handbook for hosting, the dean kriel handbook for …...stories, notes and anecdotes prepared by the...

HANDBOOK FOR HOSTING, The Dean Kriel

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HANDBOOK FOR HOSTING ARTISTS, BRICS & OUR ROLES TO PLAY

Triptych 1, scenes from [MARS] 1: First Landing

Stories, notes and anecdotes prepared by The Dean Kriel, for you and your [MARS] journey

If man could experience the world…. in the same way he experiences art, there would be no need for art, artists and similar "nonproductive" elements1

1 George Maciunas. Neo-Dada in Music, Theater, Poetry, Art 1962


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INTRODUCTION The role of artist within BRICS is to host an event, hereafter referred to as ‘the exhibition’ that acknowledges the multiple cultural idiosyncrasies of a modern, progressive world. The artist, hereafter referred to as ‘the’, introduces a variety of national dishes that compliment each other in taste, size and variety. Guests will challenge each other’s perception of the relationships between the real and the imaginary, and so ‘the’ must channel the power of these spontaneous interactions into an improvised role-play according to rules as defined by the guests involved, hereafter referred to as ‘participants. ‘the’ will then allow participants to entertain each other, but facilitate their interactions with enough distance from the subject to allow all participants to contribute and engage in a manner that allows multiple perspectives to become part of the shared memory.

Triptych 2, scenes from [MARS] -2: Black & Baiju

The role of ‘the’ is not to aggravate guests, but rather to encourage them to participate willingly in the activities and recordings thereof, of which are available to the public via social media subscription, hereafter referred to as the productions. Each of these productions (disconnected moments collaged together into one harmonious unity) can be read as a compromise between the desire for entertainment and necessity for truth. The public, as a collective of individual interests, must be involved in creating the allegorical ‘reality of rotten tomato, rather than an illusionistic image or symbol of it’2 by interacting with these products through the technology available to them. By way of constant online connectivity, ‘the’ then creates a framework for participants of this or any BRICS project to experience the ‘the exhibition’, hereafter referred to as [Mars, just as they would experience life this 21st century. [MARS] then allows all participants in the process to believe in the reality and relevance of their [Mars] journey.



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Curious? What follows is a step-by-step guide and accompanying case studies for welcoming BRICS, the next inevitable change directing global culture. You, dear reader, may peruse the following ideas in whichever sequence your personal trajectory deems necessary:

Triptych 3, scenes from [MARS] 2.2 Dark Light, [MARS] 4: Pajama Party

⅓ of the world: Questioning Communities and Characters

An Authentic Community Inclusive Creative Technology Predicting Power Play

Triptych 4, scenes from [MARS] 15 A Performed Exhibition, [MARS] 1 First Landing, [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire,

3rd world domination: Changing Space and Traditions

A Game of Questionable Ethics Post-Colonial Role-Play Defamiliarizing Traditional Icons of Liberated Nationalism


3 Trips to Mars: Suggestive Stories and Role Play

A Revolution in Social Mobility Capturing (the) Moment(s) in History Branding Cross-Cultural Propaganda

Or another introduction…


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Take your [MARS] journey to: ⅓ of the world: Questioning Communities and Characters 3rd world domination: Changing Space and Traditions 3 Trips to Mars: Suggestive Stories and Role Play

Take another introduction, or just be curious…

WELCOME TO

⅓ of the world: Questioning Communities and Characters

Triptych 6, scenes from [MARS] 15 A Performed Exhibition, [MARS] 2.2 Dark Light, [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire,

Who is you’re your [MARS] journey about? An Authentic Community Inclusive Creative Technology Predicting Power Play

AN AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY

Thus the primary contribution of a truly concrete artist consists in creating a concept or a method by which form can be created independently of him3

An authentic author doesn’t necessarily imply authentic motives. For this reason [MARS] interrogates the politics of space by using autobiography to bring issues of authenticity into conversation. Starting with autobiography creates a strong audience connection from pre- to post-production. This entry point is as unique and familiar as each person is to themselves, and understanding how or why subject matter is personal to oneself makes finding the connection in another person more authentic and thus more satisfying to interact with. Autobiography is the writer telling his or her own story, most often in the first person perspective. With [MARS] it is the telling, rather than the story, with which I am concerned. Autobiography need not be only MY story, it can be a shared story of first person perspectives. The arrangement of this telling was a form of shared storytelling that enabled participants of [MARS] to contribute to the realization of the final product: how I am conveying what you are now reading about our interactions. 3 George Maciunas. Neo-Dada in Music, Theater, Poetry, Art 1962


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Using a simple form repeatedly narrows the field of the work and concentrates the intensity to the arrangement of the form. This arrangement becomes the end while the form becomes the means. 4

Triptych 7, scenes from [MARS] 5: Alter Ego

[MARS] is a self-portrait that attempts to capture the essence of a human in their complex, miscellaneous and inconsistent search for individualism, the moments of curiosity. Curiosity begins with the choice to take a chance on the unforeseen, and hopefully arrive at change. Increased access to internet enables more people than before to make choices with effects that may or may not have been intended. These people are also more aware of increasing frequency of social changes in their spaces. Allowing participants to enact this awareness and demonstrate how with positive reinforcement, their curiosity led them to spontaneously develop rules for role-play. They then established power dynamics that reflected their perspectives of the spaces they occupied and how they understood the relationships of themselves and others to the space. Much of social media involves creating ideas with relationships between text and image. Sharing these ideas in groups and communities generates a space of conversation that multinational brands are desperate to take ownership of. Email marketing transplanted junk mail from the physical postbox to below the cyberspace inbox. In response, social media operates as a service to participate in and not and not a product to distribute. The allegorical 15 minutes of fame enjoyed by stars of the silver screen has been divided into 15-second digital experiences multiplied among more people. These digital artists can be anyone who can occupy curiosity within a particular time on public online forums and social media platforms. The relevance of their occupation is particularly difficult to judge within traditional conventions of art appreciation and understanding of what constitutes the role of the artist, who, as Roger Fry explains, should express

something which was latent in us all the time, but which we never realised, that he has revealed us to ourselves in revealing himself. And this recognition of purpose is, I believe, an essential part of the aesthetic judgment proper. 5

Roger Fry was published before the advent of internet and social media, but his concept can guide us to determine how we recognize the authenticity of purpose in digital art. Digital art on the internet occupies more space in time than the average human life can comprehend; and as such the median aesthetic perception of digital

4 Sol Lewitt. Paragraphs on Conceptual Art. 1967.

5 Roger Fry. An Essay in Aesthetics. 1909


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art is prone to a generalized level of perceived mediocrity. The future of art in the digital realm then lies not in defining new conventions, but creating spaces of reference and contrast by which consumers of digital art can present, practice and produce ideas. The next generation of digital artists will be those who can create the frameworks for consumers to express their creativity in ways and spaces that would have previously been overlooked. Determining the authenticity of these artists and their intentions will also require that aesthetic judgment operate within the cultural context from of the art or artist itself. The concept then to create art that operates independently of the artist is surely what George Maciunas describes in his predictions for the contributions of concretists to the Neo-Dada:

Further departure from artificial world of abstraction is affected by the concept of indeterminacy and improvisation. …. a kind of framework, an "automatic machine" within which or by which, nature …. can complete the art-form, effectively and independently of the artist6

The “automatic machine” of which Maciunas describes then could be new ways of using social media to generate creative content, or even new social media platforms altogether.

