General Note:
[…] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research endeavours to make bare the process of research and development in creative and artistic research. This is for readers / viewers an opportunity and mechanism to see the types of academic critique engaged with creative research and to make visible the responses and development.
The following peer review was produced blind and in process, the artist / author has subsequently been given the opportunity to respond and develop both the theoretical and interactive parts of the article before publication. What you see published has been edited post this review.
Peer Review 1: Bantu Men’s Social Club (2020)
Reviewer: Anonymous
Which aspects of the submission are of interest / relevance and why?
Working with silencing in interesting ways, this project treats the BMSC as a site of silencing by the powerful apartheid regime. The project works with the BMSC’s invisibility through a process of being present with its historical remains and in so doing traces the past through the present moment. This means that, as a researcher, the artist is able to have an authentic experience with the notion of hauntology and thus becomes a conduit for what still reverberates within the project’s site.
Of interest is the use of sonic investigation, which is carefully understood as a variable of acoustic awareness, and the ways that this method asks the audience not what is seen, but what is heard. In a labour of experimentation and meaning-making, the audience is invited into a world wherein three sonic pieces and a piece of writing are integrated into a central design which reads as a blue heritage plaque. As one attempts to make sense of the design you are confronted with, hidden parts of the research begin to emerge, such as a hollowing out of the sound under the symbol of a doorway, projecting a certain indoor quality. Despite where you might be viewing the digital artwork, the audience is drawn into an echo chamber which situates the building in question. The plaque becomes a sonic portal, charged with specific information and sounds -codes for the re assemblage on the ‘other side’. This portal is reminiscent of Chus Martinez’s groundless and resonating space that consists of all that resides in between, in this case the viewer, the research and the sounds itself.
While viewing the project, there is one jazz sound track that plays on loop, and if you keep the sound dial onhigh you will have heard it several times before coming to the end of the voice recording. This loop carries with it a sense of a stuckness that doesn’t sit still, but instead thickens the time you spend invested in the project; one feels a persisting energy that cannot be fully grasped, yet carries with it memories, narratives and movement. In this sense, the departure from ‘echo’ that the artist speaks of in their work to a different sort of sonic quality, ‘reverberation’, can be sensed. Reverberation emerges here as as one that is not infused with a response of sameness, as might be understood with the notion of the echo, but that instead exists as a presence thick with a ‘ghostly aura’ that continues to exist between things.
The audience is brought into this resonance in speculative ways, wherein they experiment with what rises from the parts presented in the artwork, creating meaning for themselves in similar ways to how the artist may have through being present at the historical building. That is to say, the artwork seems to set up an array of nodes which, together, design an experience for the visitor to generate their own experience in ways that mimic the authentic ones that the artist had by being present with the historical building, but that nonetheless equate to meaningful engagements with the knowledge being produced through the research at hand.
In many ways the silencing, or smothering as the artist puts it, of this site emerges through this work as not being snuffed out but instead as existing. And it is through aural listening capabilities that this site is accessed again.
I understand this work as drawing together socio-anthropological work on silenced histories and social narratives together with the potentials that sonic engagements have in both producing research as well as generating artworks that probe and ask questions about such sites. Overall, through a closer understanding of the BMSC, this work provides an understanding of Johannesburg that is thick with pasts and presents; it allows for a portal into erosion that understands both the host and the activity upon it. In convincing ways, sound is brought forward as the carrier between worlds (past/present) in ways that point toward the unending less of the past and the reverberations of it in the present. But more than that, it is the potential of the sonic portal that intrigues me most and which I find to be a powerful tool for accessing the in between.
How are the artistic and research outcomes represented?
Initially the questions of the work are not prevalent -one is faced with a dynamic object that needs figuring out. However,, due to the fact that everything is contained in a circular form, and the movable dials are designed to read like ones on a mixer, navigating becomes fairly obvious. The use of a sonic reading of the text was helpful, as the space for the text was quite small and could perhaps become claustrophobic when half way through the essay. Ifound it useful to listen to the voice while scrolling down the text, and when I had orientated myself within the written text enough I began to experiment with the reverberation dial, which lead to a feeling of placement within the context of the research itself -the BMSC.
The written description and its sonic component through different ways of engaging the site. Initially it felt as if I were reading a blue plaque, historical statements without much methodological engagement were being ‘told’ to me. But then it shifted toward a deeper analysis of the engagement that the artist had with the site. What was useful about this is that while I was ‘arriving’ in the digital sphere created, I could listen in in a less demanding way, which left room for other activities which tried to make sense of the design. Later on, however, when the text drew me in more through the artist’s methods of engagement, I felt like I understood the space enough to really play in deeper more exploratory ways.
How well does the design support the submission?
The works are presented together in a singular design with multiple functionalities. The design reads as one of the many historical blue plaques that scatter Johannesburg’s heritage sites. The usefulness of the digital plaque in this project, however, is that it enables the audience to engage it in ways where a deeper understanding of the history might be explored, thus they find their own the importance of coming to one’s own understanding is posed. The sonic dials embedded within the digital plaque allowfor a range of experimentation that stretch from silence to noise, the middle ground of which is makes audible all levels of the three tracks. I found it interesting to combine reading the text with listening to the audio version of the text, but to then allow the audio to distort into that roomy haunting space that was being raised in the text. This activity drew me in to the work at the very same time as I began to understand where it was that I was going. In a time where restrictions of movement are prevalent and fear of large crowds exists, the sonic capacity presented within the digital design of the work had transporting potential that I thought was evocative.
Are there any ethical or legal concerns?
Did the artist receive permission to makeuse of the Jazz track?
Conclusions and and pre publication revision:
This project demonstrates fine artistic research in its abilities to compose clues toward the larger mystery of the silenced histories of BMSC. It plays with the word silence by shifting it into sonic reverberation in interesting ways and poses the sonic as a refutable tool in its abilities to transport both researcher and audience into historical sites of importance.
I recommend that this work be accepted as is, no revisions necessary.
