Moxyland (17 page)

   I've got no illusions. I know exactly where they go when they peel off at two or three, after lunch, because that's the deal, four hours' work and you earn a decent meal; and I know they won't be coming back till tomorrow, once they've slept it off. The thing is to respect them and how they run their lives. We can't force them to be here, but we can offer an attractive alternate to rummaging in the garbage or begging for food. We're building a conversation, not handing down a lecture on high. Respect is reciprocal.

   It's remarkable how fast Ash pulled it together, once he got over his shock that I had changed my mind about the sponsor thing. Fast-tracked by his corporate buddy boy at Chase Standard Bank's CSI program, which makes me think he's got something going on for Ash. Of course, Ashraf thinks that's hilarious.

   Chase Standard insisted that we didn't use straight chipped flyers or posters, that they had to have an opt-in function, so that you have to physically stop and interact with the poster, but the kids are overloaded with all the slick clubvertising on Long Street, there's no way they would have paid them any attention. So we saved the cash on the posters and hit all the shelters instead, speaking to the kids personally, and getting the social workers onside.

   It's disgusting how much of a difference real sponsorship makes. Instead of badly printed tees, the kids have navy overalls, with the logo stitched tastefully over the heart. The stitching on the back boasts 'Investing In Our Youth'. Instead of cold potjie stewed at home with whatever ingredients Ash can find, we have nutritionally enhanced hamburgers delivered promptly at quarter past twelve from the kitchens of Chase Standard's head office, two blocks over.

   Unfortunately, we have to take the overalls from the kids at day's end. We tell them it's because we need to wash off the paint, but it's at Chase Standard's insistence, so they don't go off and get vrot and harass people, still wearing the logo. Likewise, no one's allowed to leave with paint, in case they tag with it or, worse, inhale.

   Practising is all designated within this specific zone, although all the kids get branded sketchbooks and a box of pencil crayons (because you can huff koki) to take back with them. It's an inspired gesture, which could have only come down from a corporate social investment dick who doesn't have a clue about streetside reality, where kids get mugged for anything vaguely precious or personal.

   We've pulled together some seventeen kids, itching to get their hands on the paint, but this is not just tagging shit. There are techniques to be mastered. The kids with no artistic ability get to do the manual fill jobs, but even that requires a measure of skill, using tight little circles, or precision strokes to make sure the paint doesn't run.

   The LEDs, on the other hand, are plug and play. Tiny bulbs the size of the head of a drawing pin, imported specially from Amsterdam. We're using magnetic paint, so it's just a matter of positioning and slapping them on. It was what sold Chase Standard on the project – that we could embed lights in the shape of their logo, which would blink all night for all the incoming traffic to see. You can pre-program patterns to add dimension or words. 'Peace'. 'Love'. 'Ubuntu'. 'Revolution'.

   It's easy to embed other things in magnetic paint too. Totally stable, skyward* assures me. I wouldn't expose the kids to unnecessary risk.

   We're doing up all three of the panels on the side of the ex-library, up there with the logos and adboards and videomercials beaming down. All in the name of a Good Cause, the street kids channelling their frustration into something useful, something beautiful. Something the public can feel good about.

   Watching Zuko workshopping the rapt crowd, spraying up an outline of letters, 'LOVE', the style somewhere between the fat curves of Sixties' hippie typo and the jagged tangle of Eighties New York subway bombing-style, I don't know why we didn't do this earlier.

   I tell Ashraf as much when he comes back from giving the tour to the bunch of Chase Standard employees on their lunch break, and that I'm proud of him. He practically glows, which makes it harder to come clean about all the extra-mural we've got planned.

   Oh, he knows about the animal rights thing, that's his baby anyway. He's always been a rabid defender of our furry friends. He was hectic PETA before we got into working with kids. And the station protest has been a long time coming. But he's not in on the picture on the optional extras, the stuff that is gonna make the news.

   The point is that the kids are homeless already. As long as we don't get caught, they have nothing to lose. They can't be disconnected because they don't have phones. The disenfranchised will get their moment of glory.

