01/03/2008 17:00 - (SA)
Art Attack with Carl Collison
The cool, sexy tunes blasting from the sound system up on the inner city rooftop just barely drowns out the sounds of police sirens and the honking hooters of impatient taxi drivers.
Throngs of hip, young inner city frontliners have gathered here at the beautiful Drill Hall complex to celebrate the groundbreaking Keleketla children’s library. The project is the brainchild of Bettina Malcomess, currently an art theory lecturer at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art. Malcomess developed the Keleketla concept as part of her residency at the Drill Hall. The children’s library is a welcome addition to an area of Jozi that is treading a fine line between being a no-man’s land and being gentrified.
“For me it is an art project, because it is so cleverly strategised. It works with the space beautifully and because it is about knowledge production,” says noted fine artist Dorothy Kreutzfeldt about the library. Kreutzfeld also heads up the Joubert Park Project (JPP), a non-profit collective of artists “who share a passion for the inner city of Johannesburg’’ and manifest this passion “through various public art projects which engage the Johannesburg Art Gallery and it’s surrounds, artists, other organisations and, most importantly, the local residents”, and who have, since the onset, been actively involved in getting this project off the ground.
Keleketla takes its name from the Pedi word traditionally used at the beginning of a story or, literally, meaning ‘long ago’ or ‘back in the day’. “It is really about a more active form of listening,” says Malcomess.
So why the library? “I come from a literary background, so I wanted to do a project around reading. There really is not a strong reading culture in South Africa, especially among the youth. So, I wanted to do something sustainable around this,” says the 31-year-old Malcomess.
It appears as though sustainability is not the only thing that is driving this groundbreaking initiative. Accessibility seems to be a key factor, as well. Keleketla is not only open to the previously-though-presently-still-very disadvantaged children from the immediate surrounding area, but is also open to all and sundry; this speaks volumes of Malcomess’s commitment to fostering a culture of reading locally – one that is not dependent on retail chains’ lust for profit or the ridiculous taxes government places on book imports.
“It’s a resource centre, so anyone who wants to start a project here can use it. If people take it on, it can sustain itself.”
Keleketla’s location at the Drill Hall is particularly relevant; once a military base and then the site for the Rivonia Trial, now, however, it serves as a base for projects that seek not to destroy but rather to build bridges and share freely.
The one-roomed library takes up a tiny space. But its size belies the sizeable impact it could have on the surrounding community. Keleketla’s attempting to inculcate a reading culture into a community for whom putting food on the table every night is a constant struggle and poverty their one, true and constant friend. (Ideas, as valuable as they are, don’t fill anyone’s stomach.) The library could hopefully serve to inject some much-needed pride.
When I ask Kreutzfeld what she hopes the library will mean to this area, she pauses before answering: “Well, we’re hoping it will draw a different kind of audience. Firstly, it will serve the school kids from the immediate surrounding areas, but we’re also hoping to attract an older crowd – not just from the direct neighbourhood, but also any other people interested in possibly running workshops from here. Or those who want to use it as a resource space.”
Already, the projects they have run have gone on to further success. Says Kreutzfeld: “What is working well are the reading hours we host, in collaboration with Likwid Tongue, a very vibrant and dynamic group of performance artists. What we’re really hoping for is that the library becomes a catalyst for other initiatives. If young creatives, for example, wish to use the library for book clubs they should feel free to approach us.”
Judging by the interest that has already been shown in the fledging initiative, it would seem as though these young guns with a serious social conscious won’t have to wait too long.
Says Malcomess: “We have already been approached by a corporate that wants to assist us.” Which corporate this is, Malcomess is not yet at liberty to say. Aside from this mystery benefactor, Keleketla is also being funded by Joubert Park Project as well as the National Arts Council, through the Council’s schools programme.
And while Malcomess acknowledges the importance of having a steady flow of funding coming in, she says it’s really about a much broader (and nobler) ideal than simply getting the dosh streaming in. “It’s really about cultural literacy; about engagement with more cultural aspects.” To bear testament to this, she will be extending this project with the release of her book, titled Wish You Were Here. “[The book] is really a collection of fragments about my childhood in Jozi. It’s really about the memory of language in the city – a subjective mapping of Joburg.”
When I told a friend of mine (who, at the best of times can only be described as an Afro-pessimist – “We are the next Zimbabwe” being his constant refrain) about this groundbreaking project, and its potential offshoots he pondered it for a while before saying: “If I could know about more of these type of projects, I definitely would have more confidence in this city … and this country.”
It is the Keleketla library’s power to change perceptions that will make it and other similar initiatives successful. They are vital to our success as a city and as a society. A society desperately in need of something to make us believe in ourselves and that works to strengthen our ability to transform our realities into what we would like them to be.
Keleketla Library can be found at the Drill Hall complex, cnr Twist and Plein Streets (opposite the Noord Street taxi rank). To donate your old books or for enquiries, contact either Dorothy Kreutzfeld on 083 956 0507, or Bettina Malcomess on 078 253 7579. Alternately, email keleketla@gmail.com
pulseditor@gmail.com
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