Author: Francois Maritz

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Claudette Schreuders: 1973 –

Claudette Schreuders creates carved and painted wooden figures that reflect the ambiguities of the search for an ‘African’ identity in the post-apartheid 21st century. The domain of woodcarving is a contested one for a white, Afrikaans woman, and the subtractive process of carving offers a certain lack of control that she enjoys. Schreuders’s sculptures demonstrate a convergence of African and European influences from the blolo and colon figures of West Africa to medieval church sculpture, Spanish portraiture and Egyptian woodcarving. Their stocky bodies, solid stance and staring eyes ‘own’ space in a very particular way, partly indebted to the shape of the block of wood from which they emerge. Narrative and story telling are fundamental to the reading of her figures, which is why Claudette Schreuders opts to show small bodies of work as sculptural installations, after which the figures are available to be bought individually.

Schreuders’s sculptures are essentially modern deities for modern problems, taking with them the blolo figures’ potential to ‘cure’, as well as engaging with issues around foreignness and hostility and the means we use to create a space for ourselves in a perceived ‘alien’ environment.

Schreuders’s work often follows the theme of making public that which is private or simply telling stories that have their origins in personal experience. It is this straight forward approach to herself, her world and her work that makes the work so moving and appealing. Schreuders is able to make something universal out of the seemingly trivial and personal. Her honesty and sense of humour are evident in the work.

The artist describes herself as something of a perfectionist, working slowly and indulging in her labour intensive process; which she sees as quite revelatory in terms of understanding one’s intentions and desires. “I start off by making thumbnail sketches, very loose simple drawings of what I want to make. And I usually draw my sculptures in groups. Or on small pieces of paper, or in my books. The drawings I do for my sculptures are very informal. And the prints I do are much more finished products. My first series of etchings was a record of some of my favourite existing sculpture. And after that I decided what I would like to do is to keep a record of my own work seeing as it’s something that leaves me.

The first set of lithograph prints “Crying in Public” that Claudette Schreuders did at The Artists’ Press sold out almost immediately. The high quality of the lithographs and the intensity of her drawing mean that those who cannot afford her sculptures are still able to build up their collections of this remarkable South African’s work. She has continued over the years and arrival of her children to keep a record of her sculptures in lithographic form.

In 2004, Schreuders was commissioned to do four life size bronzes of South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Albert Luthuli and F.W. de Klerk for the Waterfront in Cape Town.

Claudette Schreuders – Artist’s Statement

“I think what I’m interested in is telling stories. It’s portraiture, but it’s a vehicle for telling a particular story, or the way in which society makes people who they are, or the group against the individual. As soon as you make a figure, it has an identity, and it’s immediately a white person or a black person. To me, things aren’t that simple in South Africa. Everyone has an identity. And I made three white figures at first. The first one was Lokke and then the Housewife, which was fibreglass, and then the Dominee, which was of my grandfather. And then you start thinking, “but they’re all white”. That was before I even looked at the colon. And that provided a connection for me in Africa. I like to think of it as desire in a way that makes you want to make things. I don’t look for ‘authentic African art’ to collect. I find that relationship of ‘taking’ very hard. My whole outlook is obviously western, but if you do research about art, or your own art, you have a whole different way of looking at it. Then you can get back to very basic questions. It’s interesting for me to look at portraiture as something where you try and make a person with the idea you have of them, and try and bring in abstract elements, like in African art where they say “this is a beautiful person because he [sic] is complete.” So I am interested in making things that are beautiful, and how beauty works.”

 

Title: The Hero
Medium: Six colour, chine collé lithograph
Paper size: 28.5 x 38.5 cm
Edition size: 35

Title: Spent
Medium: Six colour lithograph
Paper size: 45 x 60 cm
Edition size: 30

Title: Close, Close
Medium: Lithographic Print
Paper size: 38 x 51cm
Edition size: 35 + 3AP

For purchasing any of her work go to https://www.artprintsa.com/claudette-schreuders.html

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“The current education system is truly bankrupt”

Our education is based on the wrong ideas. As a result, it produces passive knowledge copycats instead of creative, curious people. In his new book Gevormd of vervormd?(educated or deformed), philosopher Jan Bransen argues for a different education format in which the student plays a greater role. “Something must be done. The current education system is truly bankrupt.”

