Running Dry (8th-13th July 2009)

The freshwater spring that gushes out of the embankment of the Port Alfred Road in the Eastern Cape, just outside Grahamstown, is a place that holds a particularly interesting social energy.  Once only used by those people who did not have access to running water, it is now the site of a rather poignant democratization.  Due to a substantial decrease in the quality of tap water, many of the residents of Grahamstown and surrounds come to this point in order to collect drinking water.  Once a quiet and relatively hidden space where life-giving water splashed mostly uninterrupted into the valley below, it has now become a meeting place, where a queue often serves as a reminder to passing motorists that in an era of dwindling natural resources, water is not only a concern for the poor, but for everyone.

Having utilised this spot on numerous occasions, I wanted to return  and pay homage, not only because of its significance as a resource but as a social interstice, where people from all economic backgrounds share a visible social commonality as a result of their direct relationship with nature. 

In collaboration with Linda Stupart, we decided to mimic a reciprocal action to that which takes place at the spring.  Instead of travelling to the spring in order to fetch water, we brought water from various sources between Cape Town and Grahamstown to the point where it gushes out of the ground.  Erecting an ice cairn made from the collected water, it served  to mark not only the significance of that spot, but also that all the places where water was collected are equally (if not as visibly) significant interstices where people interact with nature around drinking water.

At each point where water was collected, a dry ice construction was left in its place to act as visual signifiers to passers by of our presence, hoping that on some level the curiosity attached to these constructions would lead the viewer to a more intimate and conscious interaction with the space.  On a symbolic level, the dry ice (sublimating as it were into nothing), presents a small but noticeable carbon footprint attached to our use of the water.  It also acts as an indicator of our transient presence in relation to a permanent need in current and future society.

Spaces and Places

Liesbeeck River

This river winds through the southern suburbs of Cape Town and is a significant landmark to anyone who has lived in the area.  Meandering through a number of residential areas, it provides a recreational break from the city for people to jog, cycle or just relax and enjoy the water, including a man who was using the canal we were at to bath.  This is also a place where Linda had grown up, bunked classes and been part of a major cleanup project to reduce the visible human impact on the once heavily polluted river.

We chose a spot where one of the canals that drain  Rondebosch's storm water into the river connected to the main body of water, and built a dry ice sluice: Linda beginning on the one side and myself on the other.  As we reached close to the middle, the flow of water into the river proved too strong for the light gas blocks and traces of our intervention joined the path of the water, bubbling into the distance.  Those left behind, proved an interesting conversation point for a number of the joggers and walkers, who paused to see our broken bridge across the canal.

Steenbras River

The Steenbras River serves as the first significant body of water that one passes once over Sir Lowry's Pass and away from the psychic borders that the peninsular mountains and the Helderberg imposes on  Cape Town.  It also feeds into the Steenbras Dam, which in itself is one of the water storage areas for the city. 

Choosing a place where the N2 crosses the river, we constructed a dry-ice pathway (visually similar to that which was constructed on the Liesbeeck River) from the closest access point on the river, towards the road. 

As it was connected to a busy highway, the only person to witness this quiet intervention was a motorist who stopped at the river to collect water for his overheating car.  It did however, impress upon us the extent to which roadways and bridges tend to negate the presences of waterways that are approached as obstacles to be overcome

 

Knysna River

The Knysna River is the main river that feeds into the second largest estuarine system in South Africa. Home to the most endangered seahorse in the world (Hippocampus capensis), it was also my place of work for over four years whilst an adventure tour guide. During this period, I was privy to not only the magnificent sea life that sheltered amongst the wreckage of ships near its headland entrance to the sea, but also to those creatures that lived in the upper reaches of the the river tributaries in the forest. 

We chose a spot, roughly ten kilometers upstream from the river mouth, where a weir separates the salty estuarine water from the town's fresh water drinking supply.  It is a dramatic spot, as the weir also serves to provide a visual division between the water that flows along its course and large, deep pools that are still.  This spot also serves as a camping area (the farmer, whose land the weir is built on, allows many people to utilise this spot to gain access to the river).

Due to recent heavy rains, the weir had collapsed in some spots and had been sandbagged in order to keep the level of the dam at an optimum. In fact, the sandbags also served to raise the height of the weir and so increase the holding capacity of the dam above.  Linda and I used these sandbags (themselves a more practical intervention) as the base for our dry ice construction, this time deciding to build upward, mimicking the construction of the weir as well as the water pump (a noisy reminder of mans presence in an otherwise quiet place) that draws water to the town's storage dam.

Ironically, the upright construction left by us, collapsed as we were leaving, much like the wall on which the sandbags had been placed (clearly not a permanent solution to the increasing water needs of the town).

Kranshoek Waterfall

The Kranshoek waterfall is situated at a viewpoint overlooking the sea, deep in the Harkerville forest.  Here, many visitors and residents from the Harkerville community come to picnic and enjoy a somewhat sublime view.  It is interesting to note the stream that feeds this waterfall is barely visible above the forest floor and yet as it approaches the rocky ledge of the falls, it bubbles to the surface only to disappear again thirty meters beyond the base of the ninety meter drop.  On a symbolic level, this space is also very similar in appearance and views to the no longer accessible Brackenhill Falls, some fifteen kilometers west of this spot.  Brackenhill feeds the Noetzie River, that up until the building of Pezula golf estate  in 2002 was considered to be a pristine system from source to mouth.  The access points to that river system are now all privatized and visitors and local residents alike no longer have access to its water.

