanda Wauye, Catherine Lie, Nicole Remus, Phumulani Ntuli, Mūthoni Mwangi and Rosie Olang’ Odhiambo, and Mona Okulla Obua.}

_{[14] Sites included Salaama Road Farm, where Remus’s Submerge sat, waiting, to Plot 18 Entebbe Road, the Uganda Road Sports Field, and Ganzu Lumumba Avenue, where we stopped for lunch amidst Brogan Mwesigwa’s Kumanyagana (2024) – itself based on an earlier lunch at 32° East – through to MISR Makerere, Kamwokya Tresor Life Center, and finally, Kyambogo University Department of Architecture.}

_{[15] Mphahlele, “The Unfinished Story,” 13.}

_{[16] Bengi Rwabuhemba, “I am thinking”. To be published in the forthcoming collection produced during the ARAK Writing Workshop at 32° East.} 

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