 google - Illustration © Francois Smit Is Big Brother watching you?
Yes, but these days he’s called Google – and the company is storing too much information for comfort  Sisterhood? Forget it - Illustration © Francois Smit Sisterhood? Forget it. Catfights over handbags and tears in the toilets. When this producer launched a women-only
TV company, she thought she’d kissed conflict goodbye. Samantha Brick reports  Targeting crime at the root - Illustration © Francois Smit Without robbery and its spiralling effects, South Africa’s alarming crime rate would be measurably lower, writes Todd R Clear  A party for the born-frees - Illustration © Francois Smit Today’s young people have no attachment to history - or Malema, writes Jovial Rantao
The political landscape in South Africa is changing – and it is doing so fast. Like a rolling stone gathering lots of moss.
A new political party is to be launched on December 16. The party will, in all likelihood, be led by Mbhazima Shilowa, the former premier of Gauteng and ex-national executive committee member of the ANC.
Next to Shilowa in the leadership of this yet unnamed political baby will be Mosiuoa Lekota, the former defence minister and national chairperson of the ANC.
Lekota is still a member of the ANC and faces disciplinary action for speaking out in public about what made him unhappy as an ANC member. He will most probably get fired... |
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Seven steps on how to become a Conceptual Artist |
1. Abandon any existing ideas about art and style (they’re crap anyway!).
2. Dress in very expensive and exclusive casual gear (no popular teen brands and no obvious labeling). Predominantly black dress code always works well. Adding one or two small touches of red or orange can add to the effect. You want to look like a designer anarchist. Hair styling is crucial. For males, Mod-romantic or else a very short precision cut works well (No. 2 cutter). Get 3G and become “Blue Tooth” enabled, preferably on Blueberry, and/or use Apple Mac wireless (minimum 180GB). Wiring and cabling looks very tacky. Never be seen touching Microsoft. Footwear: something that looks like it was designed by a genius Postmodernist engineer for maximum comfort and speed, but avoid rapper footwear styling. (The two can sometimes look vaguely alike.) Basically, you’ve got to look like an enigmatic, solitary, super-intelligent, slightly sinister, and highly disciplined inter-galactic Samurai renegade (like a 21st century version of a late-19th century Dandy).
3. Develop the vocabulary. Reading a few pages of Derrida, Gergen, Foucault, Baudrillard and Rorty will quickly get you up to speed on the language. Once you’ve done that, read any copy of Flash Art published since 1985 and you’ll be able to put all your new words into an art context with ease. Then learn to intersperse your sentences (occasionally) with a few colloquial words like “cool”, “fuck/ing”, “crap”, etc. The secret is to come across very confidently, and even aggressively (only when necessary). Saying it sharply, assertively and confidently is VERY important. Once you’ve perfected your vocabulary and style of delivery, then read a few of the latest issues of Flash Art and memorise the names and work of the very newest young British artists (Japanese artists are also okay). These references will become your cutting edge in any conversation, and will guarantee your informational superiority in virtually all situations. Look slightly disdainfully at people who appear not to know the latest artists - that always gives you an immediate and huge advantage. You’re already looking like a winner! |
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Serendipity: the art of finding what we are not looking for |
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Serendipity is such a perfect word for what it defines that it may have been serendipity itself that inspired Horace Walpole to coin it. The word comes from the original name for Sri Lanka, Serendip, the setting for the Three Princes of Serendip, a fable of three nobles who make discoveries by accident. Through their sagacity they deduce, for instance, by the kind of abductive reasoning used by Sherlock Holmes, that the road that they have been travelling on, because the grass has been grazed on one side only, must have been shared by a mule blind in one eye. |
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