Launch Photos

(click for more photos from Saturday's launch)

Control

The big day arrived with an annoying alarm clock bleep, way too early for any sane person to wake up on a Saturday. We rushed off to KwaThema, and got straight into finishing the last few outstanding projects before the start of the launch. Gareth and I hung the mattresses, we all placed the rubbish bins, the grass was glued, and the basins were filled with bottle tops. The African Incense was placed and paint spills were removed. Catherine’s husband Harry arrived to start pinning up photographs and hoards of children looked on with eager, gruelling anticipation in their eyes.

Dennis arrived with his learners from Sakhelwe Primary School, and some of our respective family members arrived. Linda was still painting our paired project sign, much to Ahaka and my dismay, and we made the final arrangements with the Kwasa-Kwasa dancers and their performance for our paired launch.

In no time, the incense was lit and smoke streamed from the building as it once did in 1976. This smoke was cleansing, halting the decay of the building, symbolising its renewal. Catherine was spontaneously drafted into the cleansing ceremony. The choir sang while the smoke burned. A far cry from the violent scenes of rampaging students and screaming residents described by those who witnessed it’s burning. The building has been spiritually healed, its dark, rubbish collecting bowls are now alive with the laughter of children, no person holds the key to this door, it is held open by the spirit of community. In this project we rejected the idea of initially investigating what select individuals wanted to do with the structure, moulding our brief around a person. Instead we made a decision that seeing as though no individual owns the building, no individual should. I think we have saved it; we have saved its history and preserved its message. A building always represents its owner, their strength, choices and history. We have denied the beer hall this burden, and allowed it to represent itself.

We left the beer hall and visited the Recycling Container project. Ahaka and I said a few words, and the Kwasa-Kwasa dancers turned our brief about a dance which involves the recycling of rubbish into a sexy recycling saunter. They oozed and folded their way around the refuse area, flicking and twisting glass and cans into the right bins. They were fantastic, and the crowd seemed to love it. I am very happy with the outcome of our paired project. We supplied a brief to the artists and they returned a sign, full of their own interpretations. I am amazed at how Ahaka studied waste and I studied containers and our result was a piece of mural art, whereas Tom studied mural art, and Robyn studied open spaces and they produced a pavement element. We are happy that Stan will be able to make more money off recycling glass, that the park will now be a cleaner place, and that we’ve been able to organise refuse bins for the area.

We then moved onto the Robyn and Tom’s fantastic concrete plinth, Gareth and Sifiso’s brilliant, bright blue poles and Catherine and Kasia’s beautifully paved, almost mosaic intervention. We had lunch and speeches at a really slick looking Chess Park. The board was really iconic, full of activity, well made and very good looking, with the sign, equally as sexy, bold and striking. A taxi took us back to the Beer Hall which was full to the brim with children. I was very excited to watch them use the building exactly how we envisioned. They sat on the slab to watch basketball, with their arms resting on the middle bar of the balustrade, exactly why we designed it that way. They were having a fantastic time. We handed out eats and Coke to the masses of children, in huge queues and general chaos. Gareth ran a very successful basketball tournament. We cut the music at 6pm, cleaned up, and sat down at Stan’s for a completely hysterical drink with the volunteers. Then it was goodbye.

What an incredible day, such an unbelievable project, such a successful result. Today the building belonged to the children of KwaThema, in the evening it was the youth’s. One volunteer never saw the end of the revelries. He was arrested for stealing beer crates and pulling out flowers. Here ownership was enforced over the building; we all felt it shiver as the police approached. Today resembled its demise, police arresting a youth for being a nuisance, as in 1976. They were asked to come out by those who seem to have assumed an authority over the building. Control is a dangerous drug. What honestly gives them the right? Their involvement in the project.

Late Night Crates

Catherine and I left Wits this morning, and made our way to the Carnival Mall in Benoni, we were on a morning of errands, We were at the mall to buy prizes for our Basketball challenge at the launch, we were very lucky to find two well priced Nike sports bags. They will definitely do. Then we went to a nursery somewhere out in some obscure farmland where a lady with a beehive haircut sold us more vygies. Our adventure then took us into Springs on a mission to find shackles for our swings, well we toured the town, twice, and eventually found them after brief confrontations from an ogre looking man and a very sassy sales assistant. Then we had to collect our sponsored Coke from a depot in Nigel. They had might as well refer to Nigel as half way to nowhere, because that’s exactly where we went. In the middle of a dead maize field, in what must have been planned as an industrial development, which no one but Coca Cola and a dead maize field saw as a viable place for development. Catherine and I were intrigued to be sent away from the depot to collect our Coke elsewhere. They no longer do wholesale because of rampant crime. We both looked at the dead maize as we drove out of the depot wondering where the criminals were and why they would rob a place so far from any obvious human habitation.