Triptych 8, scenes from [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire, [MARS] 5: Alter Ego

Who is you’re your [MARS] journey about?


Or take your your [MARS] journey in another direction… ⅓ of the world: Questioning Communities and Characters 3rd world domination: Changing Space and Traditions 3 Trips to Mars: Suggestive Stories and Role Play

Return to the introduction, or become curious again



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INCLUSIVE CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY Technology is changing the way communities interact and communicate with each other. We’re afforded more opportunity to create and contribute to conversations and at increasing speeds and in more spaces. Access to creative tools had previously determined the role of artist and this access allowed the artist to develop the virtuosity employed to express society’s thoughts, so how does art appreciation judge the aesthetic value of an artist in an age when technology has enabled more globally inclusive art making practices? Immersing myself in the culture of foreign life in Beijing I sought to determine the moral codes of foreigners and predict how they would behavior in particular situations. By developing this thesis along the same lines of my creative work exploring BRICS, [MARS] became a metaphor for the young people from around the world who had travelled so far from the place they knew to a world that had been isolated in its own history, culture and ethics. China has been criticized for its dominant role in BRICS, and I wondered whether it was a space where new ideas could flourish or would it be a space that rejected the incorporation of alien life into local culture.

In our time we have an experientially drastically richer environment. … The whole world is there to be seen, and the whole world can watch man walk on the moon from their living rooms. Certainly art or objects of painting and sculpture cannot be expected to compete experientially with this?7

Globalism today is the convergence of historically opposing economic interests, cultural influences and moral codes. As technology improves our ability to communicate across geographical boundaries, improve global standards of living and increase life-expectancy; popular science tells us that unless we develop means to migrate into space, society will sabotage its own ability to advance.8 This experience, as Kosuth describes above, has been expressed with such intense intimacy since the advent of television; but with more advances in technology, more people have been able to interact more with the objects, events and people that shape their lives. Internet has broken our understanding of time and space by making it possible for information to travel to and from people at all levels of society. More people are talking and engaging in creative processes that contribute to the actions and reactions that shape global society. Human rights movements are developed on social media and mobilized as fast as the local internet speed. So then, how does the artist gauge his role in this conversation? The internet has changed the traditional roles that separate the artist from the spectator of the artwork and so we have a much more fluid interaction between artist-creator-spectator (to the extent that anyone at any time and on any platform can express and distribute their thoughts on a mass scale). How does art appreciation recognize the value of an artist’s work when the conventions that defined artist as creator of thought have changed? The

7 Joseph Kosuth. Art After Philosophy. 1969 8 Ben Austen. After Earth: Why, Where, Why, where, How and When We might Leave Our Home Planet. 2011


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artist now is applicable to anyone with a mobile phone that is equipped with applications to create digital art, furthermore anyone who has access to the social media accounts to distribute their thoughts.

Triptych 9, scenes from [MARS] 4 Pajama Party

As traditionally understood, art appreciation is a conditioned exercise in aesthetics, that being a matter of taste at a time in history. Since 5000BC, Egyptians had developed a conceptual and systematic representation of the human image.9 By the 12th century, Japanese artists devised pictorial conventions to visually convey the emotional content of the time. The campaign strategy to elect the 44th president of the USA, Barack Obama, was developed using an integrated marketing communications strategy that appealed to voters across multiple digital and physical platforms.10 In each example, the role of artist has been to identify how conventions in art are a means to advancing the interests of society during a particular time. An artist’s judgments should present new propositions on the nature of art and whether or not conventions of the time are relevant to the future. Its relevance to society of the time is contextually bound to its affect on the trajectory of art’s tradition, history and conventions. As technology becomes more relevant in the art making process as well as more accessible in the public domain, the role of artist as creator of content will develop to curator of interests. The artist’s reign as tastemaker is at threat for as long as he understands art as a declaration of virtuosity, and not an expression of experience. So in judging the aesthetic qualities of art today, art appreciation should look to how the work is indicative of a concept that realizes itself in the process of thought, rather than a representation of thought. Furthermore, reflecting on Roger Fry’s paradigm of aesthetics, consider that art is an expression of emotions regarded as an end in themselves. Tools for creating art (in the digital realm) are more widely accessible and so the role of artist in the future will be to encourage this inclusive development within the art world, which had previously been excluded from mainstream society. 11.

Who is you’re your [MARS] journey about?


9 PBS.org. How Art Made The World: Egypt, Obsessive Order 10 ISMR. Case code: MKTG211. Barack Obamas Integrated Marketing. 2009



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Or take your your [MARS] journey in another direction…

⅓ of the world: Questioning Communities and Characters 3rd world domination: Changing Space and Traditions 3 Trips to Mars: Suggestive Stories and Role Play


PREDICTING POWER-PLAY Power dynamics provide functional roles in any group of two people or more. When these power dynamics are challenged then curiosity drives an investigation to determine what caused the challenge. To encourage participation in the conversation around space exploration, NASA has disrupted the power dynamics of education, access and awareness that had previously separated astrophysicists and fans. As the NASA Mars Rover explores Mars, it’s @curiosity Instagram account allows its followers to travel with it, through regular updates and images from space. The open platform encourages more participation in a conversation around space exploration and the ethical implications it has on society’s development. The conversation is a role-play between the astrophysicists and their fans, imagining their journey on Mars through the discoveries posted on the Instagram account. @curiosity has managed to create an authentic relationship among its contributors and followers by inducing emotions that support its motives. As technology enables audiences increased access to media-making, society has become more obsessed with spectacle and numb to sensation. Or has it?

