LEANA VAN DER MERWE 10. URBAN ONTOLOGIES // DO WE CREATE THE CITY OR DOES IT CREATE US? 87 10 LEANA VAN DER MERWE URBAN ONTOLOGIES 2013 ARTIST’S BIO UNTITLED I (DETAIL) Far left Leana van der Merwe 1400 x 800mm, Earbuds, tile spacers and hot glue Leana van der Merwe inished her Fine Arts degree in 2011 with distinction at the University of Pretoria and has since been teaching irst years drawing and painting at the Department of Visual Arts. She is currently also a Masters student at the Department and is conducting research on the depiction of hunted and sacriicial bodies by South 2013 UNTITLED II (DETAIL) African female artists. Her interests include feminism and gender as well as contemporary South African art. She Left, middle works mainly with painting and sculpture with a speciic interest in assemblage sculptural works, which employ the Leana van der Merwe everyday in a new manner. Some of her paintings have been bought by the UP Arts collection in 2010 and her 1300 x 1100mm, Earbuds, tile spacers and hot glue sculptural works have been exhibited in several group exhibitions, which includes the 2012 Absa L’Atelier Competition 2013 exhibition at the Absa Gallery in Johannesburg. UNTITLED II (DETAIL) Left Leana van der Merwe 1300 x 1100mm, Earbuds, tile spacers and hot glue METROMUSINGS LEANA VAN DER MERWE Urban ontologies 88 URBAN ONTOLOGIES ARTIST’S STATEMENT is “cultural, existential, psychic and epistemological” in (Grosz 1994:164). This leads to the formation of new 2008:14) are the main theme for my works on addition to the sometimes physical displacement of hybrid identities and material forms that emerge from this exhibition. people coming to the city from rural areas or across these different forces. Jamal (2011:3) acknowledges the Darwin, Elizabeth Grosz (2011:31) asserts that life, in our borders from neighbouring countries. This dificulties which exists in inding coherent narratives Consumerism and commerciality create the illusion of its emergence “brings new conditions to the material displacement forces the individual to search continually or ways in which relationships between objects, lows importance and meaning (Dodson 2000:420), within world, unexpected forces, forms of actualisation that for new forms and identities, becoming almost a kind of and individuals could be understood or even explained the post-modern city, through products, experiences matter in itself, which without its living attenuations, it visitor to her own life, becoming not only a traveller in such places. The post-colonial, post-modern, post- and entertainment. Heidegger (in Teal 2008:14) contends may not be able to engender.” She elaborates that life of place, distance and identity, but also a creator of the apar theid city can never be explained as a unified that western culture tends to focus on “things” when is not an alternative or an Other to matter, but rather new material world which she seeks to possess as a whole or a structure into which individuals could it attaching meaning to life. He suggests an alternative a process emulating from the same energy source, an haven or even a home. or adapt, but should rather be articulated as an on- approach where the exposure of the “backgrounds, going process, an emergence of forms to which no processes and interrelations” between different objects person, system or territory could stake a claim. could serve to bring meaning and signiicance to our Do we create the city or does it create us? Following elaboration of the same matter from which it is born. Grosz (2011:33) describes life as being parasitic to According to Grosz (1994:167), Deleuze and Guattari’s matter, needing the physical to be what it is – to become work creates an understanding of subjects and objects what it is becoming, ever creating new forms as it where they are no longer in opposition with each Following Heidegger, Randall Teal (2008:14) contends Buildings, roads, cars and crowds of people remain emerges, changes and adapts to the materiality that other. In this context, the boundaries between the that it is not the isolated material units that form a meaningless if we understand them merely for their surrounds it. material and the immaterial become blurred and totality that are important, but rather the connections sights and sounds, but are given a richness of meaning understanding of the phenomena of our everyday lives. fragmented whilst having the ability to connect in a between these, the conversations which happen and when read together with their interactions with the Dodson (2000:418) contends that within the multiplicity of ways. The application of Deleuze and the movements which take place. Assemblage works different forces of culture, nature and humanity as well postmodern city, the homogenising effect of American Guattari (1987:260) notion of ‘becoming’ might be explore theses relationships between materials, forms as the impact which objects have on each other, their consumption creates “a variety of place-speciic hybrids helpful in order to gain a non-structuralist understanding and forces as well as our understanding of these interrelationships and their associated meanings. and juxtapositions”, where economy and culture of the city. As a material force, the city through its elements, which we try to give a coherent form and compete with the intentions and the identity of the contact with different bodies and other forces, could attach meaning to.Together, the structures which emerge Teal (2008:22) contends that ‘making’ or ‘building’ individual. These individuals within the post-colonial, be described in terms of “a discontinuous, non-totalisable through our interaction with life and our understanding correlates with one’s own existence and thus one’s post-apartheid cities of South Africa, also face a certain series of processes, organs, lows, energies, corporeal of “ourselves, the places we inhabit, the things we understanding of oneself. ‘Everyday-ness’ becomes displacement which, according to Ashraf Jamal (2011:2), substances and incorporeal events, speeds and durations” encounter and the people among who we live” (Teal extraordinary through a “particular adjustment METROMUSINGS LEANA VAN DER MERWE Urban ontologies 89 10 URBAN ONTOLOGIES within a speciic environment” (Teal 2008:19), through attachment. The city then, can also be seen as an individuals. It