transcript of the gmail chat with Athi-Patra Ruga for "the thud of a snowflake"

athi-patra:  cool , i can now on g chat, desktop is mine.

Sent at 10:03 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  shoot!

me:  oh, ok, cool...

let's start with the questions i sent... your name - Athi-Patra - please explain the origins
Sent at 10:04 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  Id rather not, it will spoil the mystery.

me:  hahahaha ok, so if i make stuff up about an obsession with the great dames of history - particularly controversial ones, e.g brenda, v-mash etc will i be on the right track?

Sent at 10:06 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  nah...but yeah. but dancehall queen Patra would be warmer.

me:  is it the sexuality that she exudes in her work that draws you to her? your work is very sexual or rather deals with themes around sexuality a lot

Sent at 10:08 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  well for she is from that longline of bad gals who messed with gender prescriptions , by using her sexuality.

and in a way this does lnk with my work , it revolves around the reclamation of the body from dictum/dicti
athi-patra:  for example my work deals with the animal that is a man. an how his body thru many reasons has been made to feel foreign to him.
patriachy, and religiopus references to the body ,

Sent at 10:13 AM on Tuesday

me:  now that you mention the substance of your work, i was reading the transcript of your interview with Ed Young, and in it you seem to imply that your performance work is purely self-indulgent and perhaps has no substance but is merely controversial (or camp as you put it) just so you can move the tapestries... am i correct in that understanding? or were you merely being facetious in that interview?

Sent at 10:15 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  yes the tone of the interview was very irreverent and there are moments that I ask myself "what is it for".

it's thankless work this art thang.
however , i think it is clear that irrverence is a tool in my work and that includes camp. these tend to get to the point more...the point being an accessible one...
me:  that Trojan Horse thing your talk about? hit them with that Will Ferrel "No one knows what it means. It's provocative! It' gets the people going." to facilitate the conversation?

Sent at 10:21 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  provocation works if you are gonna be dealing with a wall made up of staid notions of art.

i am highly aware of that.
Sent at 10:22 AM on Tuesday

me:  next question: who or what influences you and why?

Sent at 10:24 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  well TV is the ultimate inspiration. and also just physical expression from fashion to performance.

Sent at 10:27 AM on Tuesday

me:  you've been compared to Stephen Cohen, what are your thoughts on the obsession of the media and the public with comparing artists?

Sent at 10:29 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  stephen Cohen is an influence in my work , the first performance i ever saw in 2002 was Cohens chandalier in newtown. the comparison is an honor...however...

me:  however???

athi-patra:  sorry mali is late for his elle shoot...pandemone.

me:  oh dear... ok... you wanna take a break?

Sent at 10:36 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  however it is an exercise in lazy journalism to make such a basic copmarioson without engaging with the work and the longline of performance

artist dealing with the same issues.
francko b, leigh bowery , ron athey etc.
am back...
Sent at 10:41 AM on Tuesday

me:  do you think perhaps in your case it's because a lot of journo's find it difficult to review your work, so they resort to simple comparisons? or is it because the south african performance art scene is a little thin and so leads to simple comparisons to those most prominent?

Sent at 10:42 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  a bit of everything above . I am ambivalent of the "reviewer" , as it is reportage more than it is about engagement with the artwork. that could lead one to simpleness

athi-patra:  also, i do not think of the art scene as a local thing , i play in the international field along with many artists who are from south africa. And this requires our journos to think broader.

Sent at 10:47 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  is it tough to review my work? Then if so let it be about your experience and no convoluted qualifications on the work. do you get

Sent at 10:48 AM on Tuesday

me:  ok, next question: black families are notoriously conservative, your work is very provocative, what is your family's take on your work?