Triptych 10, scenes from [MARS] 2.2 Dark Light, [MARS] 5: Alter Ego

The industrial revolution is not only the first full-scale technological revolution that civilization has experienced since its very beginnings; it is also the greatest and most thorough-going … In other words, the industrial revolution marks a great turning point in history12

If the ‘industrial revolution’ was the ‘technological revolution’ of the time, then it is possible to use past reactions and changes as references to predict cultural behaviors in the future. Culture frames our instinctive behaviors and technology can

12 Clement Greenberg. Avant-Garde and Kitsch. 1939


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assist in developing those instincts into actions. Predicting these actions requires a study of the motives that drive the effects of change and the cultural impact technology has on society. Using my immediate surroundings as a starting point for this investigation, my aim was to develop a framework that produced art with a community, for this community and of the community. Community sports and games encourage mass participation within designated roles - players, coaches, supporters, advertisers, maintenance staff, betters, commentators. Each role-player is as integral to the overall spectacle of the performance as the other. The roles we choose to play are reflections of our instincts or intentions to re-enact or counteract memories we attached to these instincts. The choices made to play these roles are defined by a cultural context that governs power dynamics. To develop a framework that allowed inclusive contribution to the creative space, [MARS] took its subject matter from designated art spaces into spaces where audiences were able to develop their own set of power dynamics by playing games. My role was to facilitate their process and encourage their controbutions. Through the games that we played, we produced action that I recorded and then edited. The product of this process was a series of juxtaposed images to create a storyline. Facilitating their willing contributions to creating the work, I then used the action from the games juxtaposed the real recorded footage with my own imagined outcomes. Through the games we played and the way they responded to changes in the environment, these people became my art material. The [MARS] series became a process by which I concluded that role-play is a means for groups to investigate their surroundings and challenge power dynamics. When cultural conventions of power dynamics are challenged, our instinctive behavior is to investigate the cause of change. My community led me to create a framework with them, for them and of them and their investigations became a progression of motives enacted as: “Who am I?” “I am.” “Now, I want…”

The belief in art for art’s sake arises when artists and people keenly interested in art are hopelessly at odds with their social environment. 13

My initial intention in [MARS] was to create a very imaginative representation of what I foresaw if BRICS nationals would colonize Mars. However, the audiences involved in this process were interested in creating a different story. Frustrated by my inability as an artist to create my vision, I saw the same situation experienced by my audience. Understanding that the function of art is to communicate ideas, I sought to uncover a framework in which audiences could find more power in creating the characters they wanted to see played in stories. Chernyshesky’s ideas in the 17th thesis of Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality expresses the notion that art has “the purpose of pronouncing judgment on the phenomena of life”14. So when art isolates itself from the audience as a series of self-referential statements and justifications for its existence, the audience is disconnected from being validated and

13 GV Plekhanov. Art and Social Life. 1912 14 N. G. Chernyshevsky. Collected Works. 1906


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thus validating the need for art.

Triptych 11, scenes from [MARS] 1 First Landing, [MARS] 5: Alter Ego

As technology continues to improve global connectivity it gives art more power to become a completely inclusive activity, where the struggle for power or dominance become inoperable vices against human advancement. In [MARS], the participants were involved in creating characters for the stories. They did so by actively participating in the conversations around BRICS as a political alliance of geographically disconnected nations. These discussions online then manifested themselves in the real spaces I provided through installation. Much of this process is akin to the work of Brazilian director Augusto Boal, founder of Theatre of the Oppressed. He took his theatre into public spaces and involved audiences in role-play. The characters they created in these role-plays gave the public a voice to express their political views and as such impacted changes in local governance.15

we need popular art and mean thereby art for the broad masses, for the

many who are oppressed by the few, “the people themselves,” the mass of

producers who were for so long the object of politics and must now become

the subject of politics. Let us recall that the people were for long held back

from any full development by powerful institutions, artificially and forcefully

gagged by conventions, and that the concept popular was given an

ahistorical, static, undevelopmental stamp. 16

Russia, at the time of progressive artists like Pushkin, was a volatile state divided by the need to trump empire and the traditional conventions that kept it in place. The people wanted art that would improve the morale of the state. In a turn of events, the Tsar Nicholas I employed Pushkin to elevate society from the state of hopelessness. When Nicholas I forgave Pushkin for ‘the political errors of his youth’, art was given institutional power to transform spatial politics and become a tool for directing the vision of the state by using the people’s mouthpiece. In these examples, Russia using poetry and Brazil using the public space, BRICS can understand how the cultural changes within societies at the time were a direct result of the interaction between art and governance.

15 Augusto Boal. Theatre of the Oppressed. 1993

16 Bertolt Brecht. Popularity and Realism. 1938


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Triptych 12, scenes from [MARS] 1: First Landing, poster from [MARS] 4: Pajama Party

In [MARS], the participants created characters for their stories by contributing to the conversations online. Online connectivity allows artists to communicate with their audiences, but it is imperative to understand how these characters are portrayed as this will determine the success by which the work is able to disseminate knowledge in society. The future of characterization in BRICS projects lies in developing characters within audiences. The artist then should develop frameworks for the audience to contribute to this creation and then interpret how to present their contributions in ways that support national pride. Today, the role of art in BRICS must present positive propaganda to counteract this era where past ideologies will begin to fall away. As a result of changing ideology, the state will sink into an aggravated sense of hopelessness, to which the artist should communicating awareness of the challenges change brings about but with pride. Adjusting to the current cultural context and the way in which technology has become a public forum and mouthpiece for expressing political ideas, artists can take advantage of the platforms that social media, mobile technology and global connectivity offer for involving audiences in the creative process of role play and characterization.

Have you decided who your your [MARS] journey is about?


Or take you’re your [MARS] journey in another direction… ⅓ of the world: Questioning Communities and Characters 3rd world domination: Changing Space and Traditions 3 Trips to Mars: Suggestive Stories and Role Play



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WELCOME TO

3rd world domination: Changing Space and Traditions

Triptych 13, scenes from [MARS] 15 A Performed Exhibition, [MARS] 1: First Landing, [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire,

What is your [MARS] journey about?