We finally got to KwaThema at 12:00, where Gareth and Robyn had been preparing an argument as to why the swings should be positioned where they want them. We were frightened by their enthusiasm and newly developed upper body strength so we relented. The rest of the day was filled with controlled mayhem as we rushed around completing everything for the launch tomorrow.

At the Recycling Container site, our painter Linda had not yet arrived, and had finished about 10% of the sign. In our complete panicked hysteria, Ahaka managed to find an excellent artist, Wilson and we immediately employed him. By the time he reached the site, Linda had too, so we had two artists completely reinterpreting the sign, but managing to complete it. They worked until 9pm that evening.

I have no photos of today because of the amount of work we had to achieve, from last minute painting, to the erection of the basketball hoop and general cleaning up. We managed to fix the swings, which look fantastic and left the mattress, fake grass and beer crate wall fixing for tomorrow morning.

Well our day didn’t end as most have, it reached 6pm and we didn’t go home but moved to the back of Mr Cindy’s house with a mass of about 60 beer crates. Here, armed with a drill, hundreds of nuts and bolts and a quartz each, we set about building the beer crate walls. It was utterly chaotic, but we managed, emerging cold, slightly bruised, yet determined, straight backed and glossy eyed.

Tomorrow it all comes together.

Recycling

Today was a day of much activity. The morning started with a visit from Busi, a representative of The Glass Recycling Company. She was here to meet Stan and me to discuss his options in operating a glass collection facility in KwaThema. She was most positive about Stan’s position and felt that her board would approve the application which Ahaka and I draughted for him. In organising the skip, Stan would have an additional form of income and the community would have a real alternative to dumping their glass, or throwing it away in their general rubbish. Stan spoke about a person he would employ to collect glass, thus spreading his earnings further into the community. We were very happy with Busi’s visit as she showed some real commitment and belief in the viability of the recycling of glass next to the beer hall site.

As soon as Busi left, Dudu arrived with her assistant from Mondi Recycling. They were here to head our recycling workshop. In no time, around 100 Grade 6 learners, accompanied by their headmaster Dennis, joined us from Sakhelwe Primary School. They sang songs and thoroughly enjoyed Dudu’s talk about recycling waste and saving the environment.

The rest of the day was spent on various projects around the beer hall. We managed to finish the basketball lines, the props were finally painted, the balustrade was almost completely up and we received the first few beer crates from the Mississippi Tavern, down the road. Catherine finished the painting of the road stripes which stretch out to the next park and the concrete plinths in the landscape were also painted.

We were extremely relieved when a front end loader and a massive truck arrived to remove the mountain of rubbish. They worked for a long period, and made a great difference. Fischer also joined us today to chemical mortar our abacus which looks completely fabulous. Each face of each block is a wonderful piece of work, I could spend a long time looking at the paintings which the children did on our blocks at the workshop. We finished the day at Stan’s, as we do every Thursday, discussing the launch.

Interview Sound Clip:

http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP

Busi, The Glass Recycling Company visit.

Stanley Sibanyoni on ownership of the Beer Hall.

Black on Black

Catherine and I dashed off to KwaThema this morning after picking up the last batch of our bolts from the fantastic people at Fischer-Upat. We arrived in KwaThema at around 9:30. We started the morning by spreading out our new crusher stone delivery, and laying bricks for a small one course wall which will stop the stone from spreading everywhere. January, our welder, continued with the hand rails and I began to paint the steel undercoat with Lawrence, a volunteer.

Lots happened today. Veli, the painter completed our Power-Salute mural and began to paint the names on the beam. January and Gareth managed to get quite far, finishing another prop, installing two stair uprights and welding on a few more lengths of hand rail. Khula continued with the basketball lines. Robyn made a great dent in the white stripe painting of the tire bollards; they look really beautiful and simple. The white line will also act as a warning for motorists who speed around the corner. We had our no dumping signs delivered today which was really exciting. The beer hall is really coming together, it’s bold, strong, iconic form is being moulded and heightened. The building’s history is evident in the surfaces remaining in the building, the bricks we’ve used to pave, the powerful mural.

Ahaka managed to bolt up the sign boards onto Stan’s container this morning, our sign painter Linda was there punctually and immediately started his undercoat.

