The Times has this week been reporting on the fall-out after Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana’s left a Johannesburg art exhibition in a huff because it included a series of photos of lesbian couples that she considered “pornographic”. The photographs are by Umlazi-born Zanele Muholi, a self-described “activist-photographer”
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Return of the Censors
Thursday, March 4th, 2010 by Sean O'Toole
The Times has this week been reporting on the fall-out after Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana’s left a Johannesburg art exhibition in a huff because it included a series of photos of lesbian couples that she considered “pornographic”. The photographs are by Umlazi-born Zanele Muholi, a self-described “activist-photographer”
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In Praise of Mister Weirdo
Friday, February 26th, 2010 by Sean O'Toole
“These are your names: Mr. Brown, Mr. White… Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue… Mr. Orange and Mr. Pink.”
“Why am I Mr. Pink?”
“Because you’re a faggot! All right?”
By all accounts Steve Buscemi, a former fire-fighter with New York’s Engine 55, got off lightly when he was christened Mr. Pink in Quentin Tarantino’s tomato-sauce masterpiece, Reservoir Dogs.
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Eye of the Storm
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 by Dylan Muhlenberg
As convenient as an iPod is (other music players are available), the problem with technology is that it strips music of its tactile aesthetics. It’s one thing having the complete Pink Floyd back catalogue on mp3, but to have hard copies in LP, especially when it doubles as art, well that’s connoisseurship.
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Rave Memoirs
Thursday, February 11th, 2010 by Sean O'Toole
It was 1998, the arse-end of rave. Three escapees from a maximum-security gym in Randburg are gurning and grinding on a dance floor in Newtown. One of them wears silver pants. Another sunglasses. It’s tragic. Ugly really.
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Curse of the Coal Train
Monday, February 8th, 2010 by Andy Davis
“The coal train is a motherfucker,” says Hugh Masekela in Songs of Migration, in his build up to performing the classic song “Stimela”.
“There are no happy songs about trains in Africa.” The train is a symbol of dislocation, forced removals, the leaving of loved ones, insecurity and upheaval. And then he begins to blow that flugelhorn
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Sick City
Friday, February 5th, 2010 by Sean O'Toole
Infecting the City is the rather charmless name for a public arts festival held in Cape Town each year. Last year’s event caused a bit of stir when the logo for the programme was unveiled – it featured an icon of Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, the “burning man” from the 2008 xenophobic attacks.
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Cubicle Hardcore
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 by Roger Young, images by Dylan Geldenhuys
There is something weird in the Cape Town Convention Center; and no, I’m not being disparaging toward all the tattoo and body modification artists. God knows they’ve had a life time of being called freaks, but the atmosphere itself is odd, off, a little incongruous. The white walls, the little booths, the neat sushi bar outside, the extremely clean Harleys, display cars, the squeaky clean looking Suicide Girls; all somehow clash with the earnest men in leather, bent over bleeding
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I Demand Your Attention
Friday, January 29th, 2010 by Sean O'Toole
The thing about language, fundamentally, is that it can’t imitate sounds. If I write Pfffffffft, does it really communicate the dismissive fart I heard come from the mouth of an elderly German man looking – casually, without conviction – at a photograph by Thomas Demand? Not really. Tom Wolfe made us believe it was possible, spectacularly possible, but at the end of the day… I don’t think so.
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