A GAME OF QUESTIONABLE ETHICS In Africa, orthodoxy, as seen in televangelism, aims to develop a paradigm inside the consciousness of its consumers. Ritual, as seen in traditional circumcision practices, applies accepted conventions into the relationships between objects and consciousness thereof. Victoria Tupitsyn then explains how installation is a space that occupies both orthodoxy and ritual, because both transform participants’ understanding of time and space and are ‘the principle agent of such transformation’17. Installation aims to use ritual and orthodoxy for interpreting how

17 Ilya Kabakov, Margarita Tupitsyn and Victor Tupitsyn. About Installation. 1999


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society accepts conventions and creates relationships between expriences and objects

a great part of human life, is made up of these instinctive reactions to sensible objects, and their accompanying emotions. But man has the peculiar faculty of calling up again in his mind the echo of past experiences of this kind, of going over it again, “in imagination” as we say.18

Humans have instinctive reactions to sensible objects. As we comprehend more objects, we develop our own system of recognition. Without developing a systematic means to comprehend objects and use this recognition to determine meaning, every instinctive reaction would be a new discovery. Constantly making new discoveries without developing a catalogue for recognition would render our consciousness unable to utilize these reactions to make choices. This catalogue of recognition lives in us through our memories, the juxtaposition of time and space that create perceived value or meaning. Communities of orthodox and ritualistic practice recognize that our vision serves imperative needs to classify and sort these discoveries so we may shape our perception of the world. Through the process of memorization, habitualization can come to dominate this process, and so we look to art to relieve our senses of the confines of systematic recognition and give us new means of making memories. It is the role of art to develop a means for identifying how this system of recognition operates, then deducing a means to disrupt the system in order to revive the experience of discovery. Ritual and orthodoxy develop our consciousness to make relationships between the real and the imaginary. These relationships determine the shapes and colors of objects that we recognize and the nature of these perceptions determine how we respond to objects. Our response then leads us through a chain of ideas that influence the perceived value we place on objects. In orthodoxy, value accumulates to worship; in ritual value accumulates to rites of power. Both require the believer to invest whole-heartedly in the validity of this performance, the relevance it has in their own life and how these beliefs bring meaning to their existence as part of a community of shared memory. Social media, mobile technology and global connectivity afford society a widely accessible creative existence, albeit overwhelming and artificial at times. In “About Installation”, Ilya Kabakov describes installation as a progressive art form that compromises the conventional power dynamics inherent within art tradition in exchange for “all the parametres of space … [where] a cosmos of sorts is brought to life.”19 [MARS] recognizes these conventional power dynamics as those that separate creator, spectator and participant. By seeking to incite reactions from participants, [MARS] encourages them to critically investigate how spatial relationships construct, limit or inspire creativity.




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Triptych 14, scenes from [MARS] 2.2: Dark Light

Triptych 15, scenes from [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire, [MARS} 15: A Performed Exhibition

From August 2015 to April 2017 I had been living in a popular area of Beijing, densely populated with foreigners working, touring or exploring in China. Amused at the unintended documentation I had made of these foreigners through my social media feed (WeChat), I sought to express this discovery as a case study for modern life in developing nations. I then drew a parallel between foreigners coming to China and thought leaders from BRICS travelling to Mars. After generating conversation for the idea, I met models and photographers to capture the idea in a series of images. However, our choreography could not translate the spontaneous role-play I saw in my social documentation. I then looked to Sol Le Witt to find that

There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious. 20

By day I worked for a social media agency, by night I explored the cross-cultural nightlife and on weekends I sought to create community spaces for South Africans. These time constraints required me to combine my art practice into my daily life, and although I had already been doing it online, I could now actively think of how to apply it into real time spaces. This chain of development led me to incorporate my friends into the creative process that my photographic work had started. These friends were as supportive to being involved in the process as they were challenging to control, and I realized that if [MARS] was to present models of behavior and reactions to changes in spatial relationships, scripting their interactions would only yield pre-determined answers. I removed conventional power dynamics and created a space for the fluidity of creator-spectator-participant, wherein my friends could critically engage with the question: how do we determine the rules by which to play in spaces of multiple moral codes? Thus, I played a game of questioning moral codes. I encouraged their egos and recorded their interactions, noting their reactions in the creative spaces I created for them through installation and the online forums (WeChat) where I focused conversation and feedback.

20 Sol Lewitt. Sentences on Conceptual Art. 1967


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In the end, the process revealed more than an imaginative expression of BRICS colonizing Mars: if the words of one person resonate with another, it induces a chain of ideas that eventually find some form. In other words: the authenticity of a connection is integral to understanding how curiosity drives human motives to change their existence.

Figure 1, collage of group chat messages in WeChat messaging application





ROLE-PLAY IN A POST-COLONIAL CONTEXT Today, there is much more discourse in post-colonial nations where local voices provide greater understanding of the socio-cultural context for understanding the past, previous and future interactions between role-players in BRICS. How to manifest the motives that govern emotions is key to encouraging positive participation.

The Outsider, whether occidental scholarship or Diasporic Negro discourse, quickly established delineations without acknowledging the possibility that these may not be shared by those whose histories are at the center of discourse.21

21 Oguibe, Olu. In the ‘Heart of Darkness’. 2008


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For art in post-colonial societies, ‘othering’ is a form of gaze that separates the viewer and viewed. In most cases this is when the foreign gaze believes it can only validate the existence of the other, the viewed subject, by their own perspective and fail to comprehend how the subject may view itself as something independent of the viewer. Oguibe notes that ‘Otherisation is unavoidable’, but when the identity that the subject imposes on the other must replace the subject’s own ability to create an identity for itself, then it is of concern. Whether ‘othering’ is done intentionally or not, it is important to be aware of how it affects interactions and perspectives between and of the artist, subject and audience in societies experiencing conflicting ideas of socio-cultural identity formation. This awareness allows us to understand the expectations of audiences and predict their responses within particular socio-cultural contexts, and thus create positive manifestations that produce willing participation and creative interactions. [MARS] is a series of collages that juxtapose disconnected moments into harmony. The exhibiton was held in my home and these moments are loosely tied to the imagined space of Mars and their real location in China. The sense of unity arises when we place more emphasis on the various groupings of people that were brought into the space as a result of being connected to me as the artist. The connections herein created a unity in the work that centered itself on one idea that branched into many ideas. By allowing audiences to design their own trajectory through the work, each individual experience gave multiple perspectives. To interpret the disconnected moments the audiences saw in the exhibition, they Instinctively created a story. This story was a production of the memories they link to objects or events. Reflecting on this idea of instinct and memory, the accepted conventions of behavior within a home environment lend themselves to a relaxed atmosphere. My audiences felt less inhibited to participate in unconventional manners than they would in traditional spaces for performance, bound by the set boundaries between performer and spectator. Residential codes restrict levels of noise, number of people and the extent to which the rooms can be transformed from living spaces to that of convincing artistic endeavors. But making audiences aware that these situations are spaces of multiple realities enables them to contribute their imagination to meet a satisfying compromise. Departing from this point of view, I learnt that my audiences must have a choice to participate in the experience if their perspective is to be shifted willingly and convincingly. Inviting people to my home and framing the situation as an imaginative event, guests could choose a room to occupy, giving them the prerogative to participate and become characters in a role-play. This demonstrated how residential spaces could be transformed into areas of activism, entertainment or entrepreneurship. [MARS] then was a framework with a central idea but allowed participants to branch this idea into the stories they saw fit.


