Hasta La Ideas

South Africa’s subversive new publication takes on the country’s contemporary creative culture

Founded to “really assault the dominant narratives in our own unique way,” the South African magazine Mahala goes against the typically glossy grain with an “un-designed” style that allows its similarly raw content to shine. The publication launched in August 2010 and, now on its second issue, supplements a daily website—both the brainchild of Andy Davis.

Stories like “Surfing is Wanking,” “Racist Dogs” and “The Colonialism of Small Things”—to name just a few—shed light on topics that affect South Africans, but with its Vice magazine-style journalism, anyone interested in leading-edge culture will appreciate this unconventional upstart.

We recently probed Davis to find out more about Mahala’s beginnings, its future, and the overall state-of-mind in South Africa.

What do you most hope to accomplish with Mahala?

I want to create a platform for a racially-integrated South African youth culture that can interrogate our experience, our culture and really just provide an impetus for people to make good, relevant stuff. South Africa is still a radically segmented place. And we’ve got a whole backlog of shit that’s been swept under the carpet and kept out of view. I want Mahala to pick at those edges, to go where the art, music, literature, etc. intersects with politics, society and weird-ass South African dynamics like race relations and socio-economic disparities.

The online site tries to crunch through what’s happening in South Africa on a daily basis. We aim to publish three to four stories a day. The debates we get going in the comments show that our audience really gives a shit about what we say, and they have a stake in the culture so they all pile in and make their voice heard, which is a good thing. But it can be quite rough on the comment boards. We have a non-intervention policy. We don’t delete anything. If people want to hang themselves kak vibes, so be it.

We hold the print magazine to a higher standard. We want people to read everything twice. It’s supposed to be a real collector’s item. But it also gives us the latitude to publish photo features, fashion, fiction and investigative journalism that isn’t always suited to online attention spans.

What is the most challenging part of creating each Mahala edition?

Getting the right mix of words and images, without being too gratuitous or going too hardcore, but still being able to interrogate the culture and experience. I think with our first issue we were sitting on so much unreleased content that we didn’t temper it properly. So it was a bit relentless. With the second issue we got the mix a bit better varying between depth and levity. There were some almost academic style articles, hard-hitting investigative journalism, some great narrative non-fiction, fiction and some nice humor.

Another thing we really struggle to do is find good, black writers, photographers and illustrators. That’s not to say they don’t exist, it’s just that South Africa is so systemically fucked up thanks to apartheid that massive segments of the population were actively uneducated by the apartheid schooling system. So, generally speaking, anyone who is black, creative, talented and competent gets employed very quickly. And there just isn’t a plethora of young black talent beating down our doors, desperate to get published. And the last thing we want to be is a group of whiteys sitting around writing about black culture. We want to push this relationship into a “post-racial” space. Things are changing though, and it’s picking up pace. And we certainly don’t want to be those sad guys who do head counts based on skin color. But we’re still a long way off from the ideal of an equitable, meritocratic society.

Does each edition have an underlying theme?

Not yet, but we may be heading that way. I think at the moment, we don’t need to introduce over-arching themes because the culture is happening all around us and having a theme would necessarily occlude some of the most relevant and exciting stuff. Besides, I quite like the way the magazine jump cuts from narrative to narrative. I want them to stand alone and not have too much editorial unity. We always said Mahala would support a plurality of views, so it’s cool for each piece to stand alone and not be perceived as coming from central editorial authority.

What can we look forward to seeing in Mahala 3?

I think it’ll be bigger and better than Mahala 2. I thought there were some little failings in the last issue, that I’m glad to have the opportunity to rectify in the next issue. But those are mainly little publishing minutiae and insecurities. Generally the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. At this stage a lot of the content is still in the air. We’re also working on a site redesign and, for our international readers, we’ll be making all the print mags available online as PDFs, from the next issue.

To subscribe to the print publication or receive their daily updates, visit the Mahala website.

