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2003: Bind/Ontbind Series

It’s the wind and the sun that occupies a blade of grass wholly. Like a coat of arms that defends nothing but, instead, invades it in session of wanting and of making. The touch of a million long fingers that wills its way across a threadbare back, bending and folding, cantankerously clicking and distorting the spine from the outside in. That’s where it wants to be.

To give this moment something like a lasting form is to accept this invasion from the outside in. To listen and to see from the diffused plateau of all light and to accept in that moment the infinite width of all that breathes – the very lived experience that always has you in its grasp while you can only ever have it in your sights. Like a lone sniper on a hill that occupies and defends their territory always in the singular: I/you have you/me in my/your sight.

This attempt to defend oneself against the inevitable invasion of the outside is sustained by the illusion that one may come to know something wholly without becoming wholly immersed in it. And to find that despite our best efforts to the contrary, tomorrow will be as yesterday. (J. Thom 2003)

 

bind-ontbind-series-2a

Bind/Ontbind 2, 2003

Performance at the Venice Biennale 2003 as part of the group exhibition ‘Recycling the future:viveravenezia2’ curated by Angela Vetesse, Duration approx 30 minutes

All the works of the ‘bind/ontbind’ Series attempt to collapse the dichotomy inherent in their title… In Afrikaans to ‘bind’ means “to tie up; to fasten; cement; hold; trammel; bind…bound by; commit (to the conditions)…linkage; fixation; weave (patterns)…to connect”. Conversely, the word ‘ontbind’ means to “untie; undo; break up; disband; dissolve; decompose; decay; putrify; disintegrate; analyze; decompound; resolve (forces); dissociate; disconnect; …disintegration; disestablishment; dissolution; …annulment”.

The works in this series are all metaphors for the complex interrelationship between these two seemingly oppositional forces – everything we are and we everything we know is subject to their constant re-vision, re-articulation and re-formation. Albert Einstein said that the only constant force in the universe is change. However, I would add that, for me change is in itself chaotic. It has no substance and cannot be objectively known.

Nico Anklam

Photo credit: Nico Anklam

Bind/Ontbind Series 3, 2003

Public performance, Venice (Italy), Duration approx 30 minutes

 

Thus everything is subject to change including our (re) interpretations of its meaning. In fact, there is the paradox: as with all things, we can only speak about it in metaphors – in order to render it knowledgeable we have to position words/concepts ‘in its stead’, to ‘represent’ it i.e. ‘bind/ontbind’. For me, things are not either in the process of ‘binding’ or of ‘un-binding’ alone, they are simultaneously doing both.

“We may attempt to contain this ongoing process of transformation (or of expansion and retraction) within complex systems of knowledge – as various historical epistemologies, ontologies and cosmologies have attempted to do before – but we cannot ever hope to contain it. If this is the ‘grand narrative’ that defines human existence, it is not grand at all: neither its cause nor its effect will ever be ours for the taking. As an artist, all I wish to do is to draw attention to this fact”. (Interview with the artist/curator Alex Zika for the show “Agora” held in London at the Transition Gallery, 2004).

This series of work could also be seen as an attempt to critically engage the obsession with the politics of representation that dominated in the South African artworld during the early years of post-apartheid South Africa.  For me the problem with its critique of the binary modes of representation that dominated in apartheid South Africa was not that  it was not only  deeply needed,  but rather, that this post-apartheid critique did not go far enough to de-stabilize the very system that allowed and empowered such binary distinctions as self/ other, white/black, male/female, human/animal to function in the first place. The problem is that we are always already the ‘other’ we create, just beneath the skin we peer out from the horrors of our own creation. In simple terms, we must see ourselves within our projections of others, confront this realization in no uncertain terms and take responsibility for it.