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Triptych 16, scenes from [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire

The tree describes the passage from unity to diversity: one tree, with many branches: from Indo-European, to dozens of different languages. The wave is the opposite: it observes uniformity engulfing an initial diversity: Hollywood films conquering one market after another22

Franco Moretti describes how world literatures can operate like waves or trees. Whereas imperialism before the 20th century operated like a wave, engulfing one culture after another, BRICS in the 22nd century will be a bloc of geographically disconnected nations with common development goals, thus a tree of goals branching out into their different needs. Waves dislike barriers (of culture, language and conventions for representation) as they present challenges to maintaining geographical continuity. Trees and branches allow markets, entities and nations to interact with each other without the threat of cultural discontinuation. Franco Moretti’s analogy of trees and waves, when applied to BRICS, offers a means for comparative analysis. As the BRICS continues to increase their influence and demonstrate new frameworks for global development, it will have to demonstrate a plan of action for addressing new conventions for interpreting symbolic power. History gives many examples where ideological and nationalist changes have been met with resistance or have aggravated a population uncertain of how changes will affect their future. Learning from these examples, BRICS can utilize the tradition of storytelling. Storytelling has been as essential to orthodox and ritual since recorded history, as it is in today’s hyper mediatized world of branding and popular consumer culture.





22 Franco Moretti. Conjectures on world literature. 2000


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DEFAMILIARIZING TRADITIONAL ICONS OF LIBERATED NATIONALISM Humans have an instinctive need to define boundaries and by studying each other’s emotional responses, humans can create perceived value of space. Changes in perceptions of space can be manipulated, but requires that one defamiliarize onself from the socio-cultural context in order to understand how the moral codes balance emotions in particular spaces.

The words “my horse” referred to me, a living horse, and it seemed as strange to me as the words “my land, “my air”, my water”… There are people who call others their own, yet never see them. And the whole relationship between them is that the so-called “owners” treat the others unjustly. (Narrator of Toltstoy’s Kholstomer)

Through the words of a horse, the human concept of ownership becomes a question of morality, rather than a means to designate property. Commenting on this use of defamiliarization, Viktor Shklovsky says, “as perception becomes habitual, it becomes automatic … Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life”23. Following Shklovsky’s theory, to understand how morality drives motives (of the society who subscribes to particular moral codes), the investigators must distance themself from the moral codes from which they themself subscribe. It felt impossible to defamiliarize myself entirely from my own socio-cultural context (South Africa), and so I drew perspectives from my experience in Russia and readings from her great literary philosophers. Using multiple perspectives I could understand how conventions in cultural conventions in China define the way its people conceive and perceive spatial boundaries. Defining the conventions for comprehending and accepting spatial boundaries has required humans to study each other’s reactions socio-cultural perceptions of space. The perception of space is a process by which an organism becomes aware of the relative positions of itself and objects around it.24 How the organism perceives the depth and distance of space determines its behavior, movements and orientation to the environment. Humans have developed ways to manipulate each other’s perception of space by placing value on space, commoditizing that value and creating barriers to access these spaces. When geographical features (water sources, mountains, mineral sites) became commoditized into the global trade economy, the struggle for ownership and conflict for control gave rise to systems that conditioned psychological perception of boundaries. In many countries, the act of defining spatial boundaries has been fundamental to installing, maintaining and justifying class structures.

23 Viktor Shklovsk. Art as Technique. 1917 24 Boundless.com. Perceiving Depth, Distance and Size


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Triptych 17, scenes and poster from [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire,

For the most part of 400 years, South African society has been shaped by the politics of space: struggling for the power to dictate ownership of space and control over each other25. Laws under Apartheid rule of 1960-1994 conditioned a binary system of ‘othering’ that functionalized classification into every aspect of daily life, defined by strict relationships of power. To delve deeply into the inner-workings of Apartheid is a complex endeavor that requires incredible sensitivity to how society was manipulated into maintaining the functionality of a system (albeit an internationally recognized system of atrocity). Defamiliarizing ourselves from moral codes and looking at the system as a study of socio-cultural reactions to space, we then see that instilling psychological perception of space can overrule geographic recognition of space. So determining the perceived value of space is imperative to predicting the scale and range of emotions that can be produced in that space.

Nevertheless, we can distinguish between advance and regression … I see no reason why we may not even anticipate a period, of some duration, of which it is impossible to say that it will have no culture. Then culture will have to grow again from the soil…26

Reflecting on the industrial revolution in the west during the 1800s, the then perceived decay in western cultural values offer us insight into how the unsettling, destructive nature of change is brought about. The foundations of Indian culture, rooted in the caste system, demonstrate a complex struggle to permanently fix class as a divisive tool within society. Just as unavoidable as ‘otherization’ is, so is classification – the learnt ability to distinguish between shapes and colours to perceive our world. Problems arise, however, when these classifications condition a system of recognition that disempowers certain shapes or colors from actively participating in society, simply by initial recognition. In South Africa class has been a psychological construct of race, in Russia and China class was perpetrated by feudal systems. Class is Brazil too is a complex issue of heritage that affects one’s access to wealth. In these examples class has played a role in society that has designated every member of the community in a role-play. As these societies progresses in the advent of social media, mobile technology and global connectivity, then this visual system of recognition will become obsolete as it becomes inoperable in a society that requires pluralism, multiculturalism and constant redefinition to progress into the next era of human advancement. The journey towards this next era can be an unsettling change, for which art will play an important role in making this change intelligible, possible to cope with and eventually embraced. In creating the framework for audiences to

25 Roger B Beck. The History of South Africa. 2000. 26 TS Elliot. Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. 1943


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embrace this change, artists will have to communicate an understanding of these audiences and their reactions to socio-cultural perceptions of space. Conditioned perceptions of boundaries will change as more people have access to creating and sharing information, and it is these changing perceptions that will be the fundamental challenges to present class structures.

Have you decided what is your [MARS] journey about?





