HALF ART
CHRIS THURMAN: As in colonialism debate, good and bad is one in art
SA’s arts scene has lately been forced to grapple with the inadequacy of perceptions that artistry is automatically on the side of the "good"
Helen of Troy’s beauty, according to the famous lines in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, "launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium". Helen of Cape Town’s Twitter account has launched a thousand think-pieces and resulted in a public roasting that could be career-ending. I am loath to reproduce what has been said about her latest foray. Much of the criticism rightly aimed at her makes the mistake of accepting the premise of her colonial apologetics: that the artefacts of history can be divided — the phenomena we live with, among and through in the world today — into categories of "good" and "bad". One cannot simply say: infrastructure is good, violence is bad. Transport infrastructure made possible by exploitative labour practices is neither good nor bad; it is what it is, inseparable from an irreducibly complex South African and global colonial history. Ditto piped water. Their contested pasts aside, both of her bizarre examples are also linked to anxieties a...
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