Notes

This film explores rites of passage and transitions in male identity through a poignant visual and aural representation of the head shaving “rituals” of young military recruits. 

Originally conceived as an artwork for a touring museum exhibition, 3SAI: A Rite of Passage is a short, cross-platform, non-narrative documentary in the experimental, non-verbal genre. The film has no plot or script and its content is neither contextualised nor site-specific. It is a poetic sequence of high-quality footage documenting the head-shaving rituals of young recruits at the Third South African Infantry Battalion (3SAI) in Kimberley, South Africa. Combined with evocative landscape imagery, time-lapse and slow-motion cinematography as well as a compelling soundtrack, this presentation of an annual male rite of passage asks us to re-examine these moments of transition in masculine identity, and consider what is captured and what is lost ...

Footage was captured using 35 and 16 mm film as well as High Definition video to obtain a high viewing quality and to capture frames in sufficiently high numbers per second to slow down the action to the required level. Saturated-colour ‘documentary’ scenes highlight a depiction of ‘reality’, whilst the mysterious ‘poetic’ scenes are viewed in more desaturated tones. Stereo ambient sounds of razors, liminal spaces and other head shaving paraphernalia are combined in a creative way for an absorbing soundtrack. 

The film opens on the emptiness of the Gariep Dam – a landscape of the Karoo in the Free State province of South Africa. The image is ambiguous. The ripples on the muddy water look like ripples in desert sand. The image is shattered by the violent jolting sound of a freight-train coupling resonating with a piercing military whistle. We cut to a line-up of young recruits waiting for their obligatory hair shaving at 3SAI. We join the queue. At first we witness a monotonous sequence of indifferent head shavings – the industrial hum of an electric razor – and then gradually the rhythm of a production line which increases in pace and intensity. Suddenly at the peak of this syncopated spectacle we are cast into a twilight realm of slow-time. We break through the military machine and witness a new head shaving in slow motion and in micro-close up format. There is now an intimacy and vulnerability that was not seen before – an altered state, abstracted, de-contextualised and open to interpretation. This then fades back into the contemplative spaces of the Gariep.

The work critically engages the medium of film itself in the way it plays with time, changing the possible meanings of an experience as time slows down. What is captured? What is lost? 3SAI: A Rite of Passage is a feature of an internationally touring museum solo art exhibition entitled Transitions. In this exhibition I explore these themes using a variety of different media. The film however, is also independently screened at selected relevant international film festivals and art biennales.

Exhibited

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Barbara and Steven Grossman Gallery & Mrs. E. Ross Anderson Auditorium, Boston, Permanent War: The Age of Global Conflict, 29 January to 7 March 2015.

University of the Free State, Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, Bloemfontein,  Representations of Otherness and Resistance, 20 May to 19 June 2015.

Appalachian State University, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Boone, Twenty: Contemporary Art from South Africa, 11 July 2014 to 7 February 2015.

Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, Doing Hair: Art and Hair in Africa, 20 August to 2 November 2014.

Le Cube, Paris, Les Écrans de la Liberté: Digital Anthropology Festival, 20 to 21 March.

Rio Cinema, London, 10th London Short Film Festival, At Home with the Ludskis: Midnight Mass (Edition #7), 12 January 2013.

University of Cape Town Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town, Not My War, 29 June to 25 July 2012.
Goya Contemporary Gallery, Baltimore, Transitions Multiples, 8 September to 5 November 2011.
4th FNB Joburg Art Fair (Featured Artist), Johannesburg, Transitions Multiples, 23 to 25 September 2011.

University of the Free State, Bloemfontein,  Are You Man Enough, 9 to 10 September 2011.

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Black Box, 9 November, 2010 to 2 January 2011.

5th Sardinia International Film Festival, Sassari, 22 to 26 June 2010.

Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, African Short Films, 13 March 2010.

39th International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Where is Africa? 25 January to 5 February 2010.

United Kingdom, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Film Festival, Africa-in-Motion Short Film Competition, 22 October to 1 November 2009.

Paul Emmanuel: Transitions shown at the following venues:

Maryland Institute College of Art, 9 September to 2 October 2011.

National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 12 May to 22 August 2010.

Spier Gallery, Stellenbosch, November 2009 to February 2010 & 25 February to March 2010.

National Arts Festival, Albany History Museum, Grahamstown, 2 to 12 July 2009.

KZNSA Gallery, Durban, 2 to 21 June 2009.

William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley, 15 April to 15 May 2009.

Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, 5 February to 8 April 2009.

Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, 27 September to 31 December 2008.

Literature

Pamela Allara, ‘Mechanized Bodies: From the Armored Body to Technological Vision’ in Permanent War: The Age of Global Conflict, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA, January 2015.

Dominic Thorburn, ‘Borderline – Sweeping a Mind Field for Borders & Crossings’, IMPACT 8 International Printmaking Conference, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK, August 2013.

Pamela Allara, ‘Diane Victor and Paul Emmanuel: Lost Men Lost Wor(l)ds’ in Gender and South African Art in African Arts, MIT Press Journals, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Volume 45, No. 4, October 2012, pages 34 to 45.

AM Weaver, ‘Paul Emmanuel, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC’, in Art South Africa, Bell Roberts Publishing, Cape Town, September 2010.

Michael O’Sullivan, Smithsonian African Art Museum’s ‘Transitions’ exhibit includes film on infantry (The story behind the work) in The Washington Post, The Washington Post Company, Washington DC, May 2010.

Alexandra Dodd. (2008) ‘Art Pig’ in SA Art Times, Global Art Information, Cape Town, November 2010.

Mary Corrigal, ‘Fine Artist Shows a Flare for Video’ in The Sunday Independent newspaper, The Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, September and in SA Art Times newspaper, Global Art Information, Cape Town, October 2008.