\nIt\u2019s\njust after 8pm and I\u2019m sitting at my desk in Johannesburg, although\nI find myself looking through the windows of the 1820 Settlers\nMonument and out towards the hills of Makhanda. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt\u2019s\nnighttime there, too, and I can see rows of streetlights and the\noccasional pair of headlights blinking in the distance. I\u2019m seeing\nall of this in real time, as if I\u2019ve tapped into the building\u2019s\nCCTV network. The room that holds my vision is still and unadorned,\nbut there are recorded voices \u2013 two of them \u2013 and they are\nspeaking in measured tones. I turn the volume up, and eavesdrop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cBlessings\non the healers.\u201d
\nI catch fragments, whispers.
\n\u201cAnd\nthose who entered here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThere\nis activity outside of the voices, too \u2013 the sound of wind, the\ndrone of cars passing by below. The movement of the town, the\nbrick-and-mortar howl of the building. Or am I just imagining this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n***<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAt\n8am the following day, I visit the webpage again. It\u2019s morning in\nMakhanda. Harsh, white light pours in from every corner of the room.\nIf I was quicker, I could have watched the Eastern Cape sun rise in\nreal-time, but I wasn\u2019t, so I skip back an hour and a half and\nwatch it break over the hills. The voices have been talking through\nthe night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n***<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Video and audio. Voice and land. Monument and history. In the simplest sense, this is what makes up James Webb\u2019s Nothing here does not hear you<\/a><\/em>. The work, a site-specific installation shown as a 24 hour live-stream, makes use of the space currently known as the 1820 Settler\u2019s Monument as a site of investigation, healing, cleansing, and listening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \nTo\ndo this, Webb invited academics, traditional healers, building staff,\nand political activists \u2013 Xolile Madinda and Ayanda Kota are just\ntwo of the well-known Makhanda-based participants \u2013 to walk through\nthe building and speak to their experiences of the space. All of\nthem, explains Webb in the work\u2019s framing text, spoke to some kind\nof blockage or obstacle and how the Monument needed to be opened up,\npicked apart, and built up into many monuments. He then shared these\nreflections with a writer who reworked them into a series of texts\ndesigned to function as blessings when spoken. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThe\ninstallation doesn\u2019t take place across the whole building. It\noccupies a small, windowed passage on the exterior of the Monument\nknown as \u2018The Bridge\u2019 and which Webb refers to neatly as an\n\u201carchitectural folly\u201d. The windows serve as a means of taking in\nand reflecting on the landscape, but they also double up as speakers\n\u2013 well-placed transducers transform them into eerily resonant\npanes, proselytising through the day and into the night. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThe\nwork is incredibly engaging, despite the distance. Webb\u2019s ability\nto grapple with the intangible and the affect-laden, primarily\nthrough the medium of sound and how it permeates and pulses through\nthe world around us, is profound. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nHe\u2019s\nalso worked with the Monument as a site before, most recently in 2018\nthrough a simple installation at the entrance of the Monument that\nformed part\nof There\nis a Light That Never Goes Out<\/em>,a\nseries of site-specific neon signs translated into selected\nlanguages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nTo\nmake sense of a structure such as the Monument is no easy task. It\u2019s\na charged space, certainly, but it\u2019s also a multifaceted one.\nPerched on a hill overlooking the shallow valley of Makhanda, it\u2019s\nwhere the National Arts Festival has its headquarters, it\u2019s the\nsite of university inductions and graduations, and it houses\nrestaurants, galleries, concert halls, cinema spaces, basement\ntheatres and more inside its labyrinthine walls. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also has an odd track record of reconciling its identity with the activities it holds. In South Africa\u2019s apartheid era, the Monument basement was home to a great deal of protest theatre. Then, in 1994 it was gutted by a fire. In 2015, the city\u2019s Foundation Council passed a resolution, minuted as follows: \u201cIt was AGREED to: Change the name of the building<\/a> which is presently not in sync with the activities which take place in the building\u2026\u201d. In 2019, while artists such as Berni Searle and Thania Petersen installed outdoor works speaking back to the presence and history of the building, part of the roof blew off and crashed down onto the Sundowner Concert stage<\/a> (fortunately, no one was harmed) during a festival press briefing. Once the dust had settled, the running joke was that the art was working a little too well that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nWebb\u2019s\nwork does not destabilise the foundations of the Monument of course,\nbut it does rattle and reorientate the building in shrewd, poetic,\nand symbolic ways. If history is the stubborn bedrock from which his\nwork emerges, then sound and language are the intangible, yet\nenduring forms it assumes. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nIn\nNothing\nHere Does Not Hear You<\/em>,\nhe is something of a sonic draughtsman, employing these simple tools\nto put forward new designs for a building that\u2019s steeped in history\nand tension. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n***<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n6pm\nnow. I\u2019m watching the light leave the sky, traces of it still in\nthe room, drenching everything in a soft honey-glow. Outside, the\nkhaki greens and yellows of the hillside, the slow crawl of cars and\ntrucks moving in and out of the city. The blessings are spoken\nintermittently, working away at the stillness, the unease, the heavy\nweight of time. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\u201cMay\nevery corner be a stage.\u201d Nothing here does not hear you is available for viewing on the National Arts Festival website<\/a>. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n \nCREDITS:\n<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Research and interviews: Dr. Dominique Santos, James Webb \n\n\u00a92021 The Critter. This article is licensed under a <\/em>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s just after 8pm and I\u2019m sitting at my desk in Johannesburg, although I find myself looking through the windows of the 1820 Settlers Monument and out towards the hills … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1188],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4581"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4588,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581\/revisions\/4588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cMay you hear the questions asked\nby the walls.\u201d \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Invited site readers: Ayanda Kota, Brendon Wessels, Joseph Maart, Juanita Praeg, Prof. Julie Wells, Mbali Marais, Nicci Spalding, Nosipho Matini, Rev. Thebe Albert Shale, and Xolile \u201cX\u201d Madinda
Interview and location sound recordist: Kuhle Ngqezana
Writer: Louis Viljoen
Voices: Nombasa Maqoko, Dr. Hleze Kunju
Voice recording engineer: Elijah Madiba
Recording studio: International Library of African Music (ILAM)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n