{"id":1540,"date":"2015-07-03T23:12:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T21:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/?p=1540"},"modified":"2015-07-03T23:12:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T21:12:15","slug":"manfred-zylla-and-the-art-of-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2015\/07\/03\/manfred-zylla-and-the-art-of-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Manfred Zylla And the Art Of Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cult Cape Town-based artist Manfred Zylla will be keeping things fierce at this year\u2019s National Arts Festival with the launch of a new book of hard-hitting images that pays homage to Pasolini\u2019s last film Sal\u00f2<\/em>, writes ALEXANDRA DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lewd, crude and packed with fervid social and political critique, Manfred Zylla\u2019s new art book, 120 Days of Sodom<\/em>, will be launched in Grahamstown on Friday, hot on the heels of recent launches in Munich and Rome.<\/p>\n

Featuring commentary by a transnational mix of renegade voices \u2013 including Aryan Kaganof, John Peffer, Nomusa Makhubu, Andrea Dic\u00f3, Niklas Zimmer, Ivor Powell, Pablo Cesar, Ludmila Ommudsen Pessoa, Ashraf Jamal, Hofmeyr Scholtz, James Matthews, Garth Erasmus and Cheng Qian \u2013 the book showcases a series of small-scale works on paper made by Zylla in homage to Sal\u00f2<\/em>, the last film by Pier Paolo Pasolini. An Italian socialist polymath and controversial player of the ideological wildcard, Pasolini was murdered in 1975 \u2013 run over several times with his own Alfa Romeo.<\/p>\n

The book launch will be accompanied by a special Pasolini focus as part of this year\u2019s Film Festival, which has been billed as the \u2018Magna Carta of Film Festivals \u2013 Supporting the Liberties\u2019 \u2013 and when Film Festival curator Trevor Steele-Taylor tests the limits of liberty, he doesn\u2019t mean 50 Shades of Grey<\/em>. Pasolini is not for the faint hearted, so if you\u2019re squeamish, bring along your blindfold and gag bag, and prepare for a full visual buffet of lust, sin and carnal depravity: Sal\u00f2 \u2013 The 120 Days of Sodom<\/em> (1975), The Gospel According to St Matthew<\/em> (1964), The Decameron<\/em> (1970), The Canterbury Tales<\/em> (1972) and Arabian Nights<\/em> (1974).<\/p>\n

One of Pasolini\u2019s films is quite hilariously described in true all-American fashion by the Harvard Film Archive as \u2018nothing less than a cinema-v\u00e9rit\u00e9 Kinsey Report \u2013 with occasional Godardian touches \u2013 on Italian sexual mores in the 1960s\u2019. Some might call that an understatement \u2013 or even, if you happened to be a hot-blooded espresso drinker, say \u2013 an insult.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, German-born Zylla became known for hard-hitting drawings that critiqued the brutality and violence of apartheid. His 120 Days of Sodom<\/em> paintings had their genesis in 2012 with a pack of paper, the small paper size of which stimulated the idea of producing a series as a homage to Pasolini\u2019s last film. It is a non-sequential series, with each painting presented within the frame of a television screen.<\/p>\n

\u2018We sold the series in 2013, to a collector in London,\u2019 says Zylla\u2019s gallerist Heidi Erdmann of Erdmann Contemporary. \u2018It was never shown in South Africa, sans one night, at Zylla\u2019s 75th birthday party on 1 March 2013.\u2019<\/p>\n

The book launch \u2013 which takes place on Friday, 3 July at 5.30pm at Grotto Mojito, corner of Somerset and High streets in Grahamstown \u2013 will also be accompanied by an exhibition of Zylla\u2019s latest series of drawings, Waiting For\u2026<\/em>, in which he interprets Pasolini\u2019s instructions, in his directors\u2019 notes and anecdotes, to his cast and crew.<\/p>\n

\u2018We took our time with the book,\u2019 says Erdmann. \u2018Manfred and I met each Saturday \u2013 it took four months before we finally settled on a basic structure… After a long meeting and no firm idea as to whom to approach for the lead essay, we went downstairs to the bar [Blah Blah Blah Bar on Kloof Street]. Carsten Rasch, my husband, suggested Trevor [Steele-Taylor]. I have known Trevor since my 20s and Manfred had met him in the 1970s. I went back to my office and wrote to Trevor, who was then still based in London, and withWith Trevor on board, \u2018we took the thread of cinema and invited the various other contributors,\u2019 Erdmann explains. \u2018The idea was to focus on the contemporaneity of the three main influences, Pasolini, Dante and De Sade.<\/p>\n

\u2018Both Zylla and I did not want another art book, so we focused on very different kinds of voices. I asked a student, a commercial diamond diver\u2026 I wanted a film script, an actor (I had seen Lugwig Binge in [Heinrich] M\u00fcller\u2019s Quartet<\/em>), academics, journalists, poets, filmmakers, friends and colleagues,\u2019 Erdman says.<\/p>\n

Steele-Taylor suggested a few more contributors and secured the rights to use English industrial music group Coil\u2019s lyrics. \u2018Manfred and I watched the music video online. Zylla, himself a musician, just loved the experimental nature of Coil, and we said yes \u2013 we want the lyrics. Producing this book has been one of those projects where everything just fell into place.\u2019<\/p>\n

One of the book\u2019s most original features its transnational spirit and multilingual text. \u2018Once we decided on mother-tongue submissions, we could throw the net wider in terms of submissions,\u2019 says Erdmann. \u2018Editing was a bit of a nightmare with so many languages, but we managed.\u2019<\/p>\n

Zylla\u2019s 120 Days of Sodom<\/em> was printed in a limited edition of 350, and retails for R1,500 per book. As Grahamstown is the first South African launch, it will be sold on launch night at R1,000 per signed copy.<\/p>\n

As part of Think!Fest\u2019s special focus on Secrecy and Surveillance this year, Zylla will also be participating in a panel discussion (Tuesday, 7 July at 10am), examining the position of \u2018art\u2019 as a method of resistance to state, religious, financial, censorial and corporate power.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cult Cape Town-based artist Manfred Zylla will be keeping things fierce at this year\u2019s National Arts Festival with the launch of a new book of hard-hitting images that pays homage to Pasolini\u2019s last film Sal\u00f2, writes ALEXANDRA DODD Lewd, crude and packed with fervid social and political critique, Manfred Zylla\u2019s new art book, 120 Days… Continue reading Manfred Zylla And the Art Of Resistance<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}