Defining Absence, Dematerialisation, and Discontinuity

In considering the Baholo art collection as a feature of the evolving cultural topography on campus, it is useful to consider the artworks from a few key perspectives.

Absence: Being, artwork and society

The concept of absence is inextricably linked to that of presence; and, indeed, for something to be viewed as ‘absent’ it is necessary for it to have had some prior form of agency or presence. The term may therefore be said to mark a state change, i.e. from being ‘present’ to being ‘absent’. In considering these two concepts in relation to art, artist and artwork we start to deal with the question of being-in-the-world, or how the nature of being manifests through absence / presence as a mode of representation.

Following Heidegger’s discussion in his essay titled “The Origin of the Work of Art” (2006), we may say that the act of creating an artwork imbues the work with something additional to merely combining the materials to form a composite. The workliness of the work is necessarily connected to the role of the artist in the production of the artwork such that the work so created acquires a form of presence-in-the-world that can afterward be recognised as its essential meaning above the materiality, or thingliness, of its substance.

This form of the artwork’s presence-in-the-world differs from ordinary objects in that it establishes a relationship between what it represents and what it is (i.e. It has a mimetic function) to the extent that we may discern a discomforting disjunction. In seeking to represent an aspect of the world, it can do so only by not being as such – that is to say, by presenting an absence in place of the presence it seeks to represent. The more powerful and effective its portrayal, ironically, the more powerfully the disjunction is felt, even at the very moment of its apotheosis.

Artists Respond: On Art, Censorship and Curation

Many artists who are connected in various ways with the ongoing dispute believe the university’s removal of the campus artworks to be censorship of the worst order. Chief amongst these are Breyten Breytenbach and David Goldblatt who have delivered damning comment on the action that the university has taken. Their objections are multifold but coalesce around the accusation that the university administration has displayed a profound lack of courage in facing up to the challenge being presented by the threat of further destruction of the art collection.

Compounding this accusation is the fact that the university administration has disingenuously tried to cast its “executive decision” (UCT Newsroom, 2017) to remove the artworks as a concern for the integrity of the works themselves, on the one hand, and as an act of emergency curation aimed at promoting political transformation on campus on the other. There has been almost no consideration about the question of academic freedom on campus, and the importance of mediating the call for de-curation of the university’s colonial assets in a way that does not summarily deny access to the artworks. In all of this, mention has also been made of a concern about insurance liability (Meersman, 2017), also on several levels.

Interview with Sven Christian

1. What do you think is implied by the concept of ‘absence’?

SC: The concept of ‘absence’, to me, implies that something material or physical is at a remove, out of sight, missing. It’s linked to an awareness that said ‘thing’ is no longer there, and a desire for it be made tangible once more. You anticipate or long for the its return. It also implies that what was once centre stage has temporarily stepped off. Whether intentionally or through force, there has been a transition, which I think is where, at least with regards to the latter, trauma steps in — there is an uncertainty about whether or not it will ever return.

2. In the context of curation, what are some of the reasons why anyone would choose to frame or portray absence?

SC: From my understanding curation is a lot like editing in the sense that you have to be selective about what does or doesn’t get seen, based on whatever story you are trying to tell. Often you construct a narrative based on pre-existing or commissioned objects, which, like words, have their own (albeit varied and subjective) associations.

Over time there is a collective understanding that forms about what these objects mean. It’s a product of seeing something in a particular way, over and over again. The more we associate an object with a specific story, the more that object takes that story’s form. This process of seeing (or not seeing) creates blindspots that solidify with time — big, unaccounted gaps in the fabric of history.

The choice to frame or portray absence is often linked to an urgent desire to tell a story that hasn’t been heard before, that has been forgotten, or that has been intentionally or forcibly erased from the ‘authenticated’ version. It’s an attempt to rectify these processes of erasure and account for the complexity of your own experiences.