ARTAFRICAFEATURE / ARTS WRITING IN AFRICAWIELDING THE PEN / HOUGHTON KINSMAN 5/10 ARTAFRICA
I am learning that there is a very real connection between policies and political strategies
(such as neoliberalism, globalisation, militarised nationalism, war and capitalism) and
the making of art and exhibitions, the teaching of art, the conditions in which artists
work, the public perceptions of art and the development of artistic practice. Contrary to
romantic and widespread thinking that visual and performance artists are isolated from
civil society, their lives are raptured by real cultural and political phenomena.My art writing has gone from focusing only on one artist’s oeuvre to how art is made
in difficult economic and socio-historical conditions; from the art academy to the
neoliberal systems that support the idea of African art; from trends within the art
market to establishing a historical timeline of art exhibitions in Uganda over the last
30 years; from Western philosophical inquiry to the colonial imaginary in modern
Uganda.- SEAN O’TOOLE
Sean O’Toole is an author, critic, journalist and editor based in
Cape Town. His cultural journalism and reviews have appeared
in numerous publications, including Artforum, Frieze, Harvard
Design Review, Mail & Guardian and Sunday TIMES (South
Africa), for whom he also wrote a popular photographic column
(2004-10). He is a founding editor of Cityscapes, a magazine
for urban enquiry published by the African Centre for Cities and
a contributing editor to the Berlin-based platform Contemporary
And (C&). He is a past editor of Art South Africa.HK: With many inaccuracies and misconceptions about artistic practice emanating
from Africa, do you feel there is a greater responsibility required when writing
about this subject? Why?Sean O’Toole: All writing, if one is to be honest to what it means to write, entails
responsibility. A writer’s particular geography does not increase or lessen that responsibility.
Here, I am guided by the poet and unlikable madman Ezra Pound, whose grave I visited
in Venice: “Fundamental accuracy of statement is the one sole morality of writing.” I
wrote his words out in my own hand once; they still sit on a pedestal above the place
where I do near-daily penance in front of an electrified screen. What is an accurate
statement? I’m sure there is an objective journalistic measure. But what do I think it
means? Something to do with paying close attention to the fine grain of things: their
sensory qualities (colours, smells, sounds) as much as their social life (the history and
theory that frames, here, visual things). Negotiating that fine grain necessarily involves
observation, reading and conversation. It also means, I have come to learn, ignoring
the stampede of online opinion, the lynch mobs with their ‘likes’ and ‘comments,’ and
getting out there. The reward is a world of hard objects, strange food, birdcalls and
human encounters. Well, that and so much more.