Outbreak of Art!

Infecting the City '09

Great to see some of you today (hello Portia!). Remember...performances continue until Friday. My recommendation is 'Exile', every weekday at 1:15 in the Adderley Street Fountain.

Mmm. It was beautiful.

Hope for More than Just Refugees

First thing’s first. We have an ESSAY EXTENSION – your 2 essays are now both due on the 20 March. This means both your essay on Karen Press' Hope for Refugees and the essay on your choice of the three novels will be due on the same date.

This does not mean that you should leave them until then! Rather start them now and use the next week to show me your drafts (as some people already have). Remember, you’ll have a lot more work coming up around that time (like your midterms!). Speaking of midterms, come and fetch an exam timetable from me if you haven't already got one. You write ENN101 on March 20th - the exact same day your essays are due. Easy on the memory, hard on the execution.

We had a nice long chat about the poetry essay in class this week. You seemed to have a lot of anxiety over where to start your analysis, but I reminded you that you actually know more than you think about poetry. In fact, when it comes to understanding the subtleties of language, rhythm and sound effects, you already have all the ‘answers’ – you just need to identify the right questions to ask yourself. After I handed out some guiding questions for you, this turned out to be the case. Glorious! Remember to come and see me, though, if you want to run your essay by me…or if you want help coming up with more questions!

Some further tips for writing a first-class essay:

1 - Don't waste space talking about 'what the poem is about'. Even worse, don't spend pages talking about the context of the refugee situation in South Africa. Although you might want to reference both of these topics, keep them short and to-the-point. In general, your essay should be more focussed on the POEM itself - think of yourself as a scientist dissecting and tweezing apart each little word, sentence contruction and image and sticking it under the microscope. Your essay should be a CLOSE EXAMINATION of the text, first and foremost. If you follow the headings I suggested you talk about (form, rhythm, word choice, imagery etc), you should stay away from the pitfalls of going off topic. Use this extra time to really craft your poetry essay! I look forward to reading them.

2 - Don't confuse the POET (the fabulous Karen Press) and the SPEAKER (unknown person whose attidude and views are complex and worth investigating).

3 - Always follow through on your three golden questions of critical anlaysis (WHAT do I notice that is different and interesting? WHAT EFFECT does this create in me the reader? WHY might the poet have wanted to create this effect?). Stopping half way through will almost always undermine your argument.

4 - QUOTE from the text to support your arguments. If you're trying to show show how a particular line creates a certain meaning, quote it. It's hard to make meaning out of an abstract concept. Show it off, parade it about and, above all, make it work for you.

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So, what else did we do?

Well, for one thing, we discovered that pretty much everybody needs to brush up on their Heart of Darkness plot knowledge.

Read. Read, or I'll throw more than marshmallows at you next time.

We chatted about the concept of Empire, power and representation. I asked you to get into the mindset of a white, British man at the height of Empire....temporarily. This was to understand the rhetoric (ways of talking) and world view that the novel would be set against. It's often hard for students to see just how revolutionary and before his time Marlow's perspective on colonisation is, so hopefully remembering this exercise will help to clarify that for us.

Hopefully I'll be seeing many of you on Saturday, at the 'Infecting the City' outing. Wear comfortable shoes - we'll be doing a lot of running between venues - and bring a camera!

PROGRAMME

At 9:30am, we will be meeting in Church Square (corner of Adderley and Bureau Streets – behind the Old Slave Lodge) to watch Limbo – a new collaborative work about today’s immigrants that dangles breathtakingly above the square where white slave-owners used to buy foreigners.

We will then move to Thibault Square (corner of Riebeeck and Long Streets, opposite the SARS tax office) where, at 10:30am, we will watch Amakwerekwere. “Amakwerekwere” is a derogatory South African term to describe African immigrants and, as such, this piece explores the issue of xenophobia.

At 11:15am, we move to the Adderley Street Fountains, where we’ll see Exile - a work about loss that haunts Cape Town’s iconic fountains while the traffic circles.

