General view of the Handspring Factory

For those who’ve read the statement of practice from Handspring Puppet Company, you might be interested in the following short interview with Adrian Kohler:

How did you first become involved in puppetry?

My mom was a puppeteer and art teacher. Made and performed figures from an early age.

How did you learn puppetry skills?

From puppet manuals by John Wright and Hans-jurgen fetig and Margery Batchelder. Built puppets as a kid. Occasional films on bunraku and Czech puppet animation. Studied sculpture at art school. Mentored by Lily Herzberg at the Space Theatre in the mid seventies. Interned at the Canon Hill puppet Theatre in Birmingham uk for 6 months. Taught puppetry at Weld Community centre, Birmingham. Ran Popular Theatre program in Botswana in late seventies Where puppets were used. Formed Handspring inn 1981 and continued to learn on the hoof.

Is there a particular school of puppetry in South Africa?

Other puppeteers.

What do you think of the work of William Kentridge? Is your work in dialogue with his at all?

I and many others think William is a Renaissance man. A broad approach to art. Generous and fearless, particularly of new technology. My work continues to be influenced by what I have learnt from William and he says the same about me. As we are not making anything new together at the moment, this dialogue carries on at a distance.

In between performances, do you think it would be worthwhile exhibiting puppets like the war horses on their own?

Yes, the horses look good just standing there.

What are your upcoming projects?

A piece called ‘True’ with Neil Bartlett slated to open at the Cottlesloe Tyeatre in October. About which I am so excited it cuts down on my sleep.

The replica is, in a way, the realm of pure craft … Its objectness, its materiality, its form absorb the force that would otherwise arise from its “content.”

So wrote Rachel Weiss in the second issue of this journal, in an article on the Cuban contemporary art group Los Carpinteros.[1]

It is a fascinating but contentious idea: What if creativity as such lies outside of the realm of craft? What if the act of copying, which requires skill in an unadulterated state in order to achieve success, is the truest version of this journal’s core subject? What if the notion of a successful copy varies according to culture or context? What are the differences between content and intent?[2]

This issue provides ample opportunity to test this idea, in two very different cultural contexts. First up is a pair of complementary articles about Japan, by Christine Guth and Kida Takuya. The articles bring us from the long-established customs of the tea ceremony (chanoyu) to the delicate politics of the nation’s craft world during the reconstruction period immediately following the Second World War. Together, the two authors show that Japan’s tradition of copying, while very different from the emphasis on individuality in Europe and America, is no less likely to produce confusion and conflict.

Later in the issue, we are off to South Africa where, as Anitra Nettleton shows, there is a more informal but equally widespread practice of imitation and emulation. This is an unsettled (and perhaps unsettling) craft landscape, in which authorship and creativity are difficult to fix with certainty. In the entrepreneurial stalls of Johannesburg’s fleamarkets, tourists are faced with a dizzying array of wares, and geographically rooted traditions are lost in a shuffle of stereotype and repetition. This process of market homogenization is itself of great interest, and Nettleton details its mechanisms at length. As she demonstrates through an ensuing analysis of South African basketry, the only way to combat such erasure is through the specifics of production. In this same spirit, we have commissioned a Statement of Practice in which the potters at Ardmore Ceramic Art (also in South Africa) speak of their experiences at a socially progressive craft enterprise. Here we encounter another form of repetition, as many of the makers voice similar attitudes (gratitude, pride, ambition). How close do we get to these men and women? As the proprietors of Ardmore note in their introduction, it is difficult to capture the “true” voice of a craftsperson who makes within a highly structured entrepreneurial context, even when he or she is sitting directly in front of you. (The statements were originally delivered as oral testimonies in Zulu; Ardmore’s shop manager, Happiness Sibisi, translated them for us. While there are grammatical inaccuracies in these translations, the Ardmore proprietors decided not to make corrections. This appeared controversial to us but we let their decision stand.)

Elsewhere in the issue we explore the linked histories of queer identity and craft-based art practice—a subject first discussed in our pages a year ago by Julia Bryan-Wilson, in her brilliant reading of the rug works of lesbian sculptor Harmony Hammond. Now Australian scholar Sally Gray gives us a glimpse of the elusive aesthetic rites of underground gay New York in the 1980s. Artist David McDiarmid’s leather garments evoke a time and place in which self-fashioning was so important that it became an all-consuming craft in its own right.

Finally, we are pleased to offer our most extensive and important Primary Text to date. Taken from the pages of Overseas Education magazine (an organ of the British colonial administrative establishment) and Arts of West Africa, this set of texts offers a window into interwar modernist attitudes to African craft. The authors were themselves educators, and it is disturbing to imagine them inflicting their combination of paternalism and enthusiasm on young African woodcarvers. Yet these previously unexamined texts have tremendous historical value. As Tanya Harrod notes in her Commentary, “Only in the field of colonial art education was the relationship between modernism and primitivism examined systematically and a dialogue set up between the West and its ‘others.’ It may have been an imperfect, impoverished dialogue, but it did at least take place.” The contents of Overseas Education also resonate uncomfortably with the present day. Imperial rule in Africa may be history, but the tensions between progressivism and tradition (even if we no longer think of it as “primitive”) have certainly not been resolved.

[1] Rachel Weiss, “Between the Material World and the Ghosts of Dreams: An Argument about Craft in Los Carpinteros,” The Journal of Modern Craft 1(2) (2008): 258.

[2] For further consideration of this idea in the context of contemporary art, see Glenn Adamson, “Analogue Practice,” in Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner, The Studio Reader (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010 [forthcoming]).

The dominant but false idea – shared by many Africans and many donors – is that the act of creativity is necessarily a collective act; that African artistic forms are not aesthetic objects per se but ciphers of a deeper level of the ‘real’ that is fundamentally ethnographic and expressive of Africa’s ontological cultural difference of ‘authenticity’. It is this African ‘difference’ and this African ‘authenticity’ donors are keen to find, support and, if necessary, invent.

Achille Mbembe ‘Art and Development’ Art South Africa 8/3 2010 pp.70-74

Hlengiwe Dube outside the Geelong Art Gallery fixing a wire basket

In the past, she has completed a number of commission for beaded public art in South Africa. This year she is producing a South African flag, embroidered entirely of beads, which will fly at the Madiba Stadium for the FIFA World Cup.

The African Art Centre where Hlengiwe works has a small gallery which hosts exhibitions of crafters. It is one of the relatively few places in South Africa were craft can be seen in a gallery setting. It seems a natural progression for a crafter like Hlengiwe to have a solo exhibition including unique works from her artistic imagination. But to claim status as an individual art is more difficult than in Western contemporary craft. Traditional culture seems to have a much stronger pull. In the following brief interview, she starts the ball rolling on the question of African craft in galleries.

What prompted you to write a book on Zulu beadwork?

Zulu Beadwork cover by Hlengiwe Dube

When I was reading the books about the Zulu beadwork, they were all saying different things and I was so confused. I decided to go direct and communicate with the people whom wear the beadwork, as well as those who make beadwork. I sought to find out from them all the meaning of beadwork and colours that they used. It was very interesting because much of what I heard was different to what the available books were saying. I decided to collect all the information that I could and share it with the other Zulu beadwork lovers, as it was direct from the Zulu people.

Do you think Zulu craft like beadwork is the expression of an individual artist or a collective culture?

I think it is both. In some instances, craft items are intended for the sole use of a crafter or the person who wears or uses the craft object. You also find crafts which are representative of stylistic expressions of a particular culture with particular colours and designs of metaphoric significance to the concerned culture.

Would you like to see more of this craft in art galleries? If so, what do you think has prevented opportunities for their display?

I would definitely like to see more craft in art galleries. I think craft has always been relegated to a level lower that Fine Art, and not as a creative form of expression. I think display in craft in art galleries will narrow the divide between art and craft.

How do you see South African craft developing in the future?

I think South African craft is developing, embracing modern trends, usages and also attracts interest from other cultures.

*’Crafter’ is the preferred term for craftsperson in South Africa.

Patrick McNaugthon’s study of Mali metalsmithing identified a problem in the applying Western distinction between art and life:

The Mande people of Mali, like some other African peoples, give a name to every kind of sculpture that they produce, and also to categories of objects such as wooden twin figures, dolls, animal masks and headdresses (McNaughton 1988:110f.). These names may be revealing as to an object’s perceived spiritual potency. Some types of objects might not be considered as art by Westerners, as in the case of spear blades and oil-burning lamps. Yet the Mande consider their beauty, symbolism, and place in society to take them beyond simple utility. The distinction between art and artifact (or crafts) is not generally marked in African languages.

Patrick R. McNaughton The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power and Art in West Africa Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988

Potters from Nkwalini Valley in KwaZulu-Natal including Masonto

Potters from Nkwalini Valley in KwaZulu-Natal including Masonto. Photo by Steven Smith. Click image for story.

The online theme for 2.3 is the broad relation between African craft cultures and the modern craft movement. To a large degree, the development of modern craft has coincided with the relocation of craft practice from the village to the studio – from cottage industry to the artistic production of unique objects. Does modern African craft follow a similar path? Does the origin of much African craft tradition in collective ritual entail a loss of meaning when an object is transferred into the cold and quiet space of a gallery? Does this limit the capacity for individual African craftspersons to participate in the international craft arena?

For this issue, we invite those working in the field of African craft to share their thoughts on issues special to their area.

Online from Journal of Modern Craft 2.3: Editorial and Handspring Puppet Company by Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones and Tommy Luther