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WELCOME TO

3 Trips to Mars: Suggestive Stories and Role Play To which era will your [MARS] journey travel?



A REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL MOBILITY I learnt about BRICS soon after immigrating to Moscow in 2013. Identity in post-soviet Russia, though complex and ever evolving, gave me insight into the formation of nationalist identities in developing countries. Russia has a long history of empire before and after soviet rule. Brazil and South Africa were colonized, and then continued to act as a colonial powers for a time within their own borders. The struggle for identity in these cases is the pursuit of power to determine moral code. How BRICS will determine the moral code by which they interact with each other will require each nation to understand what shapes the emotional reactions within their own socio-cultural contexts. These contexts are shaped by their individual histories and the trajectories they see for themselves in the future. Within the socio-cultural contexts of China and India, scale is an important factor in understanding the value of emotion. On a national scale, the value of each person’s emotion in China can be equated to a scale of 1:1.5 billion. Therefore, there is importance placed on shared emotion as opposed to the emotion driven by individual motives. Shared emotion reflects the motives of a group that determine a moral code. This moral code determines the resultant action taken by an individual in the way he or she acts upon their emotion.


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Morality, then, appreciates emotion by the standard of resultant action. Art appreciates emotion in and for itself27

Through a series of experiments with the communities I came into contact with (or had been invited to join, or ones I had created myself) scale and morality became evident through acts of ritual, games and memory. My goal was for them to unite together in a game, so I mapped multiple trajectories backwards through small rituals that created or conjured memory. I emphasized experience as opposed to reaching a predetermined answer to allow multiple entry points for reaching the goal. Not knowing how to anticipate their behavior moved my focus towards understanding why they reacted to changes in situations, thus the motives for their emotions. Audiences in the 21st century want to be more involved in the stories that are being told. Brands that use storytelling devices to draw the interest of their audiences are those who use new media to bring their audiences into a conversation about the brand. Caprice, taste and other whimsies are aesthetic appreciations of a final product and create a sacred-secular divide that separates experiences from objects.28 Storytelling is a process and so requires a set of tools for creating conversation, as opposed to a set of aesthetic values by which we can assess the product of the conversation. Both process and product are important to the brand, but involving audiences in the process towards a realization of the product requires that the storytelling become a philosophy of working in itself rather than a means for reaching the product. Taking advantage of performance as an art form of becoming, of process and realization, we can break the sacred-secular that separates experiences from objects. New media has made this process more available to audiences, but the advantages of working with new media and the tools that the use of new media provide should not override the importance of the idea.

Triptych 19, scenes from [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire,

Conceptually speaking, religion has been successful in creating relationships between objects and experience. These relationships act as signifiers which make themselves relevant to the believer when the signifiers are made relevant in the life of the believer. Using the concept of religion as a framework for creating an interactive experience in [MARS], the religious elements of ritual, role-play and storytelling become entry points that allowed participants to create an experience


28 Third Path Initiative. Breaking Down the Secular Divide. 2014


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for themself and believe in its validity. I have no intention to create a cult following, but in creating a cult-like community, the participants were engaged in an experience without having to lead them to an foreground conclusions. I am confident that this process of encouragement to seek answers through group conversation will provide insight to how the world is about to change in what I term, the era of ‘social mobility’. Storytelling needs to engage the mind in initiating action and not satisfy the desires of the eye for a pre-determining idea of aesthetic value.29 Furthermore, storytelling needs to be aware of the space that it is performed in, as transgressing the moral codes of a particular space can be interpreted as cultural appropriation. That being said, culture can be accessible and appreciated without being appropriated. Maintaining awareness of how culture creates and affirms an experience is vital to balancing how a culture entertains with what story it tells about the culture’s origins. While cultural appropriation and copyright infringement are the vice or virtue of Western civilization today, they limit the concept of creativity to being one of originality, further challenged by virtuosity and thus limited to a skillful, educated, elite minority. This is an era of self-taught skill, search-engine acquired knowledge and peer driven influence, and so these concepts of virtuosity, exclusivity and originality are fast losing relevance in a more globally aware and inclusive generation. This generation, mostly of which is growing up in developing nations with emerging markets is more able to gain social mobility and determine their future. Empowered with self-determination, they seek further participation in the what stories are being told and the manner in which they are presented in relation to them as an audience.

[understand] the teaching of men like Bastien-Lepage, who cleverly compromised between the truth and an accepted convention of what things looked like, to bring the world gradually round to admitting truths30

Like Bastien-Lepage’s audiences then, audiences today and those of tomorrow: they want to be entertained. The status of the spaces in which the stories occupy determine the how the consumer determines the power dynamics, value of time and relation to the moral codes by which the consumer subscribes. 31 Sensation is a perceived reaction of interest as a result of one’s senses being stimulated. Tabloid headlines, reality TV and live-streaming social media platforms employ sensation in their mediums to sell stories and influence perceptions. The storytellers in these mediums further employ effects (whether literary devices or digital effects) to manipulate the order of events, the tone and quality of emotions to draw the consumer’s interest. Consumers then buy into a compromise between recorded truth and accepted conventions of storytelling. For storytellers in the 21st century its

29 Sol Lewitt. Sentences on Conceptual Art. 1967




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vital to understand how the consumer is gaining more control in determining the trajectory of the story they want to told.

Triptych 20, scenes from [MARS] -2: Black & Baiju, [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire

“I do not make art, I am engaged in an activity; if someone wants to call it art, that’s his business, but it’s not up to me to decide that. That’s all figured out later.”32 Once it is out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way. 33

Here Richard Serra and Sol Le Witt both accept disillusionment with art, the art world and its politics. Art is outlived by its influence, its influence outlived by distortion. As much as art affects history, it is not exempt to being affected itself. Likewise, art and history affect each other, and the nature of this effect is determined by the storyteller’s means of holding the interest of his audience. As audiences gradually become desensitized from over exposer to sensationalism and sensation becomes a habitualized experience of consuming information on a daily basis, they will develop a system of recognition that prevents these devices from manipulating their emotions and drawing their interests. This system of recognition then is a coping mechanism that balances power between storyteller and consumer. This balance of power becomes a conversation where both the storyteller and audience are active participants in directing the trajectory of the story. Continue reading? Or make another choice to read:



32 Richard Serra, as told by Joseph Kosuth. Art After Philosophy. 1969 33 Sol Lewitt. Paragraphs on Conceptual Art. 1967


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CAPTURING (THE) MOMENT(S) IN HISTORY Curiosity is the interpretation of space over an experience in time. In language, time and tense is a paradoxical concept: as the future becomes the present, it erodes itself to become the past. Within different cultural contexts, time and tense are means to understanding cycles within life. For most of the western world and where its culture has had influence, April 1st has been a day when people play practical jokes on each other and media outlets are expected to publish at least one false news story. [MARS], the exhibition, ran from 1 – 15 April, during which several important dates are nationally observed holidays in BRICS. In China, the 15th day after the Spring Equinox falls roughly around the 4th, 5th or 6th day of April. This period is observed as Qing Ming, or Tomb Sweeping Day, and similarly to this tradition the participants in the exhibition of [MARS] burnt photographs upon leaving the space to find closure to the process. In Russia and former soviet states, April 12th commemorates the first manned space flight by Yuri Gagarin on April 12th 1961. While April 14th marks the Tamil New Year in India; Brazil and South Africa observe the Christian calendar’s Good Friday. In South Africa, April is coupled with a preparation for Freedom Day on April 27th, commemorating the country’s first democratic elections 1994.

