Kai Lossgott Hunter Gatherer 3.pdf

Failing to see ourselves as part of nature, immersed in it, inextricably of it, we instead distance ourselves 3 0 through dominion over it. disturb disable dislocate disconnect discard disappear The Latin prefix 'dis-' indicates 'apart', 'not', 'asunder', 'away', 'utterly'. Thus disrupted we stand outside of ourselves. He/she is beside him/ herself we say. Separated from Into madness. Vagrant. Errant. Is Lossgott’s Virginia MacKenny wandering, precarious practice Associate Professor of Painting a madness that makes visible the dis/order and dis/ease of self- Michaelis School of Fine Art small and common matters University of Cape Town extermination? Still from video, PAL HD, 3 min 13 sec (2015) In extremis, conventions invert Dispossession. A homeless person? He sorts, with careful precision. What is this folly, to which rich material for him. Almost a Sifting through Lossgott’s portfolio A street person. Bare feet on city With exactitude. Scrupulously. he is so committed? The history century later artists engage the same stones. Dirtied nails that scrabble He orders. Obsessively. of artists employing waste to create among the rubbish at the gutter’s The taxonomies his own. that?”, as hands separate the seeds one finds the reproduction of a Hieronymous Bosch, The Extraction 2 of the Stone of Madness (c.1494), material, but reflect the destructive small 19th century line drawing. depicts a charlatan surgeon (a dissecting, separating, tearing art that speaks of our materialism results of unsustainable economics. Enigmatically partial it displays a funnel on his head indicates deceit), apart and asunder. “A lifelong habit” is not new. Between 1918 and 1947, On this continent El Anatsui, the hand, an instrument or tool and a performing a trepanation while the quietly spoken Lossgott replies… Kurt Schwitters produced his Ghanaian artist, famed for his large- surface with a hole in it. a drunken priest and a nun with themselves. Hence Folly’s subversion 6 of rationality. Folly “sees through small and common matters Production still from video (2015) seed Production still from 'small and common matters' UV print on tissue paper (2015) the madness of those who see themselves as reasonable and self-possessed” (Atwell in Jamal 7 2005:107) . Much like the fool The weight of such small matters – detaching, dispersing, leaves us 2015). As ecosystems unravel with Lossgott, of course, speaks for hair, nail parings, flaking skin cells, matters. As the seeds are torn materially richer but increasingly each species loss, so extinctions in the king’s court, Folly is able the accumulated habits of western apart by the iconic blade of isolated in a world where the will escalate. If we don’t take care to reveal that which reason cannot. science to analyse and separate dead insects and dust motes pass 4 our vision. The Blakean injunction science, the destructive power natural ‘background’ rate of one to of the details we will find ourselves Ashraf Jamal in ‘Predicaments of and the Church, the arbiters of in order to differentiate and judge – to see the world in the smallest of of the Enlightenment’s Reason, five species extinctions per year in banished. Ousted. By ourselves. Culture’ states, Folly “knows itself to perforating a person’s skull, Knowledge, up to question/criticism. to establish the hierarchies of value particles is evoked as Lossgott muses dissecting rather than conjoining, identifiable and his production begs was once considered a means of In Lossgott’s video small and that guide what we pay attention becomes evident. The divisive the years before 1900 has risen an 5 estimated 1 000 to 10 000 times For centuries we have worked closer scrutiny. releasing madness or evil spirits 1 plaguing a person . A painting by common matters, a childlike voice So appears the work of Kai Lossgott, Abject gatherings visible to all. a latter-day hunter-gatherer of no Precious minutiae. The metropolitan fixed abode, whose access to the Kommerz – commerce). The detritus concerns into his work through The tool is a trepan. The surface – hunter-gatherer seeks the discarded. earth’s productive loam is thwarted of capitalist exchange – fragments recycling thousands of bottle tops. the top of a man’s head. Trepanation Bosch’s painting holds both Science That which cannot sustain him bodily. by the city tar as he roams the of advertisements, discarded ticket Lossgott interrogates some of the (craniotomy), or the art of He delights in what he finds. metropolis. Is he dispossessed stubs, receipts