[…] Special Issue: Johannesburg Lasts
Issue Editorial
Editorial: Last, Lasting, Lost
The specter stands for that which never simply is and thus escapes the totalizing logic of conventional cognitive and hermeneutic operations. It cannot be reduced to a straightforward genesis, chronology or finitude and insists on blurring multiple borders, between visibility and invisibility, past and present, materiality and immateriality, science and pseudo-science, religion and superstition, life and death, presence and absence, reality and imagination
(Esther Peeren, 10).
What are Johannesburg’s spectres and whom do they haunt? What spectres of late capitalism inhabit a city hastily erected on top of the rich seam of gold that lay beneath? How do legacies from Johannesburg’s past mingle with its future
Johannesburg Lasts is a research collection that seeks to uncover, unpack and deepen investigations into spectres of Johannesburg, it’s toxic legacies, its facades and the residues of its disturbed surfaces. Our initial impetus was sparked by the last remnants of an archive: The 1976 book Johannesburg Firsts by librarian Anna Smith. Johannesburg is a city young enough for Smith to keep a biased score of its firsts. She presents a vast amount of information, from the city’s large industrial debuts all the way down to the first chicken hatched in Johannesburg. This story not only loses key details and facts in Smith’s retelling, but is charged with the racist assumptions of that era in apartheid South Africa. It left us wondering about what it would mean to consider Johannesburg in terms of its lasts.
Through the framing of the last and the lost, we ask questions of how to imagine a city in terms of its ends, its spectres – those which are “both revenant, that which returns from the past, and arrivant, that which is to come…” and its continued and future hauntings (Peeren 2014: 14). Here we think of the remnants of apartheid spatial planning, the facades of Johannesburg’s suburbs and enclaves, and the “emergence of diverse urban worlds within the same territory—strange mappings and blank figures, discontinuous fixtures and flows, and odd juxtapositions” (Mbembe 2004: 375).
Johannesburg is an exquisite corpse, collaged from other times and other places, “characterized by an unmediated adjacency” a “hybrid composition” that “betrays an attempt at synthesis” (Comaroff and Ong 2013: 85). It is a city that operates through forms of mimicry and mimesis “evident in the city’s contemporary architectural forms […] in its mania for wealth, for the sensational and the ephemeral, for appearances” (Mbembe 2004: 376).
We ask questions of appearance, surfaces and residues, the visible and invisible, the sonic, tactile, emotional and radioactive. We ask questions of what lives above the surface, what legacies can be resurfaced and revisited, and what logics govern the cities operations – it’s roads, it’s policies, it’s building codes, it’s highways, and the rivers of mine dust floating off the top of dunes scattered around the edges of the city, settling in to the fine tissue of our lungs. What reenactments of dark colonial and patriarchal legacies continue to govern our present interactions with and future imaginings of this city?
In a city weighed down by extreme inequality and infrastructural breakdown (Myambo 2019: 2), during a time of cataclysmic global environmental and health crises, how do we catalogue, capture and research a city’s lasts?
Johannesburg’s construction and collapse occurs simultaneously alongside projects of regeneration and renewal. In many spaces, the remains of old buildings stand beside temporary structures, “this psychic life inseparable from the metropolitan form: its design, its architectural topographies, its public graphics and surfaces” (Mbembe 2004: 375). Johannesburg’s old and new CBDs (developed in the 1930s and 1970s, respectively) attest to a crass modernist urge to expand new ground rather than adjust to the shifting stakes of city space.
Land-locked and without obvious natural resources to draw people to it, Johannesburg has relied on extraction, artifice and novelty. From its very beginnings, “Johannesburg was fashioned as the ultimate city of the nouveau riche capital, luminous and exciting, yet superficial and unforgiving … with no historically consistent aesthetic sensibility or genuine commitment to the cultural heritage of the past (Murray 2011: 9). Johannesburg is now an amalgamation of densely layered and built upon historical space, loosely attached to swathes of urban sprawl. It could even be described as a city that has nostalgia for the future rather than the past (Malcomess and Kreutzfeldt 2013: 18).