Triptych 21, scenes from [MARS] 15 A Performed Exhibition, [MARS] 3: Self-Made Killionaire, [MARS] 5: Alter Ego

Without the weight of nostalgia, memory becomes a tool for understanding how society advances by acknowledging the past. As outlined in the Dadaist manifesto, radical communism would “prepare a man for a state of freedom”34. Though I cannot prove that this western art movement has had influence in Asian societies, culture plays an all-encompassing role in the Chinese national calendar and champions the Dadaist ideals of community, memory and ritual. On all national holidays in China it is customary to give money in red envelopes. Gift-giving culture observes the moment of acknowledgement and surprise: gift-givers must prepare themselves for the receiver’s delight or disappointment. The outcome is unpredictable, but that moment of child-like intrigue gives insight to why an individual needs to feel spontaneity and a break from convention. After the moment of surprise has been caught on camera, mobile phone photographers can share the image across high-speed internet connections. The moment of spontaneity and surprise is conditioned into these state-observed holidays and can be understood as

34 Hausmann, Roaoul and Huelsenbeck, Richard. What is Dadaism and What Does it Want in Germany? 1919


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the law, or rule-maker, satisfying the rule-breaker his need to feel freedom from control. Whenever regime change occurs, the ideological constructs of the past must find a way to be incorporated into the present. Its relevance is as integral to new change as the new ideas brought about by the change and can serve to gauge changes in society and the socio-cultural needs of the society during times of change. Acknowledging what happened in the past as necessary for what happens in the present, whether for better or worse, shifts focus from owning the past to developing the future.

Triptych 22, scenes from [MARS] 4 Pajama Party

Everyone loves a good story, but what defines good is a socio-cultural construct of taste in time. How time is perceived determines how history will be interpreted, and if history is a perception of time, an accepted account or story of events, it can be distorted to entertain a story. If history is indeed ‘his story’, then accepting a story’s perspective is accepting a particular perspective. Storytelling require signifiers of time in space: the beginning, middle and end. These signifiers are shaped by the emotions or ideas the storyteller intends to evoke in the listener. Roger Fry uses two examples of how a boy can relay the information that a bear chased him. Storytelling is the art of communicating emotions, and merely stating facts or ideas in ordinary language will not gain the same effect as if one

describes his state first of heedlessness, then of sudden alarm and terror as the bear appears, and finally of relief when he gets away, and describes this so that his hearers share his emotions35

The ‘contest for History is central to the struggle for a redefinition … with all its inconsistencies and vulnerabilities.”36 Thus changing the perception of history justifies the actions of today to determine the course of events for tomorrow. Each society’s perspective adds to the multiple accounts of history’s inconsistencies and vulnerabilities. The contest for history is a battle to impose one society’s ownership over another, but because history is a shared memory, the storytelling thereof can be a conversation of countering discourses. Then there is no need to replace each other. Through comparison and contrast multiple histories can enrich better understanding of how different societies convey information, and focus attention away from the ownership of history to the development of future trajectories.

To which era will your [MARS] journey travel?


36 Oguibe, Olu. In the ‘Heart of Darkness’. 2008


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Or take you’re your [MARS] journey in another direction…



BRANDING CROSS-CULTURAL PROPAGANDA Revision of traditional arts practices give artist a richer understanding of their own cultural origins. Cross-cultural understanding of the other gives the artists working within BRICS a knowledge of how history has shaped contemporary perspectives in these nations. As economic development makes social media, mobile technology and global connectivity more accessible to more people in more places, BRICS will have to cope with challenges these innovations bring to traditional conventions of power. As old worlds become modern societies, shifting perspectives and changes in power dynamics will threaten the livelihood of cultural conventions that governed concepts of gender and equality, access to amenities and decision-making roles. As with any organism that feels its meaning and existence threatened, change will be met with resistance37. For this reason art, business and technology will interact more with each other and with role-players within these activities.

[Ridley] Scott featured a Coca-Cola neon sign in his 1982 sci-fi thriller, Blade Runner. “The message being,” he explained, “that even in a futuristic dystopian world, Coca-Cola is everlasting.” Since Coke has always been a symbol of Americana and a constant fixture in pop culture.38

The relationship between Coca-Cola and Hollywood is a global case study for how culture and economy work together to distribute a generated interest across geographical borders. The US brand giants have achieved global dominance as well as very public disapproval. Contemporary discourse pulls into question Hollywood’s tradition of whitewashing foreign narratives by casting white actors to play characters not culturally indigenous to them, and how the legacy of this tradition continues against the will of its consumers.39 Coca-Cola’s 2014 campaign “America The Beautiful”40 presented a multicultural representation of Americans singing their national anthem in various languages. Considering the amount of conversation both have generated, they have been successful in creating a brand awareness in the

37 Franco Moretti, Conjectures on world literature. 2000 38 Coca-Cola Company. Coke Red on the Silver Screen. 2014 39 F Royster. Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon. 2003 40 Jackson Salter. Coca-Cola: The Power of Culture in Advertising. 2014


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public arena, however: to the detriment of the brand’s relationship to their audiences, due to the lack of perceived authenticity it occupies in the cultural context Within the emerging markets of developing nations, successful multinational organizations are those that learn how best to market their products in a away that compliments itself to the context of business these nations’ business culture.41 The demand for soft-drinks in the US market has enabled Coca-cola to partner with popular fast-food outlets and convenience store franchises to reduce distribution costs. Fortunately the concept has applied within the cultural contexts of other countries within which it operates: UK, Europe, Russia, Sub-Saharan Africa and a few in the Asian-Pacific region. The Indian market, however, has a much greater demand for traditional refreshments (lemon water, fruit juices, tea and lassie), produced and sold locally at a fraction of the cost that soft-drinks had been priced at.42 Unable to recognize and react to the cultural context of local demand, Coca-Cola withdrew its products from the Indian market in 1993. It was only in 2001 that the company was unable to penetrate the market again. Recognizing the importance of cultural assimilation without operating as cultural appropriation, in 2001 Coca-Cola launched a smaller bottle priced at almost 50% of the traditional packaging order. Globalism that acts as capitalist opportunism, consuming culture and not understanding how to embrace it, binds consumers further into inequality and will thus be rejected.