Sent at 10:50 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  My dad is really proud of the work . I do not find this surprising. when i was groing up I used to see my dad wearing my moms dressing gown. My mom use English Blazer at some point. they were very provocative lol...My family is like any other south africa family , we have this flabbagasting addiction to shock.

and also they think" As long as hes employed , askhathali."
me:  hahahahaha love it!

athi-patra:  but there's also something to be said about how they "come out" everytime a friend of theirs is exposed to the work.

me:  do you ever discuss your work in detail with your dad? besides being proud, does he have any criticisms or objections? i'm thinking particularly of Ilulwane - it's a very controversial subject amongst Xhosa men

Sent at 10:56 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  No , he's not concerned about the semantics or the language of art...Its another world to him. I have spoken around the table about the various projects and Ilulwane because of how it affected my family and still does , is seen a a necesarry thing to do by my folk.

i think that my dad equates artmaking with activism some times.
that puts presssure on me.
but the funny thing is after he started hearing and seeing my work...he still is expecting an album launch soon from his"performance artist son."
me:  kwaaaaaaaaa hahahahahahahaha well with the work you did with Spoek, who knows? you might find yourself in the studio one day... perhaps a compilation album from Uncle's Touch?

athi-patra:  hehehe , from your lips to gods ears...hehe.

why not
Sent at 11:04 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  however , the next instalment of ilulwane will continue the singing journey Im on.

me:  but back to your dad equating making art with activism: is your work not some form of activism? by your own admission your mission is to subvert the axioms of not only identity, but also the art world in itself? would you say this was influenced by your dad's take on your chosen field? or did you arrive at it independently?

Sent at 11:06 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  i grew up in a very conscientised time , politics have to be part of ones lifes work. The fight started a long time ago , and it continues with the art establishment and imagemaking in general.

everything i do is politikal.
me:  i thought you weren't in the habit of answering polotikal questions?

athi-patra:  well ... some can be very boring.

solicit the Jlo out of me...
ha
me:  would you say this is why you abandoned your fashion career in favour of creating art? i know the two can be interchangeable, but fashion has a more limited scope, wouldn't you say? or has that part of you not been abandoned entirely and we can hope to see a resurfacing of Just Nje?

Sent at 11:12 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  well all that happened was that I grew very frustrated with the transient apolitical nature of the industry ...this results in a narrow view that doesnt allow for one to interrogate real issue that are other than consumption...

Sent at 11:13 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  also I took fashion with me as a medium in my work...it's still a big influence. as for just nje. it was a great stepping stone to achieving this conversation about perception and how the history of image making and its effects have directed society to bot the good and the bad maybe...

me:  next question: would you say "fearless and intrepid" are apt descriptors of yourself and your work? you've done some daring things in places where the consequences could have been, and at times have been, dire? i'm talking now of your work in Dakar, Kinshasa, and Cape Town (i forget the character's name - but the Universal Church incident, and being at the Station taxi rank in a leotard at night)... or are you oblivious to those consequences when you execute your performances?

Sent at 11:19 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  the first and most important aspect of my performances are the character construct and the narative to be performaed. I like to think of describing myself as those words to take away from the fact that the context and how it translates into an image demand such actions.

beiruth
i used to not think of the consequences of my work , until Beiruth happened .
Sent at 11:24 AM on Tuesday

me:  has the Beiruth incident made you rethink performing in such public spaces, where you don't have the safety of the gallery and it's, assumedly, understanding attendees?

athi-patra:  i'll never stop performing in public...that's the politics around my core performance intervention , accessibility. How ever now there is this theatrical/scale dynamic that is very demanding ie: Ilulwane.

Sent at 11:27 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  where a public space becomes a stage and starts a story about . inclusion and exclusion. get me?

me:  yes, galleries can be a little foreboding to those who don't have previous experience attending them

speaking of scale: your performances get bigger and more ambitious, do you feel pressure to continue on that trajectory? is it sustainable?
athi-patra:  what? Growing Bigger?

me:  yes

athi-patra:  it's a non debate. i want to recreate and insert myself into these fantasy. and this requires scale.

...my dream work would probably be people coming into a stadium with pyrotechs and lights and a golden circle.
me:  like the rockstar that you are?

athi-patra:  the scale is maybe me soliciting a bigger audience , not based on academic art critisicm but a pure visual delight...that's a bit haunting.

like Arena Rock
no like the rockstar Ilulwane expects to be.
Sent at 11:40 AM on Tuesday

me:  i understand each of your characters is a kind of alter ego for you, and each one is "birthed", it lives and is then "killed off" - do they ever haunt you? or is there no afterlife for them? once it's dead, it's dead and can never be returned to life in another incarnation?