“The book may deal with education, but is actually about people,” says Bransen, professor of Philosophy of Behavioural Science at Radboud University. ‘Homo educandus’ is what I call it: the human as a self-developing creature.” Unfortunately, the situation is not great for homo educandus. In Bransen’s opinion, education does not produce people who can develop themselves. “We have removed free will from education. It has become something that people simply must undergo. In doing so, we use education to create very passive people.”

Education or deformation?

Bransen proposes that the current system has a distorting effect instead of an educational one. “This is because it is based on the wrong assumptions. We seem to unconsciously divide life into two stages: one of learning and one of living. But you learn and live simultaneously throughout your life.”

There is another misunderstanding: education serving as a transfer of knowledge that must then be tested. Bransen: “In my opinion, knowledge is a capacity. Students should be able to develop on their own.” Bransen also feels that an unfortunate culture dominates education, where everything must be able to be measured, where schools are mainly concerned with required learning results (“what a student should know”), and where diplomas play a much more important role than actually learning something or mastering specific skills.

The lecturer teaches the student

Bransen also argues for an education format in which young people play a larger role – where they literally learn to play their own role – but as a human being instead of a student. This format should encourage them to develop their own voices, perspectives, and positions.

It would also call for a new breakdown of the different learning stages. In his eyes, primary education should be about developing self-confidence by creating a solid foundation where the student gains a solid command of mathematics and language. “And in secondary education, students should learn how to play their own role. I think that should be focused on two areas, with two days of extracurricular learning.” Higher education should ultimately be divided into two approaches as well: learning and collaborating.

Experimentation

According to Bransen, education should be reformed as soon as possible. “I’m all for experimentation. Many people say that you shouldn’t do that with your children. But we’re doing that right now with this system. And it’s not even an experiment; it’s abuse. I think that now is the time to experiment. The current system is truly bankrupt.”

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Join Analog Social Media

This article is by Cal Newport a computer science professor who writes about the intersection of technology and society.

 

A phenomenon I noticed when researching Digital Minimalism is that many people are confused by the creeping unease they feel about their digital lives. This confusion is caused in part by problems of scope.

When you take an activity like social media, for example, and zoom in close, you isolate behaviors like commenting on a friend’s picture, or encountering an interesting link, that seem mildly positive. What harm could their possibly be in clicking a heart icon?

When you zoom out, however, the cumulative effect of all this swiping and tapping seems to add up to something distinctly negative. Few are happy, for example, after allowing yet another movie night to devolve into side-by-side iPad idling.

The dynamic at play here is that digital activities that are mildly positive in isolation, combine to crowd out other real world activities that are potentially much more satisfying. This is what allows you to love Twitter in the moment when you discover a hilarious tweet, but at the end of the day fear that the app is degrading your soul.

Understanding this dynamic is critical because it tells you that you cannot improve your life by focusing exclusively on digital tools. Triaging your apps, or cutting back phone time, will not by itself make you happier. You must also aggressively fill in the space this pruning creates with the type of massively satisfying, real world activities that these tools have been increasingly pushing out of your life.

It is with this in mind, and in the spirit of the New Year, that I suggest you make a simple resolution: join analog social media.

As I’ve discussed before, analog social media describes organizations, activities and traditions that require you to interact with interesting people and encounter interesting things in the real world.

Here are some examples:

  • Join a local political group that meets regularly to organize on issues relevant to your local community, or serve as a volunteer on the election campaign of a local politician you know and like.
  • Join a social fitness group, like a running club, or local CrossFit box.
  • Become a museum or theater member and attend openings.
  • Go to at least one author talk per month at a local bookstore.
  • Create a book club, or poker group, or gaming club.
  • Join a committee at your church/temple/mosque.
  • Establish a weekly brunch or happy hour with your close friends.

These types of activities tend to provide significantly more value in your life than their digital counterparts. Indeed, tools like online social media are probably best understood as weak online simulacrums of the analog encounters that we know deep down we need to thrive as humans.

Equally important, as I learned during last year’s big digital declutter experiment (summarized here; detailed here), the more analog social media you introduce into your life, the more bulwarks you establish against the creeping demands of the digital.

With nothing else in place to fill your time, your phone will become increasingly irresistible, regardless of your intentions to spend more time disconnected. When you instead introduce meaningful analog activity into your regular routine, the appeal of the screen suddenly diminishes.

To summarize: if you’re vaguely unhappy with your digital life, respond by introducing much more positive real world activity. If you embrace analog social media, you’ll soon be wondering how you ever dedicated so much time to its inferior digital equivalent.