is the extraordinary interactions though, subtraction of one single unit does not make a embodied interaction with materials and forces. assemblage of different materialities as well as which have the capacity to create new forms and noticeable contribution to the form in general, alluding Assemblage works take the everyday and by ‘building’, immaterialities, which are forged together through subjectivities. ‘City’, then, becomes both tangible and to a Deleuzian notion of a ‘body without organs’. The ‘making’ and ‘adjusting’ create new forms that have their energies, intensities and lows (Grosz 1994:168), never intangible. It becomes a structure but also a being, in shapes remind us of natural as well as man-made shapes, own meaning and articulate new understandings of the just found the way they are.Their process of ‘becoming’ various stages of Deleuzian becoming.The city emerges which move together and inluence each other as they objects employed. The interaction of material objects is never ending: it is a continuous process. Each from our varied interactions within a certain time-space, create new forms and meaning. The process of creates new lows and movements, which have little attachment, each material form or immaterial force that which is ar ticulated as a series of “becomings” of the making of these works are emergent, since no relation to the small parts from which these new forms emulates is temporary. identities as well as matter. The material as well as the structured, pre-meditated plan or process has been immaterial structures that we encounter change our followed. The exciting shapes inluence the emergent A “body without organs” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987:174) relationships with regard to ourselves and others, as shapes and vice versa and form the basis for the work’s Assemblage art was pioneered by artists of the Dada and is what emerges when different objects, subjects, lows well as our understanding of the ‘life’ that emerges. The own process of ‘becoming’. Fluxus movements, who aimed to alter conventional and intensities are forged together, whilst apposing creation of emergent assemblage artworks aims to show readings of consumer objects (Brownell 2008:30) and notions of unity and one-ness. The parts or the organs how form develops through an explorative and So do we create the city or does it create us? Urban so prove that meaning is never a ixed or unifying force of the metaphorical body will never belong to the body. ontological understanding of matter, lows and energies. ‘life’, its inhabitants as well as its structures are intrinsically that can unobtrusively be ascribed to material objects. They are all provisionally attached and constantly moving. By using objects in different ways and by adjusting their The body is always open to new inputs, which in turn The works on this exhibition, Untitled I and Untitled II life force which follows its own path, always open to reading within space, new meanings emerge. Emergent changes the structure when it is forged together with are assemblage works created from everyday objects, new energies, lows, fragments and intensities. Jamal art is created by forging objects together in a manner the existing form. According to Grosz (1994:168), the which are forged together in an intuitive way, which (2011:10) suggests the continuous search for better which follows no clear steps or plans, but rather an parts of this body carry the same ontological status, changes not only the way in which we view these ways to live in our world, based not on “imagined and intuitive process of adding, removing and adjusting despite its form. It can be “human, animal, textual, everyday objects, but also their ontologies. The utopian realities” or ixed ideas about how history continually, allowing forms to emerge in a non-linier, sociocultural and physical bodies” (Grosz 1994:168). were created. linked. The movement between these elements is a relationship between these objects as well as the effects our everyday experiences today. A non-structural non-obtrusive manner. Assemblage, according to Grosz connections between them creates meaning and approach to urban life opens up possibilities for a luid (1994:167), is non-hierarchical: no individual part can Heidegger (in Teal 2008:15) explores these interactions movement and the work created is more than a sum of understanding of urban identities and life as well as the claim more importance or prevalence than the next. in terms of the ‘everydayness’ of our daily existence and its individual parts. The works on exhibition cannot be creation of alternative histories, which does not serve The whole is not just a sum of its individual parts, but how our routine actions are informed by already described as ‘inished’ works, but can always be added a uniied grand narrative. also a conglomeration of the collective effect of its inscribed relationships between objects, lows and onto or changed into a new form. The adding or METROMUSINGS LEANA VAN DER MERWE Urban ontologies 90 2013 UNTITLED I (DETAIL) Previous spread, right Leana van der Merwe 1400 x 800mm, Earbuds, tile spacers and hot glue 2013 UNTITLED I Left Leana van der Merwe 1400 x 800mm, Earbuds, tile spacers and hot glue 2013 UNTITLED II Opposite, right Leana van der Merwe 1300 x 1100mm, Earbuds, tile spacers and hot glue METROMUSINGS LEANA VAN DER MERWE Urban ontologies 92 REFERENCES » Brownell, B. 2008. Assembling light. PET wall installation. Journal of Architectural Education 1(1):30-35. » Deleuze, G & Guattari, F. 1987. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, Translated by B Massumi. London/New York: Continuum. » Dodson, B. 2000. Are we having fun yet? Consumption in the post-apartheid city. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograie 91(4):412-425. » Grosz, E. 1994. Volatile bodies: towards a corporeal feminism. Indiana: Indiana University Press. » Grosz, E. 2011. Becoming undone. Darwinian relections on life, politics and art. London/Durham: Duke University Press. » Jamal, A. 2011. Learning to squander. Making meaningful connections in the infinite text of world culture. Grahamstown: Rhodes University. » Teal, R. 2008. Immaterial structures. Encountering the extraordinary in the everyday. Journal of Architectural Education 1(1):14-23. METROMUSINGS LEANA VAN DER MERWE Urban ontologies