Paradigms for South-South cultural exchange – A Personal Journey, by Will Matthysen. July 2004

I have been asked to talk on issues related to South-South. My journey certainly started there, and despite an interlude at first north and then east, will probably end there. So my approach to this talk has been to provide a number of observations made along the way, and how these experiences have influenced my work..

I was born and spent my formative years in South Africa, before studying, travelling and working my way through Europe and S.E. Asia for nine years before migrating to Australia in 1986. As such, I was one of many of my generation to have left South Africa in the 70's and 80's. I left South Africa in 1977 while in my early 20's, after completing three years of architecture at the University of Witwatersrand, Wits for short, in Johannesburg. The Apartheid state was then going through its most repressive stage, Soweto was in flames, and the prospect of a peaceful and equitable transfer of power seemed remote.

Designing and making wooden objects is an activity I have been engaged in for as far back as I can remember. The object which I have visited and re-visited is the mechanical clock, it has been an ongoing exploration, the more I look the more I find. From an early age it appeared to me that clocks possessed a magic of their own, and to me the clockmaker has always been, not only a meticulous craftsperson, but a conjurer of inanimate matter, which if combined in a special way could somehow be brought to life. As such they acquire a life of their own, and become the silent witnesses to our lives. They will eventually outlive us, and be passed on to future generations.

I made my first constructions when I was in my teens, but over the past 12 years have been working at it full time, designing and making in the order of 120 clocks since then, all components are handmade, both the mechanism and cabinetry. They are all different, and explore different sets of ideas. Needless to say they have evolved over that time, each generation somehow leaving its genetic imprint on the next. This tends to happen in an evolutionary fashion, but occasionally a newcomer arrives unlike anything else, either as new genetic stock, or a throwback to a distant ancestor. They can be arranged into extended family groups, are generally well behaved get on with each other. I periodically have to put them up for adoption in order to earn a living.

I still draw on my experience at Wits, which provided an education beyond the study of architecture. An eclectic range of 1970's influences come to mind, from the Whole Earth Movement to Bernard Rudofsky's Architecture without Architects, to name a few. The latter in particular was pertinent to my South African experience; I could see its relevance before my eyes. It dealt with architecture with a small ‘a', the creations of people throughout the world, the product of collective intelligence and adaptation to the environment, not only physical, but also cultural and political. It was a celebration of the spontaneous and the anonymous.

As students, we were left pretty much to our own devices. One of the earliest projects I undertook was based on the theme of ‘Home Made Homes', where I chose to study the black squatter settlements which dotted the veld on the outskirts of Johannesburg. The methodology was unassuming but effective, namely to observe, record, evaluate and finally act. What I witnessed were not romantic and pristine traditional constructions, but a hybrid use of disparate technologies. These included salvaged materials such as recycled corrugated iron externally and corrugated cardboard as internal insulation, onto a traditional pole structure and floor plan. The choice of these materials was not accidental. In a political climate where it was government policy that these homes be demolished and the inhabitants moved to the homelands, the ability to dismantle your home and move on in advance of the demolition squad was essential. The squatters had adopted the materials of the white man, and used it to beat him at his own game.

Apartheid contrived to excluded all who were not white from any meaningful participation, and if you live on the edge of a dominant society, not only do you live on the edge of its cities, use the edges of its infrastructure, but also live on its refuse and casts offs. As such, this dominant technology cannot be accesses and manipulated as intended by its creators. Fragments are extracted, parts cannibalized and given new purpose and meaning. The western obsession with barriers and wire fences has literally and figuratively been given a new twist. Instead of separating peoples, they have now become object of the imagination in the form of wire sculptures and toys. Similarly, other industrial materials from telephone cable to polythene bags are given a new lease of life far removed from their original intended use.

While the original impetus for this adaptation and improvisation of technology might have been sheer necessity and survival born out of inequity, they have now become valued and collectable. What left a lasting impression on me and has become part of my approach to my own work, was an oblique and questioning attitude to the material world around me.

Having grown up on a gold mining town near Johannesburg, some of my earliest memories are of the mine head-gears which dot the landscape. These iconic structures can be over 10 stories tall and consist of a lattice structure surmounted by a giant spoked wheel, which again, I documented these as part of another student project.

