MICK RAUBENHEIMER’S Round Corners mini-interviews place artists outside their given media while exploring their experience of the artistic. He sat down in the cybersphere to chat with enigmatic artist and musician GARTH ERASMUS.
When did you first identify as a creative artist?
That’s hard to pinpoint because as far as I’m concerned I’ve been creative all my life, but I guess when I was an arts student at Rhodes I found myself needing to survive because I wasn’t good at all from an academic point of view. I am a classic example of a product of the Apartheid education system, so basically I was uneducated… I could not cope at university. I studied painting and was struggling like hell.
I have to explain that up until I entered university I had NEVER painted before! But I knew somewhere deep down that I could love it. It’s a long story but basically I had gained entry on the strength of my drawing abilities… so painting was new for me. I found myself floundering while the rest of the class was well ahead in terms of ability (I was the only Black student then) and gradually I found ways of dealing with the medium by ‘interrupting’ it, namely, I would add things like sand to the paint to make it more textural, all kinds of collage devices I subjected the paint to, and slowly but surely I began to enjoy painting and quickly realized that I was beginning to find my own voice, so to speak.
I find myself still doing that now. But back then it was a difficult process to go through, but ultimately worthwhile because I learned an important life lesson – that in the art world, you need to find your own voice, you need something that sets you apart.
Outside of your medium, what branch of art most stimulates you?
Music. This is another long story which we can’t get into here… I came to music via visual art. That is to say, I was about to start another phase of my life in art: I was going to attempt doing 3-dimensional work and it was in this process that this other branch of creativity began to take root, and instead of building sculptural forms I ended up building musical instruments, or rather, ‘sound objects’, not to create the idea that I was in any way musical at all. Looking back I realize that that was a moment in which I reinvented myself… one that I can now put a date to – 1985. That was the moment of my permanent awakening to my Khoi and ancestor heritage.
Which artist/s in said discipline have significantly inspired you, and why?
You mean in music? The music I’m dealing with is my own invention… there are no precedents, no classical repertoire as such. No references or points of departure. But over all these years I’ve also taught myself the saxophone and in this case the usual classic Jazz examples apply… you know, the John Coltranes of the world. But there is one guy, Roscoe Mitchell, who is a huge personal icon. I guess it’s because I sense his approach has similarities with how I’ve learn the sax – as a sound generator rather than as narrative music making… His high level of experimentation with the instrument, like offsetting it with other tonalities – like the use of contemporary computer technology and the experimentation with alternative breathing techniques – opens up endless possibilities.
What, to you, is art’s most important function?
I can only speak from my own experience. The aspect of healing…. The aspect of therapy is inherent in the creative process. You don’t step into the same river twice. It`s easily understandable because we as humans are constantly in a state of change, no two days are alike. Your emotions are always in a fluid state, therefore you are in a fluid state. Of course when I speak of healing I`m really putting myself in the South African context of growing up during Apartheid. Three-quarters of my life have been spent living an Apartheid existence, so I don’t need to tell you about trauma and psychological and emotional damage to the individual. I believe ALL South Africans are traumatized in some way. In my case I’ve found that I’ve managed to preserve a certain amount of sanity through being able to give expression to my emotional state of being.
Local creatives (in any medium) that currently excite you?
Isaac Mutant. I love his work, what little I’ve seen. I love the passion that I see infused in everything he does – he goes beyond labels like ‘rap’ or ‘hip hop’ for me, yet he is all of that. I guess you could say he is Afro-punk. He is a very important, vital voice and in a perfect world he would be considered a national treasure of ours. Actually he`s even beyond national – he’s an African treasure! I would love to work with him one day, with my group Khoi Khonnexion. Actually, my own life experience resonates a bit with his, in that I also grew up in a small Karoo dorpie (I come from Uitenhage) and came to the big city and that has shaped my consciousness in a big way.
I’m also excited by the work of a crew of young visual artists who call themselves Burning Museum, and not just because my son is a part of this group but I love that they’re full of spunk and work as a collective, which young artists mostly spurn these days for wanting personal glory. I love how they lay emphasis on highlighting aspects of our forgotten, or rather, neglected community history, in an interesting and hip visual way by means of public paste-ups and performance.
What specific work – be it in literature, music, or visual art – do you return to again and again, and why?
Uhmm… the poetry of Seamus Heaney. I have to read that stuff again and again and again. And often it`s reading the same poems over and over and always coming away with a new perspective and fresh tears running down my cheeks. He was an Irish poet who just encapsulates the experience of living in the troubles in such a beautiful and sensitive way – his words have a visceral effect on me, probably because deep down I guess I’m drawing a parallel with the Apartheid experience and art that is nurtured from social trauma.
Any current project you’re unveiling / wrapping up?
I`m currently busy with a protracted body of new visual work I`m going to call the Xnau Drawings (Xnau pronounced “now”). The word comes from Nama and means ‘initiation’ and I’m appropriating it as a reference to my own journey of making meaning out of my personal experience of dealing with Khoi identity issues and self-discovery. It’s a magnum opus of sorts. Then I`m also busy creating the soundtrack for a new documentary that`s being filmed right now that is going to be a sweeping history of the Khoi from the perspective of putting the ‘Coloured’ identity to bed once and for all. It`s being directed by Johann Abrahams. My band Khoi Khonnexion are also doing a small tour of Norway in December.
Who: Garth Erasmus
Links:
http://asai.co.za/artist/garth-erasmus/
https://www.facebook.com/Khoi-Khonnexion-80191441911/
Cover Pic: Paul Grendon
WS
