Another Time, Another Place

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE: CREATING SPACE FOR REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

JENNIE FOURIE

TIME AND LOCUS

The Another Time, Another Place (2022) exhibition is a reunion of artists who graduated at the University of Pretoria between 1986 and 1992. A cursory internet search of the title reveals that this exact phrase has been used across various genres over the years, ranging from the 1958 British melodrama film directed by Lewis Allen starring Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan and Sean Connery, another British drama film released in 1983, directed by Michael Radford to songs by Jerry Lee Lewis and Engelbert Humperdinck, to mention a few. These titles represent different genres in popular culture but they loosely share themes of loss, mourning and nostalgia, perhaps melancholia for what was and cannot be any more.

Before touching on the concepts of loss, mourning and nostalgia and creating links to the Another Time, Another Place exhibition, it might serve this argument to consider the meaning of the word ”another”. There are two meanings that come to mind. The first is that another means one more or additional, whereas the second meaning denotes something different or not the same. I want to argue that the title of this exhibition could be interpreted on two different levels. When the participating artists studied at the University of Pretoria, the world, South Africa and their place of learning were quite different from what they are today. But in saying that, I also wish to suggest that the specific time and place were just one of many eras, many places that make up our conscious and unconscious world. What we are and have today would be another time and another place for people looking back 30-odd years from now.

REMEMBERING

It is easy to remember the time from 1986 to 1992, I think at first. But as I dwell on it, I realise that there is a very thin divide between remembering and forgetting and that both are tainted with nostalgia and melancholy – false friends when trying to focus on an era more than 30 years ago. One of the most suggestive examples of remembering other times comes into play in Denis Hirson’s book I Remember King Kong (The Boxer) published by Jacana in 2004. Lombard (2016:43:19-41) describes the book, with its vivid graphic of a Chappies bubble- gum wrapper on the cover, as an “evocative literary archive of white childhood and youth in South Africa between the 1950s and 1970s”.

For the purposes of her article, Lombard (2016:43:19-41) distinguishes between three forms of nostalgia: Affective nostalgia that is involuntary, triggered by sensory stimulation and that is transient in nature, narrative nostalgia that is directed towards a return to what was and represented nostalgia where affective or narrative nostalgia serves a further purpose. What would trigger nostalgia for this period? Could it be artworks created at this time, snatches of songs, smells or other sensory stimulation? And what purpose does these nostalgic feelings serve?

Hirson’s book reads like poetry and consists of 130 pages of brief statements, all starting with the words, “I remember …”. His memories cover personal experiences, as well as incidents of national interest like the Sharpeville massacre. According to Lombard (2016) “[t]he litany form of the text draws direct inspiration from the French writer Georges Perec’s Je me souviens (I Remember) (1978), a book that documents life in France in the years following the Second World War using the same format. Perec was himself inspired by Joe Brainard’s IRemember series, the first of which appeared in 1970, which pioneered the “I remember” form to describe Brainard’s childhood and youth in 1950s America”. So, I too remember.

I remember walking to The Grapevine in Sunnyside (Pretoria) on a Sunday morning for breakfast to counter the excesses of Saturday night.

I remember buying a Gregoire Boonzaaier pen sketch for R80 at an exhibition at the University of Pretoria.

I remember wearing brightly coloured stockings to match my outfits – blue with a blue dress, red with a red skirt, yellow with yellow culottes.

I remember listening to P.W. Botha’s Rubicon speech and despairing that nothing would ever change in South Africa.

I remember watching a banned video of the Nelson Mandela: International Tribute for a Free South Africa music concert that took place on 16 April 1990 in London and realising that things might eventually change in South Africa.

I remember being scared that the security police would bust us that night.

I remember going to Europe on a Contiki tour in 1986 and saying that I was Australian, when people asked.

I remember listening to Johannes Kerkorrel en die Gerefor- meerde Blues Band’s Eet Kreef on an audio cassette that we rewound with a pencil when it got stuck.

I remember that it was another time, another place.