the narrator is the pole of comment, of explanation, of evaluation, and when foreign ‘formal patterns’ … make characters behave in strange ways … then of course comment becomes uneasy – garrulous, erratic, rudderless.43

Triptych 23, poster from [MARS] 5: Alter Ego

When the destiny of an individual, community or group is intersected or altered by another culture, which completely ignores it, change will be met with resistance. So then it is important to learn from examples of global cultural convergence for artists, business and technology to understand how their interactions will be defined in society. To gain an authentic narrator for their brand, businesses should employ the

41 GL Miles. Mainframe: the next generation. 1995 42 Asaad Ali Karam. Cultural Impact on Brand: A Case Study on Coca Cola’s Cultural Issues in India. 2013. 43 Franco Moretti, Conjectures on world literature. 2000


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artist according to their ability to navigate the particular cultural context, as it becomes more integrated into technology. Global marketers are then an artistic, business and technological collaborative force that will impact strategic global market planning and implementation.44 In Brazil, India and South Africa, systems of systematic ‘othering’ supported the struggle for ownership of space. In spaces where ‘othering’ operates it can be understood that it exists not necessarily as the necessity for binaries, but the natural human instinct to classify and separate shapes and colors in order to perceive the world. By satisfying this functional aspect of recognition we can acknowledge the need for different perspectives. Today, disillusionment in post-colonial societies has been a key factor for the lack of public participation in policy making. Different parts of society that were segregated by ideologies of the past are now unsure of how to operate in a shared space and along a new set of moral codes brought about by regime change.

Triptych 24, scenes from [MARS] 4: Pajama Party, [MARS] 15 A Performed Exhibition

Most of the developing and newly developed world is experiencing the growing pains of changing nationalist ideologies and the identity crisis that changes in space have brought about. Immediate artistic responses in contemporary society seem to reflect extremely liberal tendencies to pit the lawmaker against a victim of a vote. By demonizing an ‘other’, the artist gains widespread support for an individual cause, but the immediate reaction fails to follow up with a plan or framework for developing the emotional trajectory of society from an aggravated to alleviated state of being. Experiencing ideological change has left societies affected by regime change with mixed emotions and identity crisis. To counter this identity crisis, positive propaganda needs to be encouraged by the public and supported by the state. Soviet Russia is a prime example of positive propaganda that promoted its relations with India and China during communist reign that was supported by the distribution of graphic media, literature and state-approved new media. Positive propaganda alone cannot suffice, and the public must be aware of how they can participate, thus: the rules that determine role-play. To recover the sensation of life beyond disillusionment, the artist’s reaction must include a framework for creating or changing the perceived value of space that maps the emotional milestones in from chaos to order. Furthermore, in spaces where the ideological constructs that defined nationalist ideas have changed, positive propaganda must aim to progress a society of multiple interests, influences and interpretations.

44 Asaad Ali Karam. Cultural Impact on Brand: A Case Study on Coca Cola’s Cultural Issues in India. 2013.


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Have you decided to which era will your [MARS] journey will travel?


Or take you’re your [MARS] journey in another direction…




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[MARS] EXHIBITION RATIONALE

The Dean Kriel

Triptych 25, scenes from [MARS] 1: First Landing

[MARS] explores three stages that recur in curiosity: doubt, discovery, direction. Finding our direction requires that we proceed on a voyage of discovery while at the same time we experience doubt about an unimaginable direction and destination. Our beliefs are shaped by the real and the imaginary. Believing in our personal world requires that we embrace the unknown on a strange journey towards what we cannot yet imagine, but which waits for us to discover it. However, by seeing only binary beginning and end points we overlook the space between doubt and direction. In this space lies a journey of possibilities fuelled by the addictive euphoria of discovery. On this journey we fly simultaneously with our direction and fall with our doubt. Our curiosity creates questions, not answers; so to imagine the unknown, we seek a series of clues that inform us of the next steps on our journey. These clues arise from curiosity and are catalysts for re-imagining our world. Therein awaits the spontaneous power of asking questions without pre-conceived answers. By perceiving their own relationship between the real and the imaginary, spectators believe in the reality and relevance of their [MARS] journey. In this way, spectators become participants who question not what makes them curious, but rather: why they are curious.


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[MARS] ARTIST BACKGROUND

The Dean Kriel Born 1990-01-19 (Queenstown, Republic of South Africa) I am The Dean Kriel: community creator, cultural examiner and BRICS investor. My name is a brand that is professional and personal while intriguing and energetic. I work, play and learn with the uncomfortable tension between communities and individuals. I collaborate with photographers and sidewalk models, my friends and mentors, musicians and smart-phone poets, children and those too old to be forgotten. At present, my thoughts are informed by the subtle nuances of social media ecosystems in China and design innovations in South Africa. My future areas of inquiry include innovations in Indian mobile phone technologies and Brazilian street style. My choices are still informed by my past experiences in Russia, performing there with cross-cultural music band. Music and movement are the starting points for my aesthetic, and like my moniker, they welcome enquiry upon introduction. In the developing world there is little time to appreciate beauty, more value placed on affect than aesthetic appeal. In response, my work is presented with breadth and emphasizes function over form, illustrating concepts for creating. Consequently this can be interpreted as disordered and unrefined, for which I acknowledge and pursue to improve. Light and dark, rhythm and repetition, real and imaginary characters: these are my favorite tools of expression; and the lines from which I have used to draw meeting points for contemporary art practices within BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). As I continue to live and work in BRICS, learning their languages and cultures I am collecting material for a multidisciplinary approach to performance that can tour these areas of influence to entertain, inspire and educate. Performed and exhibited works include:


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‘The [MARS] Series’ (Various venues, Beijing, China, 2017), ‘I’m Going Through Something’ (Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival, Dublin, Republic of Ireland, 2015) ‘The Phean Project’ (Various Venues, Moscow, Russia, 2014) ‘The Homeless Orchestra’ (National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa, 2012) ‘WildCard’ (Various Venues, Cape Town, South Africa, 2011)

Triptych 26, scenes from [MARS] 5: Alter Ego

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