Life among swine in our interview with the artist Miru Kim on the eve of her solo show

Photographer Miru Kim‘s newest exhibition “The Pig That Therefore I Am” opens next week at NYC’s Doosan Gallery. For her latest series, the Korean-born, New York-based artist juxtaposes her own nude body with those of about 300 pigs, exploring the spaces and similarities between humans and animals. Other themes take on the importance of touch in our development and understanding of the world—both the literal and metaphorical connective capabilities of skin—the evolution of pigs’ roles, and our relationship to them culturally, particularly since the Industrial Revolution.

By placing herself in their grunting midst, she also examines her existence as an artist—one who wishes to offer up her own skin for others to “see, hear and feel through art, music and poetry. I put my flayed skin on display in the form of a photo.”

Kim first came into the spotlight a few years ago with her Naked City Spleen series, which stunningly contrasted her nude figure with the grandness of urban ruins and industrial icons around the globe, such as atop New York’s Washington Bridge, inside the crumbling Detroit theater, in the catacombs in France and more.

Her latest series is, according to Kim, a return to her artistic roots. We had the chance to speak with Kim on the eve of her much-anticipated show.

How exactly was the new series born?

I’ve been interested in pigs since college when I was a premedical student—we had to dissect a fetal pig to learn about human anatomy. It came to me as a shock that pigs were so physically similar to humans. When I decided to go to art school instead of medical school, I started making paintings of animals, and I found photos of industrial hog farms. Until then I had no idea where most pork comes from. It came as a shock that these huge industrial farms are so hidden and forgotten from people’s daily lives while they are regularly ingesting these animal products.

Then I had an assignment in graduate school to make Photoshop montages, so I experimented with cutting out images of factory farm pigs and pasting them onto urban environments, especially subway tunnels. Then I thought, why not put a live figure instead of making fake images? That’s when I started photographing myself in tunnels and abandoned factories, which grew into Naked City Spleen. After this series was established, I decided to go back to pigs, and since I was originally a “stand-in” for an image of a pig, I decided to photograph myself and pigs.

Where exactly was the pig farm, and when did you shoot?

They were upstate New York and Iowa and Missouri. I cannot talk about exact locations because of political and legal reasons. I can say that it was close to impossible to get access to these places. This project really taught me first hand, ‘If you are really determined, everything is possible.’ It was that difficult. Even just getting the addresses of farms was difficult. I received letters from the department of agriculture in some states saying that I could be a threat to national security, and they could not disclose any information. The pork producer associations were very defensive as well. They did not respond well to my emails and letters and calls. After two months of constant requests, I finally got in touch with some farms and managed to shoot last year in the spring.

Describe your state of mind while shooting the series. Was it all as you expected?

Pig eyes are remarkable. I find them more human-like than domestic pets like cats and dogs. Eye contact with them was shocking and mysterious, because their looks … were so strange and yet so familiar. The absence of human language between the pig’s gaze and mine became almost insignificant when I spent hours in the pens naked. I started to distinguish some different grunts of theirs and feel their emotions on a very physical level because I had temporarily let my guard down as a civilized and rational human being.

There would always be two or three (or more) curious pigs in the group surrounding me, and they would sometimes bite very hard. No pig had the intention of hurting me however. I could tell because I’ve seen pigs fight and I know they could have killed me in seconds if they wanted to. When they were nibbling on me too much or biting too hard, I would turn to them and express my annoyance just like another pig would, and they shrink back. It was very surprising that a 300-pound animal with so much more strength then I would shrink back at my grunt and hand gestures. With some pigs I had face-to-face interactions that were very gentle. It was apparent that they could somehow read my emotions as well, because the calmer I was the gentler the pigs were.

Have you shown the pig farm owners the images?

They saw them in my camera. One farmer said that he doesn’t understand art these days and that someone he knew in art school started shooting photos of his own excrement in the toilet, which he thought was ridiculous. But on the other hand, he said, what I was doing had beauty in it and that he could understand some artistic value although he couldn’t tell exactly what it was.

The new series seems incredibly intimate, especially compared to the grandness of Naked City Spleen. How do you see yourself evolving as an artist?

This series is more about body and the philosophical idea of what it is to be human in relation to animals. In my previous series, the human figure represents a fictional character of a poetic narrative, so the figure is more prominent and singular. In the pig series, the human figure becomes immersed amongst other beings, and the performance aspect becomes even more important. “I” in the title “The Pig That Therefore I Am” not only represents “the artist,” but also the philosophical idea of the human being in a larger sense. For me, it’s very important to question the dualistic thinking that comes from Descartes’ infamous cogito ergo sum. I say that it’s not the thinking and reasoning that makes “I” exist. My body is full of life force, or qi, and I could feel the existence of myself more then ever when I lay next to these pigs and mingled with them with my skin.

With the new series, I’m tending more towards philosophical ideas and I feel that this is only the beginning in my artistic career. I want to do more performance work and experiment with other media like video, painting, and installation.

“The Pig That Therefore I Am” opens 24 March and runs through 23 April 2010 at the Doosan Gallery NYC.

A Parisian photographer’s objective take on small towns in a dual retrospective

by Isabelle Doal

Upon first glance Eric Tabuchi‘s photographs merely feature disgraceful gas stations lost in no man’s land, Chinese restaurants in improbable settings and skate parks where dull gray tones consume the entire landscape. His subjects seem like superfluous outcasts with to no real place in in the world. His curiosity instead explores the metaphorical confines of belonging to nature, by portraying these humble, fading buildings and objects he reveals realities about our surroundings with new eyes—as a foreigner would do—showing how the outskirts may tell something about the center.

Influenced by the works of Bernd and Hilla Becher, a German photography duo known for their depictions of industrial buildings as typology, Tabuchi—who formally studied sociology—draws attention to the tiny signs located in the margin of normality. He demonstrates how eventually, if not on purpose, things end up looking like each other through instinctive use of the same symbols and aesthetic.

An echo to each photo’s outstanding simplicity and stark surroundings, the neutral positioning of his subjects tells about Tabuchi’s point of view and approach, which is to remain objective and refrain from creating any amount of melancholy within the picture. He feels the best place for a picture is in a magazine, where it is printed, seen and thrown away. For Tabuchi, pictures are nothing but common everyday life items.

As a delayed secondary effect, the loneliness of these oft-abandoned remnants reaches the observer with their familiar shapes, like how going back home would do. For that reason, when Tabuchi exhibits his photos he always tries to merge them among other objects and forms so that it, as an overall picture, makes a new landscape and in the end a new picture.

The French photographer is also known for his books—most notably for “Alphabet Truck” and his interpretation of Ed Ruscha’s “Twentysix Gasoline Stations.” With both books and all of his works, Tabuchi did extensive traveling, documenting what looks a lot like America but is actually all shot “within a 250-km radius from Paris.”

Tabuchi’s extensive repertoire is on view at two galleries in Strasbourg, France. Creating one unified retrospective, “Mini Golf” opens at La Chambre 11 March 2011 and runs through 8 May 2011 while “Indoor Land” is currently on display at Le Maillon and runs through 29 April 2011.

Poster the world with large-scale photos to help realize street artist JR’s 2011 TED wish

Winner of the TED 2011 prize, anonymous French street artist JR’s “wish to change the world” consists of a massive humanist art project. JR grants that art, while not meant to effect change in practical terms, instead changes the way people see the world. “The power of an image is really strong,” and by “making invisible people visible” you can take the power back from the media. While the undertaking is a big one—”the world is fucked up,” as JR simply puts it—think of the interventionist artist as a master marketer, substituting such ambitious ideas as “civilization” and “culture” in place of brands, working to build awareness worldwide, one project at a time.

Using cities as his canvas, JR began writing graffiti at age 17 as a way to leave his mark on society. After finding a cheap camera on the metro, he started documenting his friends on their graffiti adventures. He started pasting the pictures on the city streets, outlining them with colored paint to differentiate them from advertisements. “The city is the best gallery I could imagine,” he explained during his TED talk.

JR fully realized “the power of paper and glue” during the 2005 civil unrest in Paris, when he took portraits of four residents from the poor neighborhood of Clichy-sous-Bois and pasted them around the rich areas, along with names, ages and even home addresses. Responding to media coverage of these individuals with his giant posters, JR inserted his message into the public dialog, adding his own layer of meaning to the depictions seen in the press.

JR took his project and a team beyond France when traveled to the West Bank where he created his “Face To Face” project, documenting two people doing the same job—one from Israel, one from Palestine. Using 20,000 square-feet of paper, JR’s crew pasted the massive portraits around eight cities on both sides of the conflict and found most people couldn’t decipher who belonged to which country.

With the success of this campaign in full force, the horrific slaying of three students in Rio’s most dangerous favela, Providência, became the setting for JR to start a new initiative called “Women Are Heroes.”, after hearing about the unjustified. Photographing the mothers and grandmothers of the students, JR posted the giant resulting images on the walls of the favela, with residents permission. The portraits, were visible from the city but inaccesible to media, creating metaphorical frisson between the media and the anonymous women.

In Kibera, Kenya, JR showed how art can more directly change the world by printing his standard jumbo photos on vinyl instead of paper, enabling them to function as roofs for houses in the poverty-stricken area. Showing an image from Google Earth during his talk at TED, JR said “Now when you look at Kibera, they look back at you.” Because pasting is culturally and legally impossible in India, team JR took advantage of the country’s dusty streets and posted white canvases which had been painted placed glue. As the dust began to blow, the image revealed itself.

Summing up his wish for the world, JR states, “Stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world inside out.”

Working with L.A.’s Phantom Galleries (veterans of converting unused commercial space into temporary art galleries), JR put together a two-day photobooth installation in Phantom’s gallery that prints huge posters you can paste anywhere.

The photobooth reportedly heads to NYC next, but to ensure even greater democracy JR worked with the agency
Huge to create the Inside Out website, where you simply upload a black-and-white photo and the team will mail back a giant poster for you to paste within your community. As JR believes, “when we act together, the whole thing is much more than the sum of its parts.”

See more images from JR’s TED talk and photobooth in the gallery.

Exploring the limits of greyscale in a group show

With a mission of reinvigorating Chelsea’s once youthful and vibrant art scene, Mallick Williams (daughter-in-law of actor Robin Williams) launched Mallick Williams & Co. in November of 2010. In the short time since opening, the upstart has already drawn attention for its ability to connect big-name artists to high-profile young collectors and shows no signs of stopping with their first official gallery show, cleverly titled “Hueless,” opening tomorrow.

An exploration of the possibilities of grey scale, “Mallick Williams & Co. carefully curated pieces from both artists who normally work in black and white (in mediums such as graphite, charcoal, paper cut and photography) alongside work from artists who are stepping out of their traditional colorful palette to create something uniquely hueless.” At the core of the group show is a roster of heavyweight street artists, including Shepard Fairey, Eric Haze, Skullphone and Russel Young. These more established artists will show alongside lesser-known talents like Marissa Textor and Sam Ske.

Young’s piece, “Fifteen Minutes With You; Well I Wouldn’t Say No”, consisting of acrylic paint enamel and diamond dust screen-printed onto linen, creates an ethereal manifestation of a memory without falling into the abstract (pictured below left). Another portrait, “Drawn Face V” (above left) by Dirk Dzimirsky aims to “not only portray the physical attributes, but more importantly the subjects inner presence of life. I chose drawing over painting as this allows me to create many layers over layers of lines and dots which react to each other in order to create a vibrant texture with directions and movement.”

On the darker side thematically, Marissa Textor’s piece “An Outlet for Pent up Forces,” (also graphite on paper, like Dzimirsky’s) breathtakingly depicts volcanic rock in photorealistic detail. Nicholas Forker takes on a “shattered sense of community in the face of capitalist driven isolation” with a greyscale drawing representing an artist informed by a globalized marketplace of ideas.

“Hueless” runs through 15 April 2011. Visit the Mallick Williams & Co. website for the full list of artists.