A central question that haunts this landscape is one of boundaries. What are this city’s physical boundaries and where are its edges? Ever more ingenuous security fences, wires and walls clearly outline who feels they have something that needs protecting and who does not. What of the rewritten CBD, the emergence of satellite financial districts in the north, like Sandton, and the superficial smart enclaves like that of the unrealised Modderfontein fantasy? What of the hollow ground underneath and the dusty atmosphere of constant construction and ruination above? Perhaps the most pertinent question this special edition of Ellipses asks is: In an “elusive” city that refuses definition, what can be pinned down as being specifically of this place, belonging enough to last? (Nuttall and Mbembe 2004).
The specters of Johannesburg are territorial: sticky and stubborn. In this special edition and with contributions that blur the lines of disciplinary practice; realised through code, static and moving images, 3D models, digital maps and interactive interfaces. All made with the intention of being accessed through screens and through them, we hope to engage with the specters that continuously create new bridges between past, present and future.
Territorial edges, dusty surfaces and sticky histories:
This city, like so many others, is threaded with encounters of lasts and losts. It is scattered with attempts to ensure its history remains, spread out across blue plaques and monuments. In the following collection of projects we see the messiness of official and unofficial histories play out. As the different projects take us along streets, under the earth, into forgotten places and future musings, there is a restlessness across them all. An undertone that says perhaps something refuses to be settled. This speaks to the haphazard assemblage of moving parts that make up Johannesburg. The projects here all, in different ways, pay close attention to the movement of people, plants, dust, data and the very visible and invisible workforces that make the city work. Overall, there is a sense of agitation and unease throughout.
Projects like those of Counterspace, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt and Brett Pyper are tied to the legacies of specific sites in the old CBD. We are drawn into potential versions and visions of Kwa Mai Mai market, a burnt and later demolished demolished building, and an historic cultural Jazz landmark. Where Pyper’s former Bantu Men’s Social Club is now an echoing heritage site, Kreutzfeldt reflects on the end days of The Bank of Lisbon through an unsettling video and sound piece. In close proximity to these sites geographically, Counterspace delves into the psychic and radioactive vibrations of a possible future Kwa Mai Mai market, where the toxic legacies of the mining industry mingle with the business savvy of Johannesburg’s vibrant informal market. Each of these projects render the aesthetics of the surface as hypnotic, and reach into the underworld of voices and messages: from the past or the future we don’t fully know.
Nkgopoleng Moloi draws us away from such histories and futures, with multiple (often conflicting) narratives, to pull us into her own vulnerable personal position walking the Braamfontein streets as a black womxn. These social and political architectures are all evocatively conjured with sound and movement.
Throughout this special edition, the senses are important. Nina Barnett and Jeremy Bolen make us aware of our skin and the surfaces of our devices, through a meditation on the ubiquitous dust that is, perhaps, the one intimate element that all inhabitants of Johannesburg must live with. In opening up the world of stones beneath the built and building city, Brigitta Stone-Johnson expands on the make-up of not only dust, but the deep time of continental shifts beneath the Braamfontein Ridge.
Riley Grant and William Shoki take disembodied experience into the realm of Marx and Zoom, questioning the always-on workforces of late capitalism. They pull into focus the labour practices behind the shiny surfaces and projections of Sandton, its digital interfaces and its hypnotising blurring of life and work. Lastly, the interruptions of DigiCleanse’s advertisements highlight the ubiquitousness of capitalism operating through the wellness industry, preying on the citizens of polluted and toxic cities who seek refuge in new age cleansing tools, both for mind and body.
Dusty Futures:
The events of the past year have shifted how we think about traces, effects, marks, and remains. On both a micro and macro scale, from the surface of our lungs and groceries to our travel routes and movements, Johannesburg life has changed. Through the sightings and soundings of aspects of the city presented here we hope to draw attention to the screens which display, frame, code, render and augment our interaction with the idea of the city and its people and their uncovering through this creative research.
