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WILLEM BOSHOFF'S PANIFICE BETWEEN AFRICA AND EUROPE: THE LANGUAGE(S) OF CIVILIZATION(S) Kring Van Kennism, 2 0 0 0 , 1 1 b l a c k g r a n i t e r o c k s , i n s t a l l a t i o n s h o t Johan Snyman was the case with Marcel Duchamp, art ias an institution is unsettled by Willem Bo sho ff s work. Whereas Duchamp disenfranchised the work o f art as masterpiece, Boshoff disenfranchises the art public as connoisseurs o f the finest things in life. The kind o f art public that the institution o f art presuppo ses— an art historically informed, educated, and relatively well-to-do group o f people (enough to have leisure time and space available for themselves) and w ho, ironically, are the first to meet Boshoff's w orks—realizes immediately that they are at a disadvantage . Encountering Boshoff's Blind Alphabet, the normally sighted art going public finds itself dependent on those people for w hom an art gallery is usually not accessible. The visually challenged part o f the public, completely marginalized by the world o f the art gallery, is called upon to disclose the meaning o f the collection o f objects. The same strategy is deployed in Writing in the Sand and Circle of Knowledge. "Marginalized" or abstruse words in English, recognizable as part o f the vocabulary o f global English by the suffixes o f -ology or -ism by any user o f English, are explained in indigenous (South African) languages. The effect o f double alienation (marginalized English words explained in a "foreign" language) is strengthened by the medium. Writing in the Sand is executed with silicone and grounded, oxidized ore—silicone conjuring the notion o f the fleetingness o f computer generated w riting and o f a shared meaning agreed and understood between two languages. Circle of Knowledge consists o f eleven granite blocks on which a mini-dictionary o f twenty o f these unfamiliar -ology and -ism words are explained in the eleven official languages o f South Africa. Although the indigenous languages o f South Africa have the floor, even literally in the case o f Writing in the Sand, and although they are engraved in stone in Circle of Knowledge, they remain unheard and unspoken, stumbling blocks for the international intellectual world traveler. In these works the artist says that he "wish[es] to reverse the dominance and power o f privileged tongues [and po sitio ns]" and to frustrate them. He explains: Their frustration is only relieved when a speaker o f a 'lesser' language comes to their rescue. The extraordinary explanation [of the so-called marginalized English word] is calculated to bring a smile to the face and to engender further conversation. Speakers o f indigenous languages have at least one advantage over English speakers. The Zulu speaker, for example, usually knows how to speak and read English in addition to Zulu, but it is extremely rare to find an English speaker who can speak or read Zulu. In my work, the Zulu is able to patronize and indulge the helpless English speaker. This informal "entente cordiale" creates a chance for people w ho are unlikely to talk to one another to share things in an amicable way. , 1 1 E H In Boshoff's work the aspect o f the clever (or cunning) craftedness o f the traditional masterpiece, even the dimension o f what Mo nro e C. Beardsley dubbed the "fooling around with meanings,"^ are retained (the latter especially because o f the 'conceptual' nature o f Boshoff's w ork). But the masterpiece as master o f the situation o f aesthetic encounter, weighed down, as it were, by unsymmetrical relationships o f cultural (and political ) power, is transfigured into the facilitator o f aesthetic— 8 4 • N k a J o u r n a f o f C o n t e m p o r a r y A f r i c a n A r t agreeable— relationships o f mutual recognition...

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