Closer inspection reveals that they are made of steel and wood. It was only later that I discovered that the timber used was West Australian jarrah. In fact much of the industrial infrastructure of Southern Africa in the 19 th and early 20 th century used this material. With increasing urbanization the mine head-gears are systematically being demolished, the only record to my knowledge being the slides I had taken in the 70's.

On the dry veld untidy clusters of eucalypts, mainly Sydney Blue Gums, surround the corrugated iron sheds of the mine compounds. Blue gums have the useful property of creaking loudly when placed under heavy load and are about to fracture. As a result they were used as props under ground, and would serve an early warning system in case of collapse. The blue gums have outlived their usefulness in that regard, have become feral, and threaten to infest what is left of the delicate Highveld ecosystem.

One species, Jarrah, has virtually been logged to extinction in its native habitat, while the blue gum, from the opposite end of the Australian continent, threatens to colonize that of its adopted homeland.

I recall making a number of clocks and other mechanical constructions during my late teens. Whilst not overtly copying examples of industrial architecture I saw around me, at a subliminal level I think I was probably influenced by them. One consisted of two large meshed wheels within a framework construction. The overall construction was of wood, sourced from a pine crate, wire inserts for the meshing teeth, and rear hub and ratchet of a bicycle wheel was used to form the rewind mechanism.

Each wheel was painted with patterns which indicate circular movement, and at a particular phase in its cycle of rotation the patterns merge to form a continuous design, in order to achieve some time keeping ability. I would have built about half a dozen similar pieces during this period, again largely cobbled together from bicycle parts.

Almost thirty years later, I am currently working on a commission which picks up the mine head-gear theme. It is for an Australian client who recalls similar structures. In this instance it is not through generalized abstractions that we communicate effectively with others, but through the personal and the idiosyncratic that finds a resonance within their own experience. The clock now begins to allude to elements on the landscape, the ground plane, the sky and clouds above, and the subterranean world below.

After leaving South Africa, I worked for a couple of years near Amsterdam, allowing me to put together the funds to complete my degree. I completed my architectural training at the Architectural Association in London, graduating under the guidance of Rodrigo Perez de Arce, a Chilean exile from the Pinochet years. Rodrigo's work focussed on urban architecture and their transformations through time, and exposed me to the writings of Aldo Rossi and the study of typology. Some of these themes were to appear in later generations of clocks.

It was the Renaissance architect Alberti who likened the city to a large building, or conversely the building to a small city. I have taken up this idea but pushed it in the opposite direction, playing with the interchancability in composition and scale between buildings and the objects that inhabit them, namely, furniture as small buildings. They become containers within containers, the city, the building, and finally furniture and its contents.

As such, the cabinets of Joseph Cornell have always intrigued me. In this instance the cabinet ultimately becomes the container of memories locked away in time and space. Time, like space is not necessarily progressive or linear or directional, but as Mircea Eliade has indicated, can be contained, re-enacted and become cyclical. Another family of designs picks up on this theme. I have integrated the clock, together a lunar dial and other astronomical functions into a cabinet with numerous compartments, some hidden and others revealed. And as with the Cornell example, this clock becomes a spatial and temporal framework to be filled by the user with objects of personal significance.

In Melbourne I decided that the quickest way to get to know the city and what it had to offer, was to study urban design, graduating from the RMIT in ‘93. At the same time I began to take up my woodwork again. I found it possible to include elements of the urban landscape, its icons and landmarks and incorporate them into the composition of another family of clock designs. One in particular started out as a sketch to lecture notes on the colonial city, turned into a freeform doodle and ended up as a clock. It is the closest I've come to automatic writing. I realized that my sub-conscious was trying to tell me something, and decided to take up my woodwork full time.

My migration from one continent to another had come at a cost however. If a sense of belonging and identity is no longer completely rooted in one community or place, one has to resort to other means, the use of memory is one mechanism and my return to woodwork was its medium.

My work lies at the intersection of two craft traditions, namely wood/furniture on the one hand and metal/clock making on the other, where techniques and materials overlap, taking techniques normally reserved for one and applying it to the other. To the purists of either tradition this mixed marriage is anathema, preferring the security and clarity of an artistic version of Separate Development.

What is clear to me however, is that we must embrace diversity, complexity, and the often contradictory nature of the world around us, and any ideology or action that refuses to acknowledge this will ultimately fail. The astronomer Fred Hoyle is said to have commented that the universe is not only more weird than we imagine, but more weird than we possibly can imