MICK RAUBENHEIMER’S Round Corners mini-interviews situate artists outside their given media, exploring their particular experience of the artistic. He spoke to the multiple consciousness that is KOOS VAN DER WAT, whom he first took notice of when he saw him credited as musician in five different bands he was listening to. Koos makes day-glo karmic art on the sly.
When did you first identify as a creative artist?
When I was a small child, I would sit for hours and hours and just draw. In class I would sit and draw….it came naturally to me, without me having to latch onto a particular conceptual framework to do it.
It was after I finished college that I had a vision that worked itself through me. It was almost unintentional but it happened and now I’m still kneading at it. The process is like being placed in a cage with a self-replicating writhing snake or something.
Outside of your medium, what branch of art most stimulates you?
At the moment, claymation springs to mind for some reason.
Which artist/s in said discipline have significantly inspired you, and why?
I remember seeing random claymation short films on TV and loving the squishiness of it. After seeing Bruce Bickford’s work with Frank Zappa in Baby Snakes, it activated a node in my mind that convinced me that my paintings and the motions within them would translate perfectly into claymation. We actually wanted to somehow commission Bickford to do a short sequence for our Havoc Vultures song Fallopean Tube. Ideally I’d like to do a claymation short film of the Creation as described in the Bible, if anyone is interested in helping take it to production.
What, to you, is art’s most important function?
I think Art’s most important function is to help the human soul transcend mundanity – the physical day to day grind of eating, working and sleeping.
Humans have spiritual aspirations that can be expressed and tasted through Art. Art obviously has multiple functions but I think this is its most primordial function – the ability of humans to create aesthetics through which their spirit/mind can be uplifted or directed towards an ideal.
Local creatives (in any medium) that currently excite you?
I really admire what the gaming developers ‘Free Lives’ are doing……they’re simply trying to make cool, gory stuff…….stuff that I would like to make as soon as I can get my mind into the reality tunnel of putting my Art or Illustrations in games….an idea that I’ve been toying with forever but still need to put into practice.
What specific work – be it in literature, music, or visual art – do you return to again and again, and why?
There are many albums that I return to, covering a wide range of ‘styles’, but If I had to name a work of music that is like resting my head on a cool pillow at night, it would be Al Gromer Khan’s Tantra Drums. That album immediately calms me down and puts me in a place of ‘cosmic serenity’. However as soon as I get too ‘spiritually emotional’, I like to jump back to a variety of intense metal albums to numb my senses and drown myself in nasty riffs and blast beats.
Any current project you’re unveiling/wrapping up?
I’m working on so many projects I wish I was forced to narrow them down by some contractual agreement. I’m trying to finalize the concept of Neptunism/Uranus so that I can bury it for future generations to dig up and toy with. Other than that I am working on a pop metal project called Staffy….which is based on my appreciation/aspiration of the music industry that used to be, and also Warriorr Prinsez – my ode to nu metal – which peaked when I was in matric. Other than that I’m still painting under Kossy and open to commissions.
Who: Artist/ musician/creator Koos van der Wat
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