Medu Art Ensemble

Ансамбль Medu Art, народ победит агрессию и дестабилизацию, 1983

Ансамбль Medu Art был коллективом культурных активистов, базирующихся в Габороне , Ботсвана, в разгар движения устойчивости к антиапартеиду в конце двадцатого века. Коллектив сформировался первоначально в 1977 году Будучи группой чернокожих южноафриканских художников, взаимно инвестировали в региональную борьбу освобождения и сопротивление политике апартеида в Южной Африке в расовой сегрегации (1948-1994). Члены Меду, или «работники культуры», как они предпочитали называться, в конечном итоге организовали и переехали в Габороне, Ботсвана, в 1978 году. Они чувствовали, что термин «культурные работники» гораздо более подходит для их миссии, а не называть себя художниками, потому что такое стремление рассматривалось как нечто тривиальное и, следовательно, элитарное и белое. При поддержке Африканского национального конгресса (АНК) в Габороне Медуру, официально зарегистрированной как культурная организация с правительством Ботсванана. Меду означает «корни» на северном языке Сото и, таким образом, описывает подземные операции коллектива (в неповиновении запрета правительства апартеида на оппозиционные политические партии и организации). Культурная работа коллектива носила ризоматический характер, растягиваясь на семи полуавтономных подразделениях: кино, графика, музыка, фотография, поэзия, издательство и исследования и театр.

В Габороне Меду организовал концерты, проводил мастер -классы по искусству и творческому письму, продюсировал фильмы, организованные кампании общественного здравоохранения и установленные выставки среди других мероприятий. Коллектив также произвел агитационные информационные бюллетени и политические плакаты, оба из которых стремились одновременно укрепить региональную солидарность, критиковать несправедливость государства апартеида и способствовать сознанию черного. Коллектив состоял из нескольких единиц - музыка, театр, фотография, графики и визуальные искусства, исследования и производство (которые были написаны), но они не были строго отделенными единицами. Одним из флагманских событий Медуна был Фестиваль культуры и сопротивления 1982 года и симпозиум, в котором собрали тысячи активистов, работников культуры и обычных людей (со всей Африки, Америки и Европы) на неделю концертов, выставки, переговоры, мастерские. и другие формы радикальной культурной программы. Это массивное начинание привлекло больше внимания к активности Медуса, в частности, усилив тщательное изучение правительства апартеида о работе коллектива. Меду распался в 1985 году после рейда Южной Африки убийственного на Габороне , который привел к смерти двенадцати человек, в том числе членов Медуса Майка Хэмлин, Тхамсанги Мнейле , Джорджа Фела и Линди Фал.

Members

As a multiracial collective of cultural workers, Medu comprised more than sixty visual artists, performers, and writers who, despite their different backgrounds and ideological positions, were collectively invested in regional liberation and resistance to apartheid rule. Although most members were South African, many hailed from Botswana, Canada, Cuba, Sweden, and the United States of America. Members of the collective included Gwen Ansell, Theresa Devant, Sergio-Albio González, Jonas Gwangwa, Basil Jones, Michael Kahn, Heinz Klug, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Adrian Kohler, Mandla Langa, Hugh Masekela, Gordon Metz, Thamsanqa Mnyele, Judy Seidman, Mongane Wally Serote, Pethu Serote, and Tim Williams, among many others. The collective originally consisted of just black South African's as its founding members were very much inspired by the Black Consciousness Movement which held the belief, among others, that white sympathisers were ‘more of a hindrance than a help to their cause’. Evidently this position of belief changed and was adapted to fit the ideal of a future South Africa that would be home to all men regardless of race and white people were allowed to join and as such it helped gain international funding for the Ensemble.

Posters

Medu played a formative role in shaping the visual culture of resistance in South Africa during the late 1970s and early 1980s along with other key printmaking initiatives such as Junction Avenue, Screen Training Project, and Cape Town Arts Project. Operating both contemporaneously with and after Medu, these collectives also issued posters to inform and galvanize their compatriots, countering the disinformation campaigns and ideologies promulgated by the apartheid government.

The first of Medu's six units to emerge was Publications and Research, which served as the collective’s mouthpiece and administrative organ by generating the collective's meeting minutes, quarterly newsletters, and other publications. This unit operated symbiotically with the Graphics Unit, which designed covers for the newsletters and produced the posters for which Medu is best known. Medu produced over 100 posters during its lifetime, using a range of printing techniques including offset lithograph and screen printing.

The iconography found across the collective's posters partakes of an international socialist and revolutionary lexicon of broken chains, clenched fists, upraised arms, and heroic depictions of activists and freedom fighters. This symbolism originated in World War I–era labor and anti-oppression movements across the world and was expressed in the work of Soviet and antifascist poster makers, Mexican muralists and print workshop members, and participants in the Harlem Renaissance—all of whom Medu graphic artists acknowledged as sources of inspiration. The posters were often folded inside of newsletters and clandestinely smuggled into South Africa where they were often posted in public spaces before being torn down by state police or censors. Numerous examples of Medu's posters appeared on official censorship registries in accordance with apartheid state's 1974 Publications Act which outlined materials the regime deemed "undesirable," or potentially threatening to apartheid law; during the 1980s, newspapers such as the Rand Daily Mail ran columns on censored material, many of which included Medu's posters and newsletters. These posters were either smuggled into South Africa by sympathetic travellers or diplomats and then placed on walls where they may have only lasted a few hours until they were torn down by the police. Other posters, the majority of one that still exists today, were sent across to the world so as to raise awareness about the issues in South Africa.

