bas princen took this photo of mokkatam ridge in cairo, egypt...
there is a short write up from regine on the we make money not art site....

yesterday was aids day....
my friend nkuli told me on the weekend that in her home town some people are actually getting aids on purpose so that they can receive the government grant of R800 a month... [thats about 100 dollars]
anyway.. this documentary called 'the origin of aids' is on freedocumentaries.org...
some interesting information... brilliant site...
you can stream it online or download it..
sharp sharp*

i cannot leave out the legendary, and i mean legendary THEORY ONE from my blog posts...
hes been around for a time and though i hardly ever see him around i often see what hes been drawing late nights while the rest of the world is sleeping...

he is consistently amazing... i particularity love his hand done illustrations of street vagrants, gangsters and sailors....
pulling through with the illest style that is theory one and no other - see his flckr account...

jack parrows - 'cooler as eke'
video is out en dis bevok!!!!.....
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when i met spoek we were both so tragically and beautifully young and naive, sitting at the tattoo parlor where tyler was working... talking about putting together a hip hop zine... well this guy, this guy.... is a genius in his own right... was studying medicine at the age of 17 and opted for a life of music and mayhem instead....
some will know him as the ebony half of sweatx where he teams up with the amazing mr markus wormstorm....
but yes what im getting to is spoek's blog... now his blog is a cultural phenomena... i dont care what anyone sais... it kicks subjects from vervoed to kwaito to jesus to albinos and the zombie disco squad right up close and comfortably next to each other.. his notes from spice island take you on a fragrant tour of the thoughts and impressions of a post-apartheid post-hip hop posterboy...

zoros new video - azania...
loving it.. telling it as it is...

BLK JKS - MOLALATADI from Jamie-James Medina on Vimeo.

there may be some south africans awake enough to recognize a band of great importance and flavor... BLK JKS have opened their arms to the world and are getting the acknowledgment that they deserve... great new video... '
'molalatadi'
featured on the fader website...

this ones been up for years... despite heavy cleaning some things slide ...

one would assume that skateboarding is not a crime... but alas in our sunny sea side town it is...

the cape town anti nuisance bylaw outlaws skateboarding

as well as begging...
climbing a tree.....
washing or cleaning a motor vehicle in a public space....
no person shall dry or hang washing in a public space.....
no person shall skate on roller skates or skate boards....
no trading goods without council permits...
if you are sitting, standing or lying in a public space and are asked to move by a officer you are then by law required to do so...

all of which are punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment..
its pretty obvious who these laws are aimed at and what there overall aim is...
to keep the city free from 'poor' people and unsightly 'nuisances'...
and keep the reality of the situation in our city outside the cbd and richer areas...
further entrenching our cities green zones and red zones...
my thought for the day...
my buddy was fined R500 for skating down loop st when it was totally empty on a sunday afternoon... im sure many vagrants and street people are constantly harrased and removed from the CBD and sea point... the city should belong to all of us...
are not public spaces by nature public...?

we are absolutely and utterly insignificant... nothing means anything... nothing means everything... everything is void... dark matter... thought is null... ambition is vanity... yet at the same time everything is essentially significant... each grain of sand and every hypothesis on human nature is valid... each emotion and life story is infinitely as powerful as the next... we are by definition contradictions.. holding the universe within and searching in the ever expanding external universe without for some validation of ourselves... we search in others for reflections of ourselves.... in countless ways we dig for meaning.... we step through ways to explore memory... project our futures... define definitions... find surety within the mysteries that ultimately are not for human comprehension... it is our limitations that make us beautiful... our downfalls that eventually give us character... it is the fall of the human race that allows for its resurrection in spirit.. and i speak not of religion... nor of belief... everything is believable but nothing is true... our knowledge is limited and to think otherwise is vanity... ive spent days lost in the absence of inspiration.... listening to silence... i want to hear the spaces between the moments... my art is nothing but a form of breathing... if we can be sailors on an epic search but know that the the ultimate end is water... that is all...

ive been absorbing my time with a book beautifully written by carolyn christov-bakargiev.
south african artists are priveledged to have such a man to learn from... his writings and works are enlightening, humbling, inspiring and devastating..
something of his that caught my eye... beautifully....
' I have never been able to escape johannesburg. The four houses i have lived in, my school, studio, have all been within three kilometers of eachother. And in the end, all my work is rooted in this rather desperate provincial city. I have never tried to make illustrations of apartheid, but the drawings and the films are certainly spawned by, and fed off, the brutalised society left in its wake. I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain endings. An art [and a politics] in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay'....

check out the gugulective's blog
it hasnt been updated in a while but they are still really active... doing some amazing work...
i met dhatini a while ago on a project we were both involved in and ive recently met some of the rest of the collective.. i think they are a much needed voice in cape town and south africa...
and am really excited to see whats in store in the future from them... hopefully we will do some things together in the next years.....

im reading a thick and intensive book by thomas pakenham called, 'the scramble for africa'...
taking one through the europeans desperate scramble to divide and rape the continent of africa in the late 1800's... which the continent has never recovered from...
you can read a bit more about it on the new world encylopedia or order it on amazon.

i see there is also a new version by author john gahzvinian...

which i believe is a more recent look at the european powers [and of course china], and how they are effecting the continent in their search for cheap resources...
going to borrow that one from meghan as soon as i finish this first edition...