In 1980, the song, The Wall II, from Pink Floyds album, "The Wall," with its haunting chorus of school children singing we dont need no education, was adopted as a protest anthem by black students during the "Elsie's River" uprising in South Africa, protesting against the institutionalized propaganda and racial bias in the official curriculum. On May 2, the song, album and movie were banned by the Apartheid government.
This video piece was created for "Banned and Recovered, Artist Intervention," in connection with the California Exhibition Resources Alliance (CERA) for which 37 artists were invited to recreate or reinterpret a cover for a book that had been censored. Although most artists chose subject matter that had been censored in the USA, I focused on a musical that was banned in South Africa.
To communicate the relationship between censorship and Apartheid, I chose two songs for which I rewrote the lyrics as subtitles while retaining the original music, given the relevance of Pink Floyds commentary on the British educational system, and the extent to which it influenced white schools in South Africa. The censorship of "The Wall" and my exposure to it punctured the elaborate balloon of deception that architects of Apartheid had so effectively constructed to surround me. It precipitated a passionate leaning toward freedom of expression, and its power to reach and connect with people in ways previously unimaginable.
I juxtaposed imagery of my privileged, sheltered upbringing as a white South African in contrast to that of Hector Pieterson, who was shot and killed on June 16, 1976, and whose death precipitated the Soweto Riots. We were the same age. I also combined photographs I shot on a recent trip to Alexandra, formerly a "township" with some found imagery for which it was difficult to ascertain the creative source.
"Banned & Recovered: Artists Intervention" is divided into four themes: Banning Books and the First Amendment at Crossfires; Books on Trial; Race, Gender and Justice; and Burning Books: the Extreme Ban and includes original book art, mixed media, paintings, photographs, and multi-media pieces.
The exhibition is inspired by the exhibition "Banned & Recovered: Artists Respond to Censorship" that was on display at the San Francisco Center for the Book and the African American Museum and Library in Oakland in 2008. An earlier version of this piece was exhibited at the African American Museum and Library in Oakland.