Medu's posters range in their content. Posters intended for South African audiences forcefully scrutinized the pernicious mechanism and brutality of apartheid through bold imagery and slogans, while others promoted the various cultural activities Medu's Film, Photography, Theatre, and Music units organized in Gaborone. The posters were typically produced through dialogue among Medu's participants, with individual or groups of members contributing to different designs before presenting proposals to the entire collective for approval. While posters for temporal-specific events such as concerts were often produced in short runs, others with evergreen political content were issued in the hundreds, especially in the lead up to the collective's 1982 Culture and Resistance Festival and Symposium where posters were given out to attendees.

Today the Medu posters serve as a rich source, they provide information that has little to no documentation elsewhere as South Africa's harsh censorship laws forbid such intelligence to be shared in the country. Gaborone in Botswana was an ideal location for the Collective not just geographically (very close to the border to South Africa and neighboring to a number of Africa countries) but also this distance served as a chance for artists to work outside of the numerous censorship laws, a chance to express themselves and to be free of the restrictive Apartheid laws. The Medu Ensemble were not the first ones to discover the advantages of the capital, the Afrikaans couple Marius and Jeanette Schoon had set the works in place in 1977 when they founded bases there for the anti-apartheid movement.

The Medu Art Ensemble's ties with the African National Congress (ANC) and the Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK) its paramilitary wing are a contentious issue. Due to the Ensemble's underground nature clear evidence is limited. The ANC was banned by the South African government in 1960 but their operations continued in secret. Officially the Medu were not tied with the ANC and the Ensemble claimed to be impartial but Medu member poet Dr Wally Serote describes the Medu members as "cadres of the ANC." The Ensemble's involvement may have fuelled their motives but it may have also contributed to their downfall and abrupt end as the SADF forces claim that their Botswana Raid 1985 was motivated by their intelligence that alleged that they were to attack ANC members.

At 1.40am on 14 June 1985 the South African Defense Forces (SADF) crossed the border into Botswana and began a raid that lasted a total of 40 minutes but caused the destruction of buildings as well as the death of twelve (the exact number is unclear) and other injured. The attack did not come completely as a surprise to the Medu members as they were constantly on guard and after the attack, the representative of Botswana for the United Nations called for an urgent meeting of the Council where the event was called an "unprovoked and unwarranted attack. The United Nations Resolution 568 drafted on 21 June 1985 ordered ‘full and adequate compensation by South Africa to Botswana' for the damages and Botswana's status and place of refugee for those affected by the apartheid regime was reiterated.

Exhibitions

Medu's work has been the subject of several exhibitions. In 2008, the Johannesburg Art Gallery mounted the exhibition Thami Mnyele + Medu Art Ensemble, which centered on the work of Thamsanqa (Thami) Mnyele and his contribution's to Medu's Graphics Unit. This comprehensive exhibition brought together artwork by Mnyele, a substantial collection of Medu's posters, and archival documents, media, and ephemera attesting to the collective's cultural programming and tragic dissolution.

Medu's posters were included in the 2011 exhibition, Impressions from South Africa,1965 to Now at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

In 2019, the Art Institute of Chicago organized The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster, the first exhibition on Medu's work in North America.

Bibliography

Key sources of scholarship on Medu Art Ensemble include:

• Antawan I. Byrd and Felicia Mings, eds., The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster (Art Institute of Chicago & Yale University Press, 2020)
• Shannen L. Hill, Biko's Ghost: the Iconography of Black Consciousness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015)
• Molemo Moiloa, ed., 58 Years of the Treason Trial: Inter-Generational Dialogue as a Method of Learning (Johannesburg: Keleketla Media Arts Project NPC, 2012)
• John Peffer, Art and the End of Apartheid. Minneapolis (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009)
• Diana Wylie, Art + Revolution: The Life and Death of Thami Mnyele, South African Artist (Auckland Park: Jacana, 2008)
• Clive Kellner and Sergio-Albio González, eds., Thami Mnyele + Medu Art Ensemble Retrospective: Johannesburg Art Gallery (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2008)
• Judy Seidman, Red on Black: The Story of the South African Poster Movement (Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2007)
• Giorgio Miescher, Dag Henrichsen, eds., African Posters: A Catalogue of the Poster Collection in the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (Basel: Basler Afrika-Bibliographien, 2004)
• Images of Defiance: South African Resistance Posters of the 1980s (Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2004)

Collections

Posters (and in some case, newsletters) by Medu Art Ensemble can be found in numerous public collections including:

• South African History Archive
• Freedom Park Archives
• University of the Western Cape, Robben Island Museum
• The Art Institute of Chicago
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel, Switzerland