//Hui !Gaeb Where clouds gather – UNDERLINE projects

Katharien de Villiers, Shisa Nyama/ Kom ons braai, 2019

Project description

Artists: Katharien de Villiers
Lindsay Langeveldt

Curator: Heinrich Groenewald

//Hui !Gaeb Where clouds gather is a collaboration between poet, artist and curator. The project explores the relationship word has to form through a mediated discourse between poet Lindsay Langeveldt, a.k.a. Maam Madame, and visual artist Katharien de Villiers. The curator, Heinrich Groenewald, facilitates a week-long exchange between said collaborators via a Whatsapp thread. Multiple expressions for language gets encouraged by the curator who creates set parameters by which various ideas and exchanges gets explored. By the end of the week the conversation is stopped, from where poet and artist depart to create work in isolation from the Whatsapp thread and from one-another. An editioned print gets produced from the thread that becomes a map/exhibition statement/anthology.

Katharien de Villiers, Kinetic Window, 2019

Underlining the facilitated discourse is an exploration of the Afrikaans language. The artist and poet are both Western-Cape Afrikaans, but occupy very different locales within the language. Having the Whatsapp thread force both the poet and artist to engage their exchange through varied conversational explorations allows for the language to be deconstructed and reconstructed in multiple and complex ways, creating a process that constantly folds in onto itself. Elements of immediacy, redundancy, word limitation, voicenote, video and emoticons are emphasised to deal with concepts around language in a paradoxically simplistic way – so is the nature of Whatsapp. Ultimately the thread becomes an investigation of truth. By means of its unprompted structure, each thread-interaction is a response subject to the place, space and time the participant occupies when their phone rings with its Whastapp beep.

Alongside the editioned maps/prints, the exhibition is further informed by sculptural works and poetry created by the artist and poet post-Whatsapp-thread. The sculptures are crafted to host the poetry, allowing for a spatially interactive experience of the literature. Simultaneously the presence of the poetry in the artwork provides a different cognisance from where the artwork is perceived.