Sent at 11:42 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  one day I will show them . Funny Iluwane the performance is about that ascnsion to the other world. Ilulwane comes close to owning its own destiny by taking that task of killing characters...I think they exist all in the after life...like 

ilulwanes ancestors or stuff like.

it would be nice to have them in conversation...that idea haunts alot of late.
Miss Congo
Injibhabha
Beiruth
Ilulwane
me:  interesting... more of that grand ambition again... it really would be fascinating to see...

athi-patra:  ...it's a band actualy...sorry am flowing like.

hehehe
me:  hehehehehe i like the idea, and i cannot imagine how but i know you're the only person capable of pulling it off
you're very prolific for one so young, do you ever take a break?
or are you like a BEE artist, always thinking of the next tender even on holiday?
athi-patra:  the latter
also I just like what I do...it seeps into every aspect of my life , and that requires a lot of putting out.
me:  next question (penultimate): who is your greatest critic? i know you're ambivalent to "reviewers" but is there any opinion that shakes you?

athi-patra:  my partner for the spirit of my work and commercially my curator Ashleigh Mclean.

may regret that answer...

athi-patra:  on the crics vibe: Zolitha ...coz she has such lucidity and respect in her approach, and a coupla swear words. also I have found a great mentor in Jay Patha especially with the Ilulwane series...the first one was performed in a under his curatorship...the treadmill heels ilulwane

he midwifes and nurtures Ilulwane along with I like to think.
and Roselee Goldberg
me:  should i strike it?

athi-patra:  let's see.

we'll get back to it.
me:  cool
last question: what's next? i know you're taking Ilulwane to the arts fest, and then another performance in PE. what come after? or are you not there yet?
Sent at 11:53 AM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  pe is gonna be a cool large scale performance, with Ilulwane sans the swimmers but yet another kind of team. also taking stock of the growth so i am prepared to create another epic ,"The future white women of Azania."

Sent at 11:56 AM on Tuesday

me:  Future white women, is there a new character being developed for that? will you be making collectable work for that one?

athi-patra:  the whole thing is about consumption and aspiration and the demise of such .  So I am designing the project to shape shift into the different media that i am responsible for. Of course it's performance-based. but to be accessible to it will need these diff translations to reach erryone , so a print , video ,craft series etc.

me:  still dealing with body/sexuality politics or is there a shift this time?

Sent at 12:02 PM on Tuesday

athi-patra:  Oh yes! more with intimacy...It is set on a prison island .

companionship is the right word.
me:  hehehehehehe it's gonna ruffle feathers... can't wait!

the thud of a snowflake

Everything about Athi-Patra Ruga is larger than life. From his infectious laughter to his style of dress, right down to the way he lives his life – large and in charge. A seasoned agent provocateur, his very existence is performance art. A tireless and prolific creator, he is always working – even on holiday. He says it's because he likes what he does, “It seeps into every aspect of my life... and that requires a lot of putting out.” I ignore the (unintended?) double entendre glaring at me from that last statement.

His given name is “Athenkosi”, the meaning of which in isiXhosa – Ruga's vernacular language – is laden with sentiments of thankfulness and appreciation (it literally means “they say thank you”). An almost prophetic moniker given that he has for almost the entirety his professional career been bowing to thunderous, though sometimes bewildered, applause from appreciative audiences in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Berlin and New York.

“Make me famous!”, he says facetiously during our interview. But he already is. He recently performed Ilulwane – an audacious masterpiece involving twelve synchronised swimmers and a forty-five minute opera he co-composed with Spoek Mathambo, that deals with issues around traditional male circumcision – at the Long Street Baths in Cape Town. Both nights the venue was filled to capacity, with many turned away at the door after waiting for over an hour to gain entry.