   I've discussed it at length with Zuko and some of the other boys, Ibrahim and S'bu, not with all the details, but they're up for it. The only worry is the dogs, but there are ways, skyward* says, of dealing with gen-mod animals.

And making headlines at the same time.

 

There is already spillage out of the doors by the time I get to Propeller, which can only be a good sign when it's just gone six-thirty. I feel fractal with nerves, or maybe it's that I'm on my fourth Ghost in under an hour.

   'You're late.' Jonathan latches onto my arm at the door and swishes me inside through the crowd. I can't believe how many people there are, crowded into the gallery. There is a queue up the stairs to see Johannes Michael's atom mobile, but the major throng is in the main room, and not, I regret to say, for my retro print photos.

   They're here to see Khanyi Nkosi's sound installation, freshly returned from her São Paulo show and all the resulting controversy. She only installed it this afternoon, snuck in undercover with security, so it's the first time I've seen it in the flesh. It's gruesome, red and meaty, like something dead turned inside out and mangled, half-collapsed in on itself with spines and ridges and fleshy strings and some kind of built-in speakers, which makes the name even more disturbing: 'W
oof & Tweet
'.

   I don't understand how it works, but it's to do with reverb and built-in resonator-speakers. It's culling sounds from around us, remixing ambient audio, conversation, footsteps, glasses clinking, rustling clothing, through the systems of its body, disjointed parts of it inflating, like it's breathing, spines quivering.

   It's hard to hear it over the hubbub, but sometimes it's like words, almost recognisable. But mostly it's just noise, a fractured music undercut with jarring sounds that seem to come randomly. Sometimes it sounds like pain. It is an animal. Or alive at any rate. Some lab-manufactured plastech bio-breed with just enough brainstem hard-wired to respond to input in different ways, so it's unpredictable – but not enough to hurt, apparently, if you believe the info blurb on the work.

   'It's gratuitous. She could have done it any other way. It could have been beautiful.'

   'Like something you'd put in your lounge, Kendra? It's supposed to be revolting. It's that whole Tokyo tech-grotesque thing. Actually, it's so derivative, I can't stand it. Can we move along?'

   I run my hand along one of the ridges and

the thing quivers, but I can't determine any noticeable difference in the sounds. 'Do you think it gets traumatised?'

   'It's just noise, okay? You're as bad as that nutjob who threw blood at Khanyi at the Jozi exhibition. It doesn't have nerve endings. Or no, wait, sorry, it does have nerve endings, but it doesn't have pain receptors.'

   'I meant, do you think it gets upset? By all the attention? I mean, isn't it supposed to be able to pick up moods, reflect the vibe?'

   'I think that's all bullshit, but you could ask the artist. She's over there schmoozing with the money, like you should be.'

   
Woof & Tweet
suddenly kicks out a looped fragment of a woman's laugh that startles me and half the room, before it slides down the scale into a fuzzy electronica.

   'See, it likes you.'

   'Don't be a jerk, Jonathan.'

   'There's some streamcast journalist who wants to interview you, by the way. And he's pretty cute.'

   My stomach spasms. This is another thing Jonathan does to keep me in my place – as in, we're not together.

   'Great, thanks. I need a drink.'

   'I'll get it. Just go talk to Sanjay. What do you want?'

   'Anything.' It's unlikely that the gallery bar would have Ghost on hand.

   Jonathan propels me in the direction of Sanjay, who is standing in a cluster of people, in deep conversation. The one is clearly money, some corporati culture patron or art buyer; the other, I realise, is Khanyi Nkosi. I recognise her from an interview I saw, but she is so warmly energetic, waving her hands in the air to make a point and grinning, that I can't match her to her work. And the third, I realise with a shock, is Andile. It shouldn't be a surprise that he should be here, considering he picked me on the basis of my work, but I still haven't come clean with Jonathan about the branding, and this doesn't strike me as the time.

   I can't deal with this right now. I push through the queue, detouring back towards the entrance and the open air – only to skewer someone's foot with the '40s-style blue velvet heels I bought for the occasion.

