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Ship of fools

2017 Competition entry

Anton Roodt

Details:

Charcoal and coloured pencil
2 x (600 mm x 790 mm) + (1100 mm x 790 mm)

Description:
Representing the "mythology" of a society in a small boat after a flood.

Lie of the Land

(i)
The lie of the land is almost always the reason why towns in the Free State came into being, even if the value of the land is subterranean, like water or gold. This “lie” is the voluptuous word. Pronounced more like “sigh” than “die”. The landscape seduces by promises it never intends to keep.

The first gaze of the colonist combs through the tall whispering grasses and narrows against the shimmer of the spring sunlight on the limpid bodies of water. Then he focuses beyond, in the far-distance, and he falls in love with the purple of the black mountain at Thaba Nchu. Soon the ochre grasses bake and shrivel and whither and the foul water of the stagnant pools offend and enervate.
But, if he prospers and is privileged to own land next to the Bloemspruit at Bloemfontein, say, then he could sit with his family under the branches of his willow tree and contemplate the land in a shady haze. If he is poor, he fears the winter among many other fears. When winter comes, it is fresh, bracing, with clear blue skies, but also cheerless if he has no firewood. This land can drive you into the arms of one another, and then the whispers of hope and promises of freedom or redemption continue until the last embers of the blue gum fire die. Then spring arrives, and the children play, and all this is forgotten.
(Source: Schoeman 1987:2-3, panorama of Bloemfontein 1866)

(ii)
The lie of the land is why people in this country has come to hate one another so much. Conquest, exclusion,

displacement, resettlement, forced removal, expropriation. These words deal with space and its domination, and some are centuries old; others deal with capitalism, local property law, apartheid and power and, above all, home.

(iii)
Then there is the lie of the land and its physical attributes that we can understand best by looking at its contours, its soil and vegetation. Vegetation is only the reflection of the soil. I am interested in contours. Sometimes changing the contours of a place can alter its fate profoundly. Contours are an abstract way to navigate a place rationally in order to gauge heights and depressions.

The Flood

In 1904, yet another flood swept through Bloemfontein and altered its topography and its relationship to water permanently.

After the flood, the town decided it had had enough. The Spruit was to become a large channel, 30m wide, 5m deep, and 800m long. Six sandstone bridges link the two halves of the city that were often cut off from each other during storms and flash floods. No longer would the contours dictate the passage of water and how the bends lay down their swathes of mud and silt that produce monster cabbages and pumpkins for the owners of water erven next to the Spruit. Water now rushed through the city with the citizens mere spectators at a spectacle. In future, the city’s water would come from somewhere else.

To construct the channel, and to dress the canted faces of the Spruit, stone was needed. Good stone was conveniently at hand, but the houses in the black township Waaihoek, blanketed the geology. Waaihoek had to go. Besides, it was also too close to the white part of town. Only Zulu Street separated white and black residents from one another. Properties in Waaihoek were expropriated, as more stone was needed. A large quarry was created. The community retreated from this abyss,  although not without a fight. The contoured hole that was created in their midst was another pockmark on the face and the psyche of the city.

Mythology

What does the “mythology of a society” mean? These are the hidden fears and longings that are rarely discussed, and sometimes surface or are exposed under very private conditions.

Ship of Fools

As architects, we built a model of the Central Business District of Bloemfontein, including Waaihoek, the first black township of Bloemfontein. The contours of this area were drawn individually on board by computer, so that they could be laser cut to fit into a box prepared for the model. The deconstructed contours were colour-coded and printed separately on sheets so that the model builders knew what went where. By re-arranging and re-assembling these contours, one could create a different city.

This then becomes a new “landscape in a box”. A 3D-printed model building of the council chamber used by both the Free State Republic (the so-called Model Republic) and the Orange River Colony, symbolically and literally becomes the focus of the wasteland. This building (known as the Raadzaal) became a symbol of political power in the Free State (and remains so until today). Could the 1904 flood have looked like this in an alternative Bloemfontein? The ship of fools sails on a flooded lake through the landscape. With a figurehead of an ass, it heads to the shore past the Raadzaal that is in some way now situated, much like the Santa Maria della Salute on the Grand Canal in Venice, on a small peninsula.

Characters

The ship of fools carries different passengers that were characters or actors on the stage of the South African War (1899-1902). Lord Selborne, the High Commissioner for South Africa, in full military regalia, is at the bow; behind him, President M.T. Steyn, the last president of the Free State Republic. In many ways, the women and children bore the brunt of the war – the naked women represent the lost republics. A lone burgher pines for his republican wife and home. At the stern is a preacher, the disappointed voice of post-war black people, lamenting broken promises, lies, and lost opportunities.