Linda and I decided to climb down to the point where the water cascades over the edge of the cliff and build a dry ice wall.  This would, for a time, obstruct the flow of the water and replace it with carbon smoke.  It was a nerve-wracking experience that piqued the interest of some of the families who were picnicking at the viewpoint.  One of the people went as far as to climb down to the waterfall platform (something that a majority of people would not think of as its access point is obscure and tricky if one doesn't know about it) 

Storms River Bridge

Storms River Bridge is a monumental single arch bridge that spans some 200 meters between the sides of the valley.  Having being reminded of the way bridges negate rivers, we stopped here to create a visual reminder to the passing motorists of the river below.  It is also significantly the first bridge in the Eastern Cape and so symbolized a transition, an acknowledgment of the political boundary that marks differing resources and approaches to environmental needs.

As a popular tourist stop, the walk across the bridge allowed for a number of people to interact with our sculpture.  To fulfill a curiosity to inspect up close what they had, moments before, passed in their cars. In doing so were co-opted into simultaneously seeing and hopefully acknowledging, the river directly below.

As we were not able to exchange our construction with river water, we bought a bottle of 'Tsitsikamma Crystal' bottle water. Although this is not taken from Storms River specifically, it is bottled nearby and constitutes (at least by marketers) some of the best quality and healthiest drinking water in the world.  (Despite this being impossible to verify, the ice 'pebbles' that we made from this water did contain a brilliant clarity and regular faulting that could signify a specific 'quality').

Grey Dam

Grey Dam provides another social interstice that is centered around water.  A popular recreation spot in Grahamstown, it is also one of the smaller storage dams that serve the needs of the town (a town whose water supply is increasingly undrinkable).   In 2006, Grey Dam was the location for a large-scale, public participation, fire sculpture that sought to similarly invoke a public recognition of the shared space and memorialize to an extent the publics need for interaction with nature.

We decided to reactivate this intention by constructing our dry ice sculpture in the form of the house that had served as an image for the previous sculpture.  Although it was dark by the time we enacted this exchange, conversations with various people during the course of our stay in Grahamstown proved that 'the house at Grey Dam' is very much still a part of public memory.  Documentation of this project can be found at www.house-at-grey.blogspot.com

Bringing it together

Monday the 13^th July saw us bringing together all the components that we had collected on our journey from Cape Town to Grahamstown.  Frozen into pebble-shaped pieces, we decided to venture to the spring just after five o'clock: a time when a number of people collect water after the days work. 

The pieces from different rivers contained within them some of the elements that were particular to its source: colour, clarity and inclusions of sediment served to allow us to identify which piece of ice came from which source.  The end product became a focal interest at the spring:, containing within it numerous differences and visually interesting aspects, the cairn eventually condensed to form a single piece of ice, which in the end became part of the spring. 

It is interesting to note that although the National Arts Festival was in full swing during that period, the spring represented a place outside of the expectations of the festival and so our cairn was not immediately recognized as a work.  This, I think added to its effectiveness as people were curious (and in some cases anxious) to know what we were doing there.

Photographs by Collin Groenewald

Honeybush Give and Take (26 April 2009)

Almonds, apples, apricots, avocados, berries, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cherries, cotton, cucumbers, grapefruit, grapes, kiwi fruit, legumes, lemons, macadamianuts, melon, naartjies, nectarines, olives, onions, oranges, peaches, peanuts, pears, pumpkins, soybeans, squash, sunflowers.

In early 2008, the agricultural world was rocked with reports that honeybee colonies had suffered a  significant decline for the third year in a row, attributed to the rather obscurely defined Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).  Reports came to light outlining the extent to which food production and by extension, the survival of mankind relies on these often overlooked workers of the field.  In 2009, South African newspapers also began flighting the story that local bee farmers have also sustained numerous losses due to a parasite, brought in from the USA, and therefore our food production can be seen to be likewise threatened.

Honeybush-Give and Take served to bring to bring to public attention in a visible manner, the number of agricultural (not to mention natural) products that are 100% reliant on bees for pollination.  Held as a public picnic outside the South African National Gallery, its position on top of one of the bronze soap boxes served as the thing differentiating this public work from a private picnic on the lawn.

Members of the public as well as friends were invited to help themselves to parts of the ‘still life’ and in return sit down and partake in the conversations surrounding the work.  After a bulk of the people had dispersed, the remainder of the food was left to surprise passers-by as well as to be taken away by the birds, squirrels and rats that share in the space.

Submerged Struggle (21 April 2009)

During the run-up to the National Elections that took place this year, name slinging and historical alliances became one of the most visible aspects of the electoral strategies of numerous of the most prominent parties.  The symbol of struggle: slipping from the lexicon of freedom and becoming an emblem of power relating not to the people, but to a group of elite politicians.

Submerged Struggle, takes this icon and subverts it to stand for the silent struggle that our relationship to the environment takes in juxtoposition to the seemingly more pressing social needs of housing and employment. 

Eight raw clay fists were placed in the water features that frame the front façade of the South African Museum (previously the Natural History Museum).  As the Company Gardens runs past parliament, this takes on dual political and environmental nuances and due to the timing (the day before the National Elections) heightened security ensured that these potentially volatile symbols were removed soon after installation.

Three however were overlooked and during the course of the day and into the following day, these symbols of struggle slipped unnoticed into the water to disintegrate alongside the environment’s importance in the political parties’ policies of government.