Early in his career he participated in a residency at Scenographies Urbaines, in Kinshasa, DRC. While he was there, he was invited to perform at a popular Kinshasa night club – or rather his first character, Miss Congo, was invited to perform. It is unclear whether or not the organisers were familiar with his work at this point. Not one to back down from the opportunity to take his art to an audience that would otherwise never experience it, he accepted. The performance is captured in a fifteen-minute video recording featuring Miss Congo, clad in his trademark red kerchief and denims, gracefully poised atop a bar stool on a stage - a needle in one hand and a piece of tapestry fabric in the other. A mic stands at the ready directly in front of him, but all that is heard throughout the recording is the din made by club patrons gradually getting impatient with this man silently weaving tapestry in front of them. There was no applause that night. But Ruga is not easily dismayed, the man is intrepid.

He is often compared to fellow South African performance artist, Steven Cohen. A comparison that he feels honoured by – the first performance piece he ever saw was Cohen's Chandelier – but warns that a basic comparison is often the result of laziness, of not engaging with his work, which many reviewers have difficulty doing. I ask if he thinks comparisons are made because his work is difficult to review.

“Is it tough to review my work? Then, if so, let it be about your experience and no convoluted qualifications on the work.”

Close friend, Pamela Dlungwana – curator at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town – agrees with this statement. In discussion with her about how the Ilulwane performance seemed to go over people's heads, she had the following to say:

“It's a visual performance piece, not a theatre piece as the write-ups say. You have to divorce yourself from expectations and things will slot into place. None of the visuals we all have in mind about traditional male circumcision were used.”

It was Anthea Buys who once wrote that it is the “politics of context” that concern Ruga. This being diametrically opposed to the “context of politics” that seems to inform critical discourse around contemporary South African art. There is almost a desire for all activism to follow the same common theme as all other spheres of South African social activism. Ruga is concerned with challenging even that, using high camp in his presentation to make even the most evolved amongst us, including himself, ask “what is it for?”.

“I think it is clear that irreverence is a tool in my work and that includes camp. These tend to get to the point more. The point being an accessible one. Provocation works if you are gonna be dealing with a wall made up of staid notions of art. I am highly aware of that.”

This provocation is not limited only to his performance pieces. Having began his career as a fashion designer, he regularly returns to textiles as a medium of artistic expression. Though he laments the “transient and apolitical nature” of fashion, he renegotiates the use of clothing and textiles to subvert the dictum that governs the human body and how it should be presented. For some in the series of tapestries that formed part of his 2009 exhibit, ...Mister Floating Signifier And The Dead Boys, at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town, he took to male pornographic imagery as a basis for the final product. One of the tapestries features a man in what appears ostensibly to be women's garments: a gold-patterned black leotard (the artist's favourite garment, even for himself) worn over a black full-body bodysuit, and long pink gloves that reach up to his upper-arms. His blackened manhood is clearly visible over the gold pattern of the bodysuit, lending it an air of dissociation or dislocation from its owner. His eyes are also blackened out, but with a kind of violent strike-out that gives the impression that his identity has been taken from him without his consent. Very little of the work he has produced over the years remains unsold, proving that provocation pays.

Ilulwane, in particular, deals with a very contentious subject amongst Xhosa men. The name refers to a person who has either forgone the traditional circumcision route in favour of the western way, or someone who has suffered a botched traditional circumcision resulting in hospitalisation and, sometimes, castration. Either way, according to the Xhosa male paradigm he is “a man who is not a man”, as author Thando Mgqolozana puts it. He is looked down upon and occupies a no-man's land between boyhood and manhood. Ilulwane is also the Xhosa name for a bat – that ethereal winged creature who's existence is shrouded in such myth that it is neither earthly nor heavenly, but inhabits that unknown place in between or beyond.

When I ask him what his father, with whom he is very close, makes of his work, considering that black South African families are notoriously conservative, he tells me that his father is enormously proud, though they never really discuss the semantics of the work.

“My family is like any other South African family, we have this flabbergasting addiction to shock. And also they think 'As long as he's employed , as'khathali [we don't care]'. I think that my dad equates art making with activism sometimes. That puts pressure on me. But the funny thing is after he started hearing and seeing my work, he still is expecting an album launch soon from his 'performance artist son.'”