The struggle which has emerged around the beer hall is very interesting. I had a very positive, yet angry, conversation with a community member who was appalled at the idea of us leaving the building once it was complete. Mr. Cindi assured him that he would look after it and that any kind of vandalism would result in a ‘black on black’ confrontation. This community member referred to a contestation between himself and a tavern owner on development of the building in the past. It’s all great that everyone seems to have very ambitious plans for the beer hall; I just wish they would see that it is of historical significance, and should therefore not be altered significantly. It is also in a semi stable condition which wouldn’t allow for serious occupation unless mountains of repair work to the concrete was completed. A new building elsewhere might end up being easier.

This evening I was standing alone, taking photographs of the building, when I was confronted by an interested man. He claimed to have wanted to have been a part of the project, but just hadn’t had the time. He expressed his enthusiasm for the work that we were all doing but became quite angry and violent when he worked out that we didn’t have any long term management plan for the beer hall. He referred to his community as a something parasitic and expressed that the community was still suffering as a society in a post-violent state. He certainly had some violence issues to confront, in the way in which he spoke to me. I am very interested to see what happens to the beer hall after we leave. A building designed to now function under the ownership of the whole community will undoubtedly be seized by an individual or group. I have a strong inclination as to who that might be.

We have been promised that our 4m high rubbish pile will be removed tomorrow morning, fingers crossed tightly.

Interview Sound Clips:

http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP

A Parasitic Community

Video:

23 May 2007 (low quality)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuWTgL96pfk

Steel

Seeing as though yesterday was the day that everything was supposed to happen, and it didn’t, I assumed that today would be that day, and it wasn’t. We really are on track, it’s just that I’m excited to have a day which makes significant, marked changes to the structure. So Robyn and I arrived in KwaThema expecting to find a huge load of steel which should have been delivered yesterday evening. Well it wasn’t there. The weather is minutely better, with Mr. Cindi’s morning outlay of coffee was welcomed as usual.

I offloaded the plywood boards which Ahaka and I are using for our sign. Robyn and I positioned the remaining props. We sent our welder, January off to weld plates and our volunteers began to lift soil where new grass was going to be painted. Soon Catherine and Gareth arrived with a fresh stock of lawn and the basketball back board. The day continued with numerous phone calls to our two steel suppliers, with neither delivering. The phone calls got quite heated, with our need for urgency portrayed very accurately. Some steel arrived finally, but it was the wrong length, so the driver was sent back and was apparently fired. Well at the end of the day we finally had most of our steel.

Ahaka and I spent parts of the day trying to stick our boards up for our paired project on Stan’s container. He was very eager and helped us a lot. The glue was awful, so we used bolts instead.

The end of the day left us with some balustrade flat bar up, three fixed props, new lawn and the beginnings of a basketball court. We also received our two ‘no dumping signs’ today and about 8 refuse bins from the council. Khula has been in charge of painting the lines.

A Cold Start to the Last week

Today was freezing. Completely, unbelievably burning cold, but we continue to toil for the greater good of humanity and because we only have about 5 days left. This morning we met in the architecture workshop and Catherine and Gareth drilled holes into the abacus blocks which the children painted at our workshop on Saturday. We darted off to KwaThema, and were greated by a bleak, freezing 8:30 in the morning beer hall. Mr. Cindi made us coffee, while we wondered aimlessly around the building, all our strategic planning reduced to a cold sludge, slipping around in our heads.

Gareth got started on the remaining uprights in our balustrade, because that is very important to finish. Catherine drove Mr. Cindi around and went to the shops a couple of times, and I filled in where I could. We received a truck load of crusher stone today, the second step in our landscaping scheme. It looks fantastic spread around the front of the building. It looks so good, we are getting more. Catherine and I also managed to mark out the primary lines of the basket ball court, and the ANCYL guys built a one course wall next to our new grass.

Today 4 of our plants were missing. Mr. Cindi says that people jealous of our project have removed them in spite. Well its a good thing then that we still have 5 more left in the tray, ready to replace those lost.

Ahaka and I had a very successful meeting with Linda, a local sign writer, about our recycling container project. We have designed a bright, colourful, information packed sign which will hopefully send out a clear message about the advantages of keeping your public space clean. The sign was influenced by the many painted around the township and the way they use people in portraying the message instead of heavy text. Linda was fantastic, completely enthusiastic and positive. We will surround the sign with red bricks to demarcate a place where recycling could take place, hopefully our glass bank will arrive in time. We have also tried to organise a group of council rubbish bins for the site, hopefully they too will arrive before Saturday. We had kotas today for lunch, kotas, a reinterpretation of ‘quarters’ (of a loaf of bread), are bread with chips, cheese, polony and a Russian sausage. Heavy stuff.

Tomorrow will be 9˚C, need I say more.

Interview Sound Clip (Open with QuickTime):

Joseph Cindy on the community's reaction

http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP

Video:

21 May 2007 (low quality)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4FhB1RgJhk