‘I ask myself’
A good cue to talk about Open Form/Open Studio. You’ve had a longstanding interest in different kinds of openness over the years, but it’s one thing working with the ‘poetics of vulnerability’, as you call it, and quite another making yourself actually vulnerable by going public with unpredictable processes in a socially engaged project. Especially as your philosophy involves the disposition of a ‘de-mastery’. While we could argue the effects of this de-mastery – you show your skill in other ways, perhaps even more assertively than through the stroke of a paintbrush – the point is that you didn’t display conventional painting prowess as the basis for engagement. What made you do this? Social engagement is not about performing mastery over material. Open Form/Open Studio was not a master class. There was an entirely different dynamic at play – play being a significant part of it. The space was one of potential. Creativity as a social process, where the physical transformation of material, its mobility, can be analogous to individual and social transformation. Laying the self bare was part of the process. The whole event – which took four months – became a way to connect interiority and exteriority, translating what happened inside the studio into the social and political world beyond. You are a teacher too. Open Form/Open Studio happened at a time of decolonising discussions at the University of Cape Town and elsewhere. Maitland ended up providing a ‘space’ to engage some of the issues in a way that didn’t have the burdens or constraints of formal institutions. The physical space was large and airy with high ceilings and huge industrial doors. Working with such a generous scale in such an open way, with all the vulnerabilities at stake, created the ground for intense sharing with many different publics, including schoolchildren. I think people were keen to get away from direct representation; they found it liberating to go with the life of the glue and to think about how materiality and process can speak, 30