This might not be a farfetched expectation, considering his recent foray into music. For the soundtrack accompanying Illulwane, not only did he and Spoek Mathambo re-arrange and re-imagine Somagwaza – the song sung at traditional Xhosa circumcision ceremonies – but Ruga also lent his voice to the opera and the spoken word on the forty-five minute track. On the Cape Town party scene he is known as DJ Uncle's Touch.

Although each of his characters is birthed and killed off, he dreams of reviving them and bringing them together in a singular performance, to bring them together in conversation with each other.

“One day I will show them . Funny, Iluwane the performance is about that ascension to the other world. Ilulwane comes close to owning its own destiny by taking that task of killing characters. I think they exist all in the after life. Like Ilulwane's ancestors or stuff like that. It would be nice to have them in conversation. That idea haunts a lot of late.”

For now though, he is preparing himself for a variant performance of Ilulwane at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in July. He will also be performing Ilulwane shortly thereafter in Port Elizabeth “sans the swimmers but yet another kind of team”.

Beyond that, we have The Future White Women Of Azania to look forward to. Another epic performance-based project incorporating all the different media he is responsible for: print, video, craft etc. Will it still be dealing with body/sexuality/identity politics?

“Oh yes! more with intimacy. It is set on a prison island. Companionship is the right word.”

Given South Africa's history with a certain prison island, this new project is sure to ruffle some feathers. I, for one, cannot wait. In a country that is only now learning to speak honestly to itself, I sense a conversation that has long lurked in the shadows is about to be initiated.

[originally published some time in 2012 on www.thiis.co.za - a now defunct online mag, and a great loss - published in its entirety without any further edits]

“Tell Them I Said Something”

Last year a group of friends and I got up on a bitterly cold winter morning and joined Metro FM's Walk For Freedom – an event held on June 16, 2011 to commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, as well as the radio station's twenty-five years on air. We gathered at Morris Isaacson High School where Tsietsi Mashinini had led that first group of protesters all those years ago, and I was awed by the turnout so early in the morning on a public holiday. Young people who had given up the warmth of their beds to relive that historic act of defiance, to remember the fallen and perhaps to rediscover their own militant voice.

The march was led, naturally, by Metro FM deejays. But it was not for very long. As soon as we started walking, the deejays lost what little control they had of the crowd and we came alive. Galvanised by the nostalgia of struggle songs and the politically charged spirit of the time (it was shortly after the local government elections, and during the Julius Malema “Shoot The Boer” debacle) we came into our own. Factions broke out amongst us as some of the more energetic and more enthusiastic comrades marched way ahead of the laggards in the back and the moderate walkers in the middle. Soon each faction had its own identified leaders – those with the loudest and best singing voices – and we followed their cue relentlessly. We sang “ayesaba amagwala /dubula dubula” with wanton abandon and complete disregard of its status as a banned song. We were defiant, as if channeling the spirit of those fallen heroes we had come to honour.

We walked the thirteen or so kilometre route, taking in the sights and sounds of Soweto that included the relatively comfortable middle class homes, whose excited occupants would occasionally come out to cheer us on and join in a revolutionary song or two. I even heard one lady tease her five-year old daughter with the words “O no le kae?” as we toyi-toyi'd past her house. We passed a South African Breweries truck parked outside a bottle store and jokingly threatened to upturn it, calling it “the people's truck”. The mood was jovial and full of mirth, colluding with the bright winter sunlight to belie the frigid conditions of the day and underlying internal struggles that each of us suffered through daily, and I could not help but wonder what it was like on that winter's day in 1976. As we neared historic Vilakazi Street, we saw the spot where it is said Hector Peterson was gunned down. A monument of stone had been erected to mark the place, and had been duly covered with graffiti.