Also see the academic article ‘Embodying the Other as Self in Johan Thom’s exhibition Exorcismseries’ by Prof Leora Farber. It is available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00043389.2004.11877019 or in  in de arte 39(69):26-46 · January 2004.

ties-that-bind-1

ties-that-bind2

ties-that-bind3

Selection from ‘The Ties That Bind’ (Bind/Ontbind Series), 2003

C-Type print on aluminum. Edition of 5, artist proof. 120cm x 80cm, Photographic Credit: Garreth Fradgley

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    • PERFORMANCE
      • 2003: Bind/Ontbind Series
      • 2004-6: Outpost Series
      • 2006: The Theory of Gravity
      • 2008/9: Vox Populis/ Vox Dei
      • 2008: Come in peace/ Go to pieces (2008)
      • 2008: Traffic
      • 2008: Twilight
      • 2010-12: Incantation Series
      • 2010/11: Recital
      • 2010: Biblioclast (Action with Afrikaans/Dutch Dictionary)
      • 2010: Figurehead
      • 2010: Host 1
      • 2011: Container
      • 2011: Licked Colony
      • 2011: Thank you
      • 2013: For Linnaeus
      • Fountain (Date Withheld)
      • …other performances
    • VIDEO/INSTALLATIONS
      • 2002: The pencil test series
      • 2003: Violence and Happiness
      • 2004: The Labyrinth
      • 2005: The Minotaur Series 12
      • 2006: The Theory of Evolution
      • 2006: The Theory of Flight
      • 2007: Ascension
      • 2007: Birth of a Tyrant (2007)
      • 2007: Terms of endearment
      • 2008: Challenging Mud (After Kazuo Shiraga)
      • 2008: Outpost 4
      • 2008: The Theory of Displacement
      • 2009: Panopticon
      • 2010: blood rites/ eat your words
      • 2010: Host II
      • 2010: Illumination
      • 2010: Shellshock
      • 2011: Flow
      • 2019: Recital: Decoy
    • OBJECTS
      • 2007: Looking for Lucy
      • 2007: Molotovmammas
      • 2007: Philistine rules/ Did you know?
      • 2007: The OK Revolution
      • 2009: Vessel – Perfect Lovers
      • 2010: Gold works
      • 2010: Knobkierie
      • 2010: Recital (Lend me your ears)
      • 2010: Songbirds
      • 2011: Workhorse (with Guy Du Toit)
      • 2012: Fallen – monument for throwing…
      • 2013: The Animal Series
        • …….Collaborative large-scale etchings
        • …….Drawings
        • …….Mahout (video)
        • …….Photographs
        • …….Sculptures with Guy Du Toit
      • 2014-15: Faust the African Series
      • 2016: Promises, promises…
      • 2016: Selfportrait as an ass
      • 2016: Selfportrait with skull
      • 2017: The Hanging Garden
      • 2019: Houseboat
      • 2020: Houseboat #2
    • ABOUT
      • Artist statement
      • Press
      • Shortened CV
      • Interviews
        • 2003: Interview with Carine Zaayman
        • 2006: Interview with Willem Boshoff
        • 2007: Interview with David Koloane (2007)
        • 2008: Interview with Peter Machen
        • 2008: Radio Papesse Interview as part of ‘.za: Young Art From South Africa’
        • 2009: Johan Thom interviewed by Sarah Claire Picton
        • 2010: The ghosts wish to remember: Interview with Petra Zemljič
        • 2018: The Aestheticized Interview with Johan Thom (South Africa) – Kisito Assangni for ArtDependence
      • Authored
        • David Koloane (1938–2019) – Artforum International
        • Kendell Geers at the Steven Friedman, London
        • Life intimidating art, The Diplomat, Sept/Oct 2007
        • Roger Ballen at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2007
        • The sleeping monster produces reasons : Diane Victor
        • Santu Mofokeng (2010)
        • The sense of fresh air (2010)
        • Taming the Trojan Horse: Disarming the Politics of Otherness in a Postcolonial (African) Context
    • CONTACT
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