Notes

In 2001, I wrote a small dictionary of political terms. Some of these were highly entertaining and some proved quite useful in describing what I believed about some politicians all along. These dictionary entries have been useful in the making of artworks, like for example, Closed Ballot (2004). In this work I used terms like: albocracy – government by ‘white’ men or Europeans; chirocracy – government by military force, or the ‘strong hand’; chromatocracy – government by a group of people of the same skin colour ruling over people of a different colour; argentocracy – the rule of money; coprocracy Koster’s word for ‘the rule of shits’; cormorancy – rule by a greedy and oppressive class; gerontocracy – the rule or power of old men; hierocracy – government by the church; hoplarchy – government by armed soldiers; kakistocracy – government by the worst citizens; kleptocracy – the rule of thieves; logocracy – government by fancy words; oligarchy – government by a small group of privileged persons; phallocracy – the rule of men only; xenocracy – the rule of foreigners.

In Political Candyfloss I tried to write glimpses of political madness as if by the hand of a schizophrenic politician. A certain infantile, shivering quality in my handwriting was made easier because I had to write backwards in the hard ground on an etching plate. The printing of the plate in reverse made the text legible in places.

Willem Boshoff

Source: https://www.willemboshoff.com/product-page/political-candyfloss