Bibliography:
Comaroff, J. and Ong, K-S, 2013. Horror in Architecture. California: Novato
Malcomess, B. and Kreutzveldt, D. 2013. Not No Place: Johannesburg. Fragments of Spaces and Times. Johannesburg: Fanele.
Mbembe, A. 2004. “Aesthetics of Superfluity” in Public Culture 16(3). Duke University Press, pp 373–405
Murray, M. 2011. City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Myambo, M. 2019. “Introduction: Jo’burg’s spatial dilemmas resonate globally” in Myambo, M. (ed), Reversing Urban Inequality in Johannesburg, London and New York: Routledge, pp 1-9.
Nuttall, S. and Mbembe. A. 2004. ‘Introduction: Afropolis’ in Nuttall, S. and Mbembe, A. (eds). Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis. Durham and London: Duke University Press. pp 1-36.
Peeren, E. 2014. The Spectral Metaphor : Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Smith, A. 1976. Johannesburg Firsts / Johannesburgse Eerstes, Johannesburg: Africana Museum.
Articles by
Brett Pyper
Articles by
Brigitta Stone-Johnson
Articles by
Dorothee Kreutzfeldt
Articles by
Jeremy Bolen
Articles by
Karin Tan
Articles by
Nina Barnett
Articles by
Nkgopoleng Moloi
Articles by
Riley Grant
Articles by
Sarah de Villiers
Articles by
Skye Quadling
Articles by
Sumayya Vally
Articles by
William Shoki
About
Andrea Hayes
About
Brigitta Stone-Johnson
About
Glen Mudau
About
Laura Seal
About
Paul Sika
About
Andrei van Wyk
About
Jarrett Erasmus
About
Karin Tan
About
Naadira Patel
About
Ruth Sacks
About
Skye Quadling
About
Tara Weber
8 Seconds in Uneven Numbers
What emerges or is withheld in the demolition of a building in the city centre?
Abstract
What emerges or is withheld in the demolition of a burnt-out building in the Johannesburg city centre at the end of November 2019? To this day, the cause of a fire at the Bank of Lisbon in September 2018, which lasted for 3 days and led to its implosion, has not been disclosed publicly. This despite a series of legal investigations implicating provincial government departments, city offices and the Johannesburg Emergency Services. The Bank of Lisbon housed various departments, including the Department of Health, when it started to burn. On the first day of the fire, three firemen lost their lives as they got trapped on the 23rd floor. It emerged that fire hydrants in the building were dry. Grievous issues of occupational health and safety were ignored for years, despite repeated complaints by office workers and labour unions. At the time of the fire, the building should not have been occupied as it did not meet basic compliance standards.
This project consists of three parts that evolve around the unfolding narrative. It begins with a video recording of the implosion, filmed from the evacuated student residency directly opposite the Bank of Lisbon (a collaboration with Simon Gush and Andrei van Wyk). This is followed by a text that collates online information around the fire, sourced mainly from available news reports and interviews. The final part is a sound piece by Andrei van Wyk: a re-composition of the cameras’ audio recordings that proposes a sonic meditation on the collapse of architecture and a search for a vertical movement through a now imagined space. Between these instances is the attempt to think through Locard’s exchange principle, that ‘every contact leaves a trace’[1] and acknowledge the disparate presence of traces in the city’s nervous system that echo an alternate, socially legitimate reality.
Authors
Dorothee Kreutzfeldt
Digital Editor
Laura Seal
Peer Reviews
Peer Review
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: 8 Seconds in Uneven Numbers (2020)
Reviewer: Anonymous
Which aspects of the submission are of interest / relevance and why?
I was very interested in how the artist gave a forensic account of the building, the disaster and the aftermath. As someone who lives in Joburg, and actually saw that fire from my office at the time, I was fascinated by how they reconstructed the history of the space.It also has a general interest for anyone interested in the psychogeography of urban space.