FORGETTING

When contemplating forgetting, it serves the nostalgist to read Ivan Vladislavic’s most recent book, The Distance, published in 2020. The story’s protagonist, Joe, grows up in suburban Pretoria in the 1970s and falls in love with Muhammad Ali. He keeps a scrapbook with clippings about the famous boxer. Years later Joe writes a memoir and involves his brother Branko to help trigger his memory. Joe is anxious that he might forget and this leads to sparring between the two brothers in Joe’s attempt to stop himself from forgetting.

In the introduction to an online conversation with Dominic Jaeckle in Hotel, 1 the interviewer describes The Distance as a “collision of memories, patching the gulf between past and present. Meaning arises in the gaps between fact and imagination, and words themselves become markers of the past, charting an era of racism into the turbulent present”. He calls it an “inventive, fragmented novel, [in which] Vladislavic evokes the beauty, and the strangeness, of remembering and forgetting, exploring the various forms of violence and rebellion, and what it means to be at odds with one’s surroundings”.

To help me not to forget, I visit the online resource SA History2 so that I would remember what happened in 1986 and onwards and never forget again. It is as if this time in my own history and the history of our country has caused selective amnesia, as if I want to forget, rather than remember.

In June 1986 a (second) national State of Emergency was announced in South Africa that lasted until 1990. On 8 January 1987 at the ANC’s 75th anniversary, Oliver Tambo ruled out negotiations with the South African government and declared 1987 “the year of advance to people’s power”. In 1988 fierce fighting erupted between Angolan and South African forces for control of the strategic town of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. In 1989 Dr David Webster, a social anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand and a leading anti-apartheid activist, was shot dead outside his home. In 1992 Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The rest is history.

I forget that security guards searched our bags for bombs or weapons at shopping centres.

I forget that there was a full page, colour photo on the front page of Rapport newspaper of the mutilated body of the bomb planter taken at the Sterland cinema complex.

I forget that the people of South Africa looked at each other with suspicion.

I forget that we never watched concerts or viewed exhibitions of international artists.

I forget that we didn’t know what sushi was.

I forget that the severe hail storms in Pretoria at that time left us driving cars that were pock-marked like golf balls.

MOURNING AND MELANCHOLY

Revisiting that time elicits feelings of mourning for a time that was so broken and could never be fixed. In his 1918 essay Mourning and Melancholia, Freud distinguishes between mourning and melancholia, both different responses to loss.3 Freud posits that mourning is a process of grieving for the loss of a person, a thing or a time, whereas melancholia is a process of grieving for a loss that cannot be fully identified. Melancholia takes place in the unconscious mind, while mourning is a conscious process. Freud considers mourning to be healthy and natural but melancholia, on the other hand, is considered pathological and is created by an ongoing relationship with that which was lost.

Thinking about Another Time, Another Place and the art works exhibited at the Student and Link Galleries of the University of Pretoria in 2022 has created a space for remembering and forgetting. I remember, and I forget.

ENDNOTES

1 https://partisanhotel.co.uk/The-Solera-Process 2 https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/general-south-african- history-timeline-1980s 3 Thanks to Juliana M. Pistorius for drawing my attention to the link between melancholy and memory in Freud’s work.

REFERENCES

Hirson, D. 2004. I Remember King Kong (The Boxer). Johannesburg: Jacana.

Jaeckle, D. Hotel. Available: https://partisanhotel.co.uk/ The- Solera-Process. Accessed 25 October 2021.

Lombard, E. 2016. The Work of Nostalgia in Denis Hirson’s ‘I Remember King Kong (The Boxer)’. English in Africa. South African Literary History Project: Special issue: Nostalgia. 43:19 -41

Vladislavić, I. 2020. The Distance. New York. Archipelago Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As a copywriter, trainer and journalist, Jennie Fourie has roamed South Africa’s media landscape for more than 30 years. She paid her dues as an educator, teaching Media Studies at the Tshwane University of Technology for 11 years. She has a particular interest in popularising research and making it accessible to different audiences.

As co-organiser of the SA Publication Forum’s annual corporate publication competition for the past 21 years, Jennie has a thorough understanding of industrial journalism and corporate communication. She holds a BA degree in languages, an honours degree in Afrikaans (cum laude) and a master’s degree in journalism (cum laude).