FEATURES
Masters Architecture student, Hariwe Johnson’ s thesis and project was offered space to exhibit at the Circa Gallery in Rosebank.
THE EXHIBITION
Middle and upper class Johannesburg visitors were able to ' experience ' a bad building. Images, sounds, videos and even trash and smells filled the usually spotless gallery, intermixed with carefully curated infographics, profiles and other art pieces which laid bare the realities of living in one of these buildings. The exhibition opened up the social divide between the haves and the have nots.
The collections of works were curated by Johnson and are illustrated and composed in several visual art media. This includes documentation, drawing, conceptual art, installation art, historical drawings, photography, cinematography, video art— and will be showcased by the three primary project contributors: Hariwe Johnson, Jono Wood and Dirk Chalmers.
Photographer Jono Wood says that the project is a window into many of South Africa ' s underlying social issues and injustices.“ The alien nature of the building is both alluring and terrifying, but the sobering reality of it seems too real to ignore. It is a rare view into a world many privileged members of society never get the chance to witness,” he says.
Wood describes the area as a place where abject poverty exists in a realm where the normal rules of society are distorted and somehow twisted into a form of their own.“ A place where human rights are not constitutional rights and where boundaries are continuously crossed either by or towards their subjects. The norms of society no longer exist, how we know and expect them, it is a place where the price of life is both morally and emotionally expensive for its residents,” he says.
Johnson carefully designed, managed and curated the entire exhibition which has several lives or modes: artistic, visual, academic, social and political. With parts of chapter 2, section 26 and 27 of the Constitution hanging on the walls stating what all people in South Africa have rights to, video footage and imagery reiterate the continuous violation of these rights.
‘ The single biggest management problem in the inner city is the high incidence of‘ bad’ buildings.’ – Johannesburg Development Agency( JDA).
Section 26 states that everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures within its available resources, to achieve progressive realisation of this right. Section 27 states that everyone has the right to have access to health care services, including reproductive health care as well as a right to sufficient food and water. With water and electricity cut off, night time brings complete darkness with little activity for an average of 220 people in the building. In a sectional drawing through the building, which took Johnson over three months to document, compile and illustrate, the inhabitants speak of hearing people crying or screaming on other floors during this time and they speculate that these‘ people’ may be ghosts.
The ratio of water to residents is 1 to 220. The building only has one water pipe on the first floor. It also has no ablution facilities so residents relieve themselves in buckets and packets. They have a dedicated floor for refuse, however, rubbish and human waste can be found on the stairs, doorways and other areas of the abandoned building.
AFFORDABLE
SA HOUSING MARCH- APRIL 2017 23