How are the artistic and research outcomes represented?
The submission combines a very detailed, and often gripping text, with sound and visual pieces to accompany.I was genuinely impressed by how much research and detail the author has provided. It really anchors the project in a sense of time and space, and brings it to life. I also appreciated how they combined the focus on space with the human stories of the people trapped within it.
How well does the design support the submission?
I really liked the design elements. The webpage had a real mystery and dread to it.I thought the design powerfully conveys the sense of urban fear and disaster which the work expresses.
Are there any ethical or legal concerns?
No.
Conclusions and and pre publication revision:
An intriguing and powerful work. It really captures its subject-both the building and people. The combination of text and audio is impactful and generates an intense atmosphere. I found it to be a fascinating submission.
Peer Review
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 2: 8 Seconds in Uneven Numbers (2020)
Reviewer: Anonymous
Which aspects of the submission are of interest / relevance and why?
How could a demolition –concretely, materially –remain so elusive and inconclusive?
'8 Seconds in Uneven Numbers' presents a research question, documentation of the process, analysis, and (unresolvable) conclusion. The submissions subject matter takes up the question of the demolition of the Bank of Lisbon in Johannesburg. The submission traces winding accounts and interviews related to the 11 months of preparation, the 8 seconds of implosion itself, the aftermath and fatal impacts on those who lost their lives in the fire which persisted for 3 days. Issues of testimony and witness surface as outcomes to foreground the unknowability and impossibility of precisely historicizing this event that happened in plain sight.
The incompleteness (“neither impartial nor comprehensive”, Footnote #2) is clearly indicated almost as a disclaimer and the details are present where possible: dates, names, times, regulations, dimension, etc. However in this polyphonic account (the implosion recording, the soundscape, the essay, the drawings, and the clippings from interviews and reports) the process of historicization becomes part of the muddle. The research outcome is an artistic synthesis of sources that in attempts to recreate and playback the event, effectively evoke an extended meditation on remediation.
How are the artistic and research outcomes represented?
The integration of artistic research and practice is evidenced by the three main pieces that comprise the research’s presentation: video, soundscape, and text. The form adequately represents both the multi-layered and multi-source research as methodology and presentation. The interaction between the submission’s elements, including the work of multiple artists, stream well into each other in sequence. The video, an absent witness (“We pressed record and exited the building”), concludes with dust settling. What is visible behind the smoke? Kreutzfeldt’s essay offers footnotes and drawings which serve to both sketch the research findings and retrace steps in the mystifying process of inquiry into the unknowable. Accompanied by the sound piece by Andrei van Wyk, the sensation of remediation is palpable. The result of these outcomes is the suspension of space and time as if re-tracing, re-playing, re-visiting, and re-reading could ever offer more than a partial account.
How well does the design support the submission?
As touchpoints, there are a few orienting elements in the design that I appreciate. They make room for the intentionally disorienting features and content. They are as follows: The title of the browser tab “The Bank of Lisbon,” the “i” on the index page to access the abstract, specs, and bio, the countdown on the video bottom right corner, the “LISTEN” label on the sound piece, the clickable pop-up footnotes.
The concepts of measurement and re-tracing steps are reflected in the design through the slowed down sound piece by Andrei van Wyk, the timer at the bottom right corner counting up and down, the two lines being drawn across the page.
The navigability between elements is also supportive to engaging an audience who accepts the invitation into the research to play it back and mull it over.
Are there any ethical or legal concerns?
Not that I am aware of.
Conclusions and and pre publication revision:
This submission is overall very strong in terms of research, method, outcomes and presentation. Most notably, the presentation effectively evokes the process of research itself. The many sources are disorienting in a way that works towards the research objectives. Through design elements and selected media, we are invited to sit in the research with the artists. The multiple design elements provide the gestures of searching, re-searching, playing back, looking for clues, almost as if all the documents are scattered on the floor and the audience is asked to attempt to make sense of what remains. I do not recommend any essential revisions.