MEMORY CARD SEA POWER
This work asks questions about 'place' and its inhabitants, in this case, the foreshore region of Cape Town's city bowl. The series documents the lives of a group of Tanzanian stowaways who live amongst the N1 Highway infrastructure in Cape Town. Responsibility for this group of men, living without passports or travel documentation, is not claimed by South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, nor by shipping agents, or the government of Tanzania. The group resists the help of NGOs. The place they inhabit is similarly interstitial; in the words of Nic Coetzer this ‘place’ “is an accident, the consequence of other intentions.”
The broadsheet is protean: it can be a broadsheet, poster, individual page, pinned to a wall, pasted to an underpass, or starting a fire. In its folded form, single photographs and the narrative are fractured and curious, addled juxtapositions(a wave breaking through the city centre) give a sense of the relentless, violent life of the protagonists.
The project has been published online, and shown at the University Art Gallery in Tennessee (2014), Wolff Architects in Cape Town, Fourthwall Books in Johannesburg, and the Athens Photo Festival in Greece (2014). An alternative version featuring Heidegger was presented at the UIA Conference in Durban (2014)
The broadsheet was designed by Francois Rey of Monday Design.
Find associated literature/commentary here.
Sean Christie’s brilliant book, Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard, which contains some of my photographs was published late last year. Sean and I worked together for part of what’s reported in the book. Buy it here.
