Kentridge’s flute: Quite a journey

William Kentridge’s production of The Magic Flute finally premiered in South Africa in September, after an extensive international tour that started in 2005. The sold-out performances were the culmination of a remarkable artistic journey that included the creation of the opera, an outpouring of drawings and prints on themes related to the production, and the completion of the seminal Black Box/Chambre Noire, unveiled in Berlin in 2006 before moving to the Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Chronicling this entire process, David Krut Publishing and William Kentridge have collaborated to publish William Kentridge Flute. The book includes commentary by Kentridge; an interview with the artist; essays by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, Stéphane Roussel and Kate McCrickard; full-colour photographs of the productions; pages from Kentridge’s preparatory notebooks; and images of the many prints and drawings executed in the several years while Kentridge was working on these two productions.

One reader can win a copy of William Kentridge Flute. Send your details to dimagazine@interactiveafrica.com before 25 January 2008.

The plight of healing plants

Disguised, faded, bruised, torn, chopped, stacked and waiting for purpose. This is how photographer Clinton Friedman saw the broken aloes and various herbs on his first visit to a traditional muti (medicine) market in KwaZulu-Natal.

The plants had been uprooted from the African wilderness and transported on foot, by train or by taxi to be sold in makeshift markets on the pavements of stations, on the side of the road or in tiny downtown shops. Considered healing plants, they have the power to transform and magically reinstate the health of the sick and weary.

Yet, in their dried, twisted and mashed form, their desperate plight for water and a fresh start in life struck Friedman. Replanting them in his Durban garden and nursing them back to health, Friedman has become an active proponent in promoting the development of an indigenous plant crop programme. Part of promotion is to generate awareness and to these ends Friedman has used his photographic finesse to make startling pictures.

Once the plants have been nursed back to health, Friedman extracts them momentarily from the ground to capture their beauty on film. Using a sheer white screen and drawing on botanical books as a reference medium, Friedman’s archival collection revitalises botanical art through the medium of film, while generating an awareness of these illegally harvested plants.

Now available as a collection in his newly published book, Subtraction, Friedman’s appeal is that his archive does not become historical, but rather a celebration of life. Each image is accompanied by the plant’s scientific name, as well as a short description of its medicinal uses and cultural significance. Using creativity to immortalise these healing plants, some of which are near to extinction, the book is a call to action.

One lucky reader can win a signed copy of Subtraction as well as an exclusive print from the book. Visit Subtraction’s website (www.clintonfriedman.com) and tell us what the URL of Friedman’s commercial photography website is. Send your answers to dimagazine@interactiveafrica.com before 25 January 2008.