Sounding Out

This group exhibition at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg was about the intersection between visual art and music/ sound. It took as its premise Glissant’s idea of mondialite, that we are living in a time of mixity but also interesting conjunctions - ‘same but different’ - realised through the notion of the echo and the refrain. In addition visual artworks from the participating artists, this exhibition included a pirate radio station that inhabited the gallery for the duration of the show, broadcasting a curated selection of invited sound artworks at regular intervals. Its opening night included a speech by Achille Mbembe and an unannounced intervention by James Webb who interrupted the electricity supply for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, in a mimic of John Cage’s famous performance artwork that instructs the performer to refrain from creating music for the same duration of time. The performance becomes the ambient sound. Indeed: enacted during a time of regular electricity blackouts in the city, nobody suspected it was an artwork and the audience seamlessly shifted from indoors to outdoors where the street lighting provided the necessary infrastructure for the event to continue. Webb filmed the disruption with a night vision camera. The exhibition also included a series of performances manifested during the exhibition run - a collaboration between Stompie Selibe and Josh Ginsburg in which Selibe entered the gallery unannounced, dressed formally, stood on a plinth and played a musical instrument using a score that comprised only directions for space and time instead of musical notation. It was filmed by the CCTV cameras in the Bag Factory, which bore witness to the ensuing performance. When Selibe decided the performance was done, he left.

Participating artists: Sanell Aggenbach, Lynette Bester, Brendon Bussy, Gordon Froud, Jared Ginsburg, Josh Ginsburg, Malose Malahlela, Angie Mullins, Neo Muyanga, Joao Orecchio, Jane Rademeyer, James Sey, Nathan Jansen van Vuuren, James Webb

Curator: Kim Gurney
Assistant curator: Thato Mogotsi
Exhibition dates: 4-18 July 2012
Opening speaker: Achille Mbembe
Catalogue produced: Yes - digital
Website produced: Yes - unfortunately now defunct