When we arrived at Phefeni Junior Secondary School – the place where the march was brought to an abrupt halt under a hail of gunfire and tear gas - we were treated to incoherent babble from some youth leaders and saucy dancing to equally incoherent music from Chomee and her chommies. This may have been a technical issue, but the general lack of interest in the youth leader's message and voyeuristic glee that swept through the crowd for the kwaito star's performance reminded me that Nelson Mandela once called us the “Boom Shaka generation”, pointing to loose morals and lack of civil activism amongst us – preferring instead to gorge ourselves on the pop culture boom of the nineties. Indeed, those were euphoric times, and we all assumed the transition would be a smooth one and so we took our collective eyes off the ball for a minute, choosing the decadence of the party over the assiduous diligence of a youth invested in its own future. But it would be folly to think this is true about all the youth of South Africa today. Not eighteen years since the advent of democracy, when there is still very little change to the majority of young people's lives. The impact of the horrible tragedy that is June 16, 1976, amongst others, is indelibly etched in our DNA. As Jay Naidoo recently put it, “Soweto 1976 was our Tahrir square.”. It is a moment in our history that reminds us that though we may be younger than those in power, we have within us the potential to effect monumental change.

So why then, if we are so powerful, are we being marginalised and treated like a focus group that requires special programs and a special ministry? There are roughly eighteen million South Africans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five – that is about thirty-six percent of the total population of the entire country. The rest of the population is made up of the old and the very young, at thirty-one percent apiece. By anyone's calculus, this makes the youth the clear majority, and so every national program should, ultimately, benefit us. This idea that the older generations who are in power are laying the foundation and building a better South Africa for the youth who are the future is a baffling one. Which youth exactly do they speak of? And when is this youth meant to reap this boon sprouting from the benevolence of our elders? When we too are too old to enjoy it? We are here, now. Surely, we should be partners in this building project?

The daily struggle to keep mind, body and spirit together stands in the way to true liberation. We are forced, daily, to operate in a system that we don't quite understand, that is not of our making and benefits too few of us to be of any real use to any of us. When those lionhearted young heroes stood up to those caspirs and the tear gas and the live ammunition, they were fighting against the further dislocation of their understanding of their reality by having it explained to them in a language that, to this day, still holds oppressive tones in some of our ears. But the damage had already been done. Bantu Education had been steadily working on keeping black people on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum for some twenty-odd years by the time of the uprising. The knock-on effects on later generations have produced a youth that is ill-equipped with the tools required to succeed in the deceptively inclusive society of today.

We are so used to having policy defined for us from above, that we have little, if any, input into the processes that create these policies. But in 1976, twenty thousand children of school-going age stood up and said we will not be dictated to. They found in themselves the wherewithal to question and protest against a policy handed down from above, to which their adult teachers were ready to acquiesce – teachers who held hallowed and revered status in the community. But we, the current generation, find ourselves besieged on all sides with no clear enemy.

We, ourselves, are by no means a homogenous bunch – our diversity and competing needs are, perhaps, an albatross around our necks that keeps us from mobilising effectively as was done on that fateful day. The privilege some of us have had the good fortune to find ourselves in these past eighteen years insulates us from the dire situation our contemporaries in, for instance, rural South Africa find themselves in, where even the most basic freedoms are curtailed by a myriad of economic impediments. What we do have in common, though, is a growing realisation that the status quo is not doing any of us any favours.

This year, no doubt, the day will be commemorated all over the country. There will be the usual rallies in randomly selected cities and towns around the country, with the same messages and pearls of wisdom from our elders. There will be the popular school uniform parties held in almost every township in South Africa. And the day will pass, and we will all suffer a collective rhetoric- and alcohol-induced hangover, and go on with our lives. But maybe, if the rumblings on the streets and in certain halls of power continue, this year will see a revolution – be it a private revolution in each of us that moves one to empower oneself or another. Or a massively mobilised phenomenon similar to the Arab Spring. Perhaps that is too ambitious. I am sure of one thing though, and that is if the commemorative Walk For Freedom that I participated in last year is anything to go by, the young are indeed restless and any artificial power held over them will eventually crumble and we will grab hold of our destinies and begin to chart a new course.

[written 30 April 2012 for Loocha magazine's June 2012 issue and posted in full without further edits]