and labels – provided same terrain, but his sources are less ‘Merz’ collages (from the German from a thistle head with a scalpel; minutiae of abject elements such as pockets filled with detritus. of his Wits? 8 desire is “the harbinger of laughter (Bervin 2013). Exemplifying New Her research focus engages artists to the revitalising capacity of folly 9 in aesthetic practice , Jamal links and bliss – that motivates Folly” England thrift, Lydia Maria Child in Southern Africa concerned (2005:108). In Bosch’s painting, in The Frugal Housewife (1892) with environmental and climate Folly, through the theatrical Follies what is being extracted from opens with the line: “The true change. In 2014 she became part of the founding team for UCT’s and Cage aux Folles, to Camp. the man’s head is not a stone, but 14 15 ; symbolic of Desire . economy of housekeeping is simply He notes that Camp “deterritorialises a lily the art of gathering up all the interdisciplinary Environmental existing norms of behaviour and 10 cultural practice” (2005:116). Trepanation reveals the flower fragments, so that nothing be lost. Humanities postgraduate of life – an emotional and often I mean fragments of time as well programme. Lossgott embraces this, noting that erratic force traditionally as materials.” he is “queering the notion of ‘trash’ 11 and the ‘useless'” , understanding suppressed by both Church and scale ‘fabrics’, weaves environmental kai l o s s go tt hun te r- gath erer a book on her head are bystanders. “About a grain of sand, or a seed be reason’s repressed conscience” 3 to and what we neglect. “A lifelong or a cell” and “the gravity force of categories, of counting and (‘The Extinction Crisis’, 2009; at our own expulsion from Paradise. repeatedly asks “Why are you doing habit”, he repeats as the magnified of little things”. cutting, of splitting and dividing, Chivian and Bernstein 2008; Pearce Consistently. Regularly. Persistently. Science. The tiniest of particles – a dust mote Lossgott returns, from forays into The Oxford English Dictionary notes that queer performativity dissolves normative boundaries, upsetting the established rule. is etymologically linked to ‘atom’. the street, to the gallery to arrange that ‘mote’ is also the ‘motion of a and order. His itinerant practice celestial object’. Lossgott forces us The Roman god of death, Hades, embodies not that he is homeless, to notice: he brings our attention to later Pluto, was originally 12 13 named Dis . This chthonic or but that the world is ‘home’. that which we disregard and discard. His sense of interconnectedness His practice gathers the universe subterranean god originally held is informed by the links between close, giving us the opportunity positive associations of fertile the words ecology, ecumene to take the flower of the world back agricultural land and mineral (inhabited land) and economy. into ourselves. ourselves, our nature, we fragment. offe r ing a f lo wer: the work of kai l o s s go tt edge. Foraging. Transparent plastic (2005: 108). Dedicating a chapter wealth, before being exiled into the underworld as a deity of death. All have their origins in the Greek Virginia MacKenny is an Chthonic may, thus, represent oikos – household or dwelling. Associate Professor in Painting our shadow side and/or refer to Good household management; at Michaelis School of Fine Art, the natural spirit within; the thrift and care, embody economy. University of Cape Town. As a unconscious earthly impulses In considering caring for small of the Self – the highest of which is ecstasy. ‘nothings’ Lossgott quotes the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson’s practising artist, she has received a number of awards including the Volkskas Atelier Award (1991), definition of Nothing: “the an Ampersand Fellowship in New Ecstasy, from the Greek Ek-stasis, force that renovates | the World” York (2004) and a Donald Gordon to be or stand outside oneself, (Dickinson in Johnson 1987: 650). Creative Arts Award (2011). As a removal to elsewhere from ek- Many of Dickinson’s poems were a critic and curator, she writes written on the backs of envelopes, on contemporary South African ‘out’, and stasis ‘a stand’, is its own vagrant state of being. The path sometimes still referred to as ‘scraps’ art and is interested in painting, to it is often desire. For Jamal within Dickinson scholarship gender and deep ecology. 