   'Hey! Easy!'

   'Oh god, I'm sorry.' Shit, I really, really, really need a Ghost. I wonder if I can make it to the spaza down the road and back before Jonathan notices.

   'No worries. Art is what the artist does, right? So technically, my bruised toes could be worth something?'

   I didn't even realise it was Toby whose foot I had crushed.

   'So you must be the famous artist, then?'

   'I'm the less famous artist. I mean, I'm not; the thing, it's not mine. But you know that.' I laugh self-consciously, still thinking about how to get a Ghost, my mind chanting a little litany of need, wondering if they serve them at the bar.

   'Is now a good time to get an interview?'

   'You're the journalist?'

   'Ouch!' He mock-staggers back, clutching his heart. 'Yeah. I brought my own phone mic and everything.'

   'I'm sorry. That's not what I… Oh God. Can we just start again?'

   'Sure. No prob.'

   He turns away, clears his throat, and then does a little twirl, one hand raised in fabulous salute, hamming it up like he's on the red carpet.

   'Hello. I'm Toby. I'll be your journo for the evening.' And I can't help but laugh. 'Do you have a drink?'

   'No, thanks. Someone's getting me one.'

   'Rocking.' He suddenly turns serious. 'Okay, now listen, Special K, if you want, we can talk later. I know it's your opening and you've got things to do, people to schmooze. I will totally understand if now is not the most opportune moment.'

   'Actually, do you want to get out of here?'

   'What?'

   'Just for a sec. I need some fresh air. And a drink.'

   'I thought someone was getting you one.'

   'A non-alcoholic.'

   'Ooooooh. Right.' He winks.

   'You want to come?'

   'Sure. Can my mic come too?'

   We're not the only people hanging outside. We have to push through a crowd, including an astonishingly gorgeous blonde, with fucked-up hair, who makes me feel conservative. We get halfway down the block before I take off my heels in disgust. 'That doesn't make it into the copy, okay?'

   He holds up his hands. 'Do you see me making notes?' We walk in silence for another block, stepping over a bergie passed out in the street. And I'm relieved not to feel any sense of an urgent compulsion to touch him. And no Aitos in sight, either.

   At the spaza, Toby opens the fridge at the back. 'Ghost, I'm assuming?' he says, putting it on his phone. It's cold and crisp and clean and it hurts my teeth and I realise my hands have been shaking all this while – or maybe my whole body. And this can't be good, but it doesn't feel bad.

   'Mind if I join you?' Toby cracks the seal on another can. 'Wow. You really are an addict deluxe,' he says, a little too admiringly.

   'Hey, did you check my coat tonight?

   'Yeah?'

   His BabyStrange is black, which is a relief after the goreporn he was projecting last time I saw him.

   'It's my little shout out to
Self-Portrait
.'

   'Cute. So, do you want to do this?'

   'Am I allowed to take notes now?'

   'Yeah, yeah.' I wave my hand impatiently.

   He hooks a mic into his phone and points it at me. 'So. What's with the oldschool?'

   'Didn't you read the press release?'

   'Let's say I didn't.'

   I quote it from memory. 'Adams's use of nondigital format is inspired by her fascination with the capacity for error…'

   'Okay. Let's skip the press release.'

   'Ah, it's just – film is more interesting than digital. There's a possibility of flaw inherent in the material. It's not readily available, so I have to get it over the Net, and some of it has rotted or it's been exposed even before I load it in the camera, but I don't know that until I develop it.'

   'Like
Self-Portrait
?'

   'And it's not just the film. It's working without the automatic functions. The operator can fuck up too.'

   'Did you fuck up?'

   'Ha! That's the great thing about working with damaged materials. You'll never know.'

   'It's the same in audio, you know. Digital was too clean when it first came out, almost antiseptic. The fidelity was too clear. You lost the background noise, the sounds you don't even pick up, but it's dead without the context. The audio techs had to adapt the digital to synth the effects of analogue. How insane is that? It's contentious, though – now they're saying it's been bullshit all along, just nostalgics missing the hiss of the recording equipment.'