At 12 noon we will head over for the launch event in Riebeeck Square (corner of Shortmarket and Bree streets)– Turning into the Void. Sponsored by Red Bull, this vast animated sculpture hangs suspended from a crane against Cape Town’s dramatic skyline.

Have a great weekend,

C

PS 71 students have put their names down for Macbeki so far. SEVENTY ONE. (R28, March 10th). Just call me Ms Marketer.

Who are YOU? Identity, Othering and Difference

This week, we talked about REPRESENTING DIFFERENCE.

We used travel photography (mine!) and travel tales (yours!) to understand how we unconsciously construct cultures in terms of difference.






1 - Action snap in Vietnam as I see what the food stall at the side of the road is selling.

2 - Goth in Recoleta Cemetery, Argentina.

3 - "You shall not pass!" Immobile in India...

Look at the politics of representation in these pictures - what am I/the photographer unconsciously saying about difference, culture and meaning?

I introduced you to ‘othering’, which is a technical term for doing just that (representing people in terms of their difference to you). I suggested that, whilst othering is something we all do (often without thought or malice) it’s good to be as aware as possible of who we are and how that might affect how we represent others. In fact, our English textbook has a title that perfectly encapsulates our themes for the course – Selves and Others.

With this in mind, I asked some of you to write a short piece on yourself – who you are, what your influences have been – to try and start becoming self-aware about some of your own politics and influences. It’s the first step to becoming better thinkers and, by extension, writers.

The link to our first novel is clear. Heart of Darkness is one man’s travel tale of a journey through central Africa at the height of colonization.The European colonial period in Africa is well known for a particularly dangerous and derogatory form of othering, so keep an eye out for these sorts of things as you read.
HINT: look out for the different layers of language and perspective of Africa you get in the novel - Marlow the traveller's language and views, the Colonial officers' perspective, as well as Marlow's friends, relative and bosses back in Europe.

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On a culture front, there are loads of exciting things afoot. We're heading to the Spier Performing Arts Festival ('Infecting the City' '09) on Saturday 21st. The theme this year is 'Home Affairs', with a focus on the concept of South Africans' sense of identity and 'belonging'. Strong themes of xenophobia, othering and identity politics will be explored - perfect for our course!

We'll be meeting in the morning at Thibault Square in town and moving from performance to performance over the next couple of hours. Best of all? It's totally free. I CAN'T WAIT!

Here are some scenes from last year's festival...

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We are also having a class outing to Pieter Dirk Uys' Macbeki at the Little Theatre in town on Tuesday 10 March. Tickets are R30 and it looks like loads of fun.

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On Your Marks...

It was great meeting all of you this week.

Here are a couple of reminders of what we chatted about.

We began to tackle the concept of critical analysis - a new way of looking at texts (remember what a text is?). I gave you three basic rules of performing a critical analysis in poetry:

1. WHAT is different or interesting about this poem?
   


2. WHAT EFFECT does this have on the way we read, hear or understand it?
   


3. WHY might it have been done?
   

Follow this approach and you'll be well on the way to writing amazing poetry essays!

We also chatted about three important 'tools' that poets use to create meaning.

FORM (very roughly, the way the poem is laid out on the page)

RHYTHM (the 'beat' of the poem - this may be regular or irregular, but it's always done for a purpose)

'SOUND EFFECTS' (things like alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia).

Finally, I suggested that poems and songs are closely connected, which gave rise to some very unfortunate dance moves. Speaking of which, click on this link to have another look at Ani Difranco performing the magnificent 'Coming Up'. I prefer this simpler live version to the one I played you in class. If you like it, have a listen to Grand Canyon - another 'spoken song'. And, of course, check out her music too! (with Valentine's day just around the corner, you might enjoy this one).

FOR NEXT TIME...

Look out for a poem, song or lyric that you particularly enjoy this week and think about what makes it clever or interesting. Please bring it to class next time - I want to see what you enjoy....and why!