1) There is archaeological evidence that trepanation is one of the oldest surgical Bibliography procedures known and that its practice was quite widespread in Neolithic Bervin, Jen (2013) The Gorgeous Nothings – Emily Dickinson excerpts from Studies communities. Bone regrowth around such holes indicates that many survived the invasive surgery. in Scale https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/detail/70065 [available April 28, 2017] 2) Also called The Cure of Folly or Cutting the Stone. 3) Lossgott has conversations with his ‘child self ’ (email correspondence with artist 24.4.2017). 4) William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence (c1803) opens with: "To see a world in a Bervin, Jen and Werner, Marta (eds) (2013) The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems New Directions / Christine Burgin grain of sand, /And heaven in a wild flower, /Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, / and eternity in an hour". The encouragement to see deeply into the small everyday Chivian, E. and A. Bernstein (eds.) (2008) Sustaining life: How human health elements is foregrounded in a poem that juxtaposes images of innocence and cruelty depends on biodiversity. Center for Health and the Global Environment. Oxford and the disastrous consequences of the mistreatment of nature. University Press, New York 5) While most scientists agree extinction rates are so high that we are in the midst of what is being called the Sixth Extinction there is, perhaps predictably, disagreement Green, Lesley (2014) Fracking, Oikos and Omics in the Karoo: Reimagining South about quite how many numbers of extinctions are occurring at what rate. Africa’s reparative energy politics https://osmilnomesdegaia.files.wordpress. Fred Pearce’s Global Extinction Rates: Why do Estimates Vary so Wildly (2015) written for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies lays out the reasons com/2014/11/lesley-green.pdf [available April 27, 2017]. in an accessible fashion. 6) The word ‘Folly’ has an etymological link to madness through the Old French folie. 7) Asserting a similar opinion Foucault, in his history of Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961), asserts "Bosch's famous doctor is far Jamal, Ashraf (2005) Predicaments of Culture in South Africa University of South Africa Press, Pretoria more insane than the patient he is attempting to cure, and his false knowledge does nothing more than reveal the worst excesses of a madness immediately apparent to all Johnson, Thomas H (ed) (1987) Emily Dickinson – The Complete Poems Faber and but himself". Faber, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, United Kingdom 8) In Praise of Folly (p 107-121) in Predicaments of Culture. 9) The chapter opens with reference to David Atwell’s analysis of J M Coetzee’s Pearce, Fred (2015) Global Extinction Rates: Why do Estimates Vary so Wildly http:// engagement with Desiderius Erasmus’ own In Praise of Folly (1509). e360.yale.edu/features/global_extinction_rates_why_do_estimates_vary_so_wildly 10) Jamal extrapolates on Susan Sontag’s exposition of Notes on Camp (1964). [available May 1, 2017] 11) Email correspondence with the artist 22.04.2017. 12) Full name Dīs Pater, commonly shortened to Dis. 13) In analytical and Jungian psychology the term ‘chthonic’ encapsulates the shadow/dark side of our being which, when neglected or repressed, often threatens to overwhelm. The Extinction Crisis http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/ elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/ [available April 28, 2017] 14) The flower is most often identified as a tulip, a Dutch flower associated with folly, but experts at the Prado where the painting is housed, indicate that this is hunter-gatherer hunter-gatherer i<->it (above & left) Still from performance with wearable postconsumer plastic sculpture Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016) Still from performance with wearable postconsumer plastic sculpture Production stills from video (2017) Trg Kralja Tomislava, Zagreb Ecstasy: an introduction (etymology) not possible as the tulip was only brought to Europe from the east in the mid 16th https://sites.google.com/site/philosophicalecstasy/Home/etymology century, well after the date of this painting. https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the- [available April 28, 2017] collection/art-work/the-extracting-the-stone-of-madness/313db7a0-f9bf-49ad-a24267e95b14c5a2 15) The lily, better known in Christian iconography as symbolic of Chastity, has a number of associations with the masculine erotic. In the Tarot it embodies freedom to be oneself. offer i n g a f lo wer Vi r g i n i a Ma cKe nny