recoil (2005)

drill hall 2005
drill hall 2005
drill hall 2005
recoil 2005
recoil 2005
recoil 2005
recoil 2005
recoil 2005
recoil 2005

recoil (2005)

Project: Drill Hall
Curator: Dorothee Kreutzvelt / Bie Venter
Place: Drill Hall - Johannesburg, South Africa
Work: recoil - (kickback, mirror,echo, backfire, oscillate) - 5 units

Drill Hall - history
The Drill Hall is a heritage site and was initially built for the Rand Light Infantry to practice their drills in 1904. The site has just celebrated it’s centenary and has played an ongoing role in the Political and social changes that have taken place in Johannesburg over the last hundred years. It’s military history has been well documented as troops from the Drill Hall were sent to fight in the first and second world wars, as well as the border wars and the North Africa Campaign. Drill Hall troops were also used to quell unrest in the miner’s strike in 1922.

As the largest space available in Johannesburg at the time, it was the site first used for the treason trials in 1956 before the trial was moved to Pretoria. It was also well known for it’s New Year’s parties and was a popular Dance venue from the 1930s until the late 1970’s. It was occupied by the military (SADF) until 1992, when they moved out of the building. It was soon occupied by squatters and the building caught alight in 2001 - the fire killed 5 of the 2800 squatters living there. However, squatters moved back into the space and in April 2002, another fire killed 5 more people and destroyed much of the building.

SAHRA campaigned for it to be saved from demolition and rebuilt as a heritage site, which has just been completed. The Rand Light Infantry has moved back to the premises as well as the Johannesburg Child Welfare and the Johannesburg Community Chest, and the Joubert Park Project (JPP). The JPP is an arts and culture organisation and will be working with artists to image the heritage and history of the site as well as its current place within the inner city. This will be in the form of a permanent heritage exhibition and accompanying schools programme as well as running a contemporary gallery space and projects at the site.

recoil - artist statement

recoil consists of 5 works that are essentially sound pieces carrying small statements that have some kind of historic link to the drill hall - either directly or by association. All electronic component parts have been left exposed - the rawness and makeshift feel works in direct sympathy to the sound bytes contained within the circuit. Teasing out the past, finding people who were there, archival information - are all relatively tenuous nodes. The arrangement of the bare components suggests a visual equivalent of the incidental and irregular consequence of finding a point where something happens - where some sort of voice is heard. The bare components also suggest a series of nerve endings - the sensitive internal parts - revealing them in order to diagnose or to repair - and this is perhaps a metaphor for the difficulty of engaging issues of the past. The fact that the viewer needs to push a button in order to retrieve the information about the past - therefore directly engages them within the meaning of the work. It is a way of manipulating the viewer into engaging the process of the past.

The placement of the works in a singular line and at the same height suggests a ‘line-up’ which is so much apart of military speak or institutional regimentation. It also speaks about conformity under duress. The sound bytes from each work then also suggest a sort of non-linear timeline - not dissimilar to the way in which the past is often remembered - displaced, indefinite and layered.

The title recoil - alludes to a process of reflection. Each work has an adjunctive title in brackets that in essence are synonyms for the word recoil. Within the context of the specific sound byte of each work - an appropriate synonym was chosen.

  1. recoil (kick back)
  2. recoil (mirror)
  3. recoil (echo)
  4. recoil (backfire)
  5. recoil (oscillate)