Media Flaws

I don’t even know where to begin. I’m livid, putrefied and disgusted to say the least. Yesterday saw me wasting away an hour of my life in a talk with an alleged artist, Barend de Wet*. This old timer actually had the nerve to grace our campus and present to us what many could term a post modernist display of sheer crassity.

The worst part is that I had double booked myself yesterday. It was either I missioned off to upper campus and witnessed our deputy vice-chancellor debating issues of Affirmative Action at UCT. That would have been interesting to say the least. But no, for the love of all things bright and beautiful (art) I chose to sit it out at Michaelis and witness a faded artist scrap together whatever remains of his dignity he could scramble. Needless to say he failed dismally. His first stunt was tattooing a lecturer and a popular artist. He then painfully proceeded to spin a yo-yo for an entire life-long 10 minutes. Thereafter he probably felt some form of obligation to play us a video of the world no.1 yo-yo spinner. Then the killer part – his ill-hearted video attempt at performance art, titled ‘pussywhipped’, where he nudely parades his wrinkled self, whilst shaving his girlfriend’s…. (take a guess).

Presuming I had died somewhere along his hour-long presentation, I could easily say I was turning in my grave. I couldn’t even jump out of this casket as I had to film the gyser for our school archives. Students mockingly asked him questions that further reinforced his fall from wherever he used to be. A bright 1^st year, posed a question that went along the lines: ‘Who is Barend de Wet, what does he do besides spinning yoyo’s, tattooing and shaving girls? What makes him an artist? His history, etc’ It was a good question, that was in line with what other lunchtime lecturers do whenever they grace Michaelis. Lo and behold, a Suzy Bell - looking like she had just walked off the set of a gothic movie - interjected and lamented the poor 1^st year for not having googled Barendt. Suzy, you boarded the wrong bus dear, I doubt the owners of google could tarnish their search engine with such banality. Barend was supposed to tell us about himself, his work, his inspirations, et cetera.

The single most inspiring element of his talk was when he eventually stopped, ran out of time or words; now that was an applause worthy moment of good riddance.