South African Painter,
Printmaker, Installation, and Performance Artist
An Interview with
Randy
Can you
tell me where you came from? Where did all this start?
O.K......I am a born Cape
Townian and I lived through the dark days of apartheid.
I've also experienced the more recent developments in
South African history and the liberation of the Country
which, as a process, is ongoing.
Tell us
about your childhood? What was that like?
From an early age I wanted
to make Art but there were certain anxieties as a child
- a certain amount of instability in the home situation
when my father worked in a furniture factory. He was
sometimes off work, involved in strike action .... he
would come home injured, having been injured on the
job. My response to that was to feel insecure and somewhat
anxious. I have quite vivid memories of that.
Does this
appear in your work?
I think so I've looked
at my work and wondered why some of these images appear.
In this particular series there are quite often images
suspended in the sky area, the ones on the ground tend
to be fixed the others are floating, there are all sorts
of tensions in the work that I have looked at and wondered
about, and I think that in my limited understanding
there are throwbacks from when I was younger. I think
that one's psyche is formed from the time before you
are even born and that definitely filters through.
When did
you feel able to express yourself through this medium?
I have always felt very
confident about mark making, and whether it was painting,
drawing or printing, I've always felt at ease in doing
those things.
Did you
have formal Art training?
I was fortunate in having
Art at school : I did Art in Primary School - I enjoyed
that. In one class in High School, the only thing we
did that was art related was book binding .... taught
by a man with a very sadistic nature. I ended up hating
it. Art is about what we lack - we fill vacuums with
the stuff we make. Those could be psychological vacuums,
physical vacuums, emotional vacuums. They are deep lacks
that we fill. I didn't have Art at High School.
What sort
of Primary School did you have?
Education was a separated
area - the Churches, the Schools were all separated.
The School I went to was for a racial category designated
Coloured and we went there knowing that this was not
the right thing that had been enforced. The whole situation
deteriorated into mayhem in the Eighties and we see
the legacy of it now............ During the Eighties
we had the Schools in revolt because of the separation
of that system. It was a system which gave privilege
to people who were designated White (and I must add
that these are not my terms - I am using them under
protest. I do not classify myself or other people in
this way. These are terms just for our discussion).
So I went through that Schooling with a sense of resistance.
Some of the teachers helped us by informing us about
the system that we were having to live under. It infiltrated
every aspect of our lives.
Did this
inform your work?
Yes, I think so through
my work I am trying to address some of these issues.
In this particular series from which this painting comes,
I think what I am looking at here is psychic domestic
baggage. The series is called Domestic Baggage .......the
kind of baggage that we carry with us. It is transitory
...... it goes with us ..... it is not transitory that
it might disappear at the end of the line .........
it might disappear in the process of us going on, moving
from one condition to another.
When you
talk about your Father's work and the upset, does it
go hand in hand with being labelled as coloured?
Yes, you grapple with what
you have. The history is of such a nature that it shapes
the people who are caught up in it.
Do you
see in your work a resentment?
It shows resentment towards
an inhumane system but I want it to be a catalyst for
thinking about those issues. So, can't we work towards
something that is better? Can't we build? Can't we change
our social fabric so that it becomes a more humane social
fabric - on which we are accepting each other, living
together, working together, to forge a better kind of
humanity?
Is this
what you want people to see in your work?
I'd like them to .....
whether they do or not I can't prescribe......... I
don't prescribe the way they look at it or see it, but,
I'm happy to talk about it to people. The talking about
it is part of it ....... part of making the process
..... yes.
Later Art
training?
I did a Teacher's course
after High School. I became an Art Teacher, which I
did for a long time. I've done things back to front.
After teaching I did formal study - doing a degree at
the University Art School in which I majored in painting,
and after that I did a Masters in painting.
Did you
go to Europe?
I went to Europe before
1980, prior to studying and since then as well.
Has your
work been influenced by things you have seen in the
Western culture?
I think it has had quite
an impact on the way my own work has gone. It has been
difficult to avoid these influences - American artists
like Pollock, and in Europe I have been drawn towards
the German painters, and also the South European painters.
I respond strongly to Tapies, the Spanish painter. I
like his use of materials, and I respond to the build
up of the surface in his work quite warmly...........
Are there
any local Artists you admire?
Someone like Walter Batis.
A friend of mine now living in Namibia - John Simpson.
I like his approach to painting. I like the work of
Ken Atkinson, and Lyn Burn who is a photographer.
Besides
painting what other work do you do?
I tend to work across the
media. I work in painting and printmaking. I make installations,
objects, and also performances. Last year I was able
to make a Video and I have just started another Video.
Videos have been recordings of performances. The most
recent video I have been working on is part of a performance.
I have done sporadic Performances over a twenty two
year time span. A Performance is what I move towards
when the situation demands it, when a painting would
not be sufficient. I need to be present in the process
of doing a series of actions which could have a theatrical
connection. I like to see a Performance as a way of
working that is almost pre-theatrical ..............
This relates to the beginnings of theatre rather than
theatre as it is now........ not as Proscenium Arch
Theatre ........... primal, raw beginnings of theatre.
Performance Art works hand in hand with my Visual Art
so that one becomes another. I see them being linked
as aspects of the same ongoing process, a process with
different elements happening.
Can you
tell us how your Art has changed with all the political
changes?
What has begun to happen
for me is an engagement - I am not trying to represent
the physical but I am responding to what I detect
as
being psychic waves out there, and we have lived under
a long period of anxiety:Prior to 1994 when we had
open
elections for the first time, and during the Eighties
and early Nineties we had anxiety about where the
Country
was going. When was the Apartheid system coming to
an end? How would it come to an end? Would it come
to an end in an extremely violent way in which there
was a Civil war. Thank God it hasn't actually happened
here ........ but there has been another kind of violence
in that communities have been fighting each other. We
have had criminal elements taking over in a kind of
warfare. Bombs have gone off in this area ....400m up
the road. We've had cars going up in flames. There's
a third force - criminal activity, highjackings, taking
the place of other kinds of violence, so the level of
anxiety has not actually dropped but has increased.
There is the unseen force which exerts its impact on
life. We have had a lot of people leaving the country
- They have packed up and left because they don't
see that there is a future for them here and they don't
feel comfortable bringing up the children in such a
stressful environment like this.....................
So in my Artmaking I am still responding to what I
detect
to be a social fabric that is living with high levels
of anxiety and stress. I am not attempting to represent
it but to respond to it. It is a personal response.
What are
your hopes and aspirations for the future?
Artmaking and people involved
with the Arts need to make Art and become people who
are responsible for making people aware of the social
groupings ....... aware of their creative responsibilities
to forge a new society. I see everyone as being creative.
We are not all making paintings but we are all able
to make a positive contribution to life instead of
a
negative, or a destructive contribution.We certainly
don't need any more guns. People have guns in their
heads. Children are growing up with destructive thoughts
- we don't need any more of that.We have had more
children
in school than ever before in the history of mankind
but we still have more violence, destruction and
criminal
activity than we have ever had before. I came away
from teaching after many years feeling I had achieved
zilch.......
What had I achieved? Some of those kids would probably
make amazing bank robbers! I find the Education system
is leading up a dead end. It is not leading us where
we need to be. It has been redesigned and I think
that
we will find in the process of putting it into action,
whether it is any good or not. We, as a country,
are
involved in various processes - hoping to fashion a
better Society for everyone to live in. Artists have
a vital role to play in that - not just Visual Artists
but Artists at all levels. What we do should be seen
as being part of a creative process that Society
can
become involved in.
Can you
tell us about this series of paintings?
This series is entitled
Domestic Baggage. It started with preparatory sketches.......like
drawings in the margin and an image that was repeatedly
coming up was that of a suitcase, or luggage. I took
that image......in each was a container with a handle,
something transportable that we take with us. So the
handle tends to feature in most of these particular
paintings.In this one handle is off - It has been disconnected.
Hopefully it can be reconnected and taken to where it
needs to be taken to.Most of these paintings are about
disharmony - a potential for reconnection. Not an easy
reconnection for the flex has been severed........Working
towards those things are never easy. I think that we
have come to realise that working for the transformation
of South Africa is not an overnight thing. It needs
more than money, more than material things - a kind
of well directed energy witheveryone working towards
a common goal.
When the
Country was moving towards getting rid of Apartheid,
if politics had gone the wrong way it would have been
potentially cataclysmic. How did you feel within your
work?
One had forebodings of
doom and trying to tune in with what was happening.....what
was the pulse like?........ When Chris Hani was killed
that was an enormous let down and we did not want
to
feel that this was the beginning of all the crap that
was hanging in the winds. So far it's been o.k. because
the positive forces have been able to survive and
push
ahead. That was largely due to Mandela, the President,
himself. He personifies positive energy. He has no
bitterness
and is like a living exemplar for the whole Country.
What happens
when Mandela dies?
That is difficult. They
are putting in place the structures that will move the
system forward.
You mentioned
Mandela's ability to forgive past crimes.
If you look at people in
areas where they live in extreme hardship. Those people
are able to laugh. I have great respect for a beggar
on the street who can laugh. He cannot take the next
plane out of here. He is living life on the edge and
that's the barometer for me. Forgiveness is important
for me. We have had Amnesty Hearings: The Truth Commission
has been sitting now for close on two and a half years
and that's where we have been seeing these kinds of
extreme situations, where the families have had to forgive
the perpetrators of extreme violence against them. Where
members of families have been killed they have been
happy to forgive them. We have a situation now where
Matthew Pausa, the Premier of the Northwest Province,
has said he is willing to forgive an amnesty seeker
who has tried to assassinate him. That's what is absolutely
necessary.
(How does
Randy Hartzenburg respond to the social fabric he describes
within his Artmaking?) He is making a video as part
of a piece of Performance art and describes it in detail........
We have a bucket of lime.
Inside and underneath the lime we have half a loaf of
bread with a bird in it.What happened was, I arrived
home one afternoon and saw a tiny bird hanging tragically
by a single thread which had choked it to death; probably
the thread from a kite a child had been flying. The
bird was hanging from a tree entangled in a thread.
It had probably been strangled so what I did was:
I made contact with a film
maker and we decided to put into sequence, a number
of actions,
- I cut into a loaf of
bread so we had the shell of the bread,
- I then chew the bread
I have taken out of it,
- I put the bread up so
the bird falls into it,
- Cut the thread and fill
the shell of the bread up with the chewed bread,
- Now that half a loaf
of bread with the bird inside is buried inside a bucket
of lime.
That film I'm making is
part of a Performance I will do, I want to project the
Video onto the wall so it will be playing,I pick up
whereI remove the bread in person, in the performance,
from out of the bucket. Then the performance will continue.
Is it an
end product like a finished painting?
One painting leads to another
one. I can see the bucket of lime as a complete object
as it is. I have done another piece of work on Robben
Island with two buckets of salt placed next to each
other, connected by a copper pipe, a conduit inside
a glass case. So I have worked with buckets and this
would not be an unusual object in terms of my 'image
bank'.
In the
performance do you know what will happen next? Improvised
or planned?
There are moments of improvisation
but I do plan them.....Yes. There is a kind of script
in my head and they are repeatable. The last one I did
two years ago, I repeated it four times over six weeks.
So it was the same thing with improvisation.
You have
talked about Art and the Community. How effectively
can Art generally be communicated to that Society?
That is one of the questions.
One of the greatest learning experiences has been when
one can talk to people, either in the presence of your
work or in retrospect. And in amazement, I have found
that across the spectrum of society, people have a tremendous
respect for Art. They want to talk about it. They want
to know more about it.I don't think Artists necessarily
share this thought I have about it. A lot of them think
that Society does not actually care. Some of us make
Art and some people respond to it. I have found that
the ones who do respond have a very enquiring mind.
They want to know more. They want to know what stuff
is all about and if we do not respond in a positive
way to that kind of enquiry then we have cut ourselves
off. We should be working at forming links rather than
throwing up barriers.Even if the art that comes out
is obscure, or challenging, or is not so nice to deal
with, that's fine as long as there is some kind of response
- and invariably there is. Even if people say they don't
like it that's a response!
Interviewed by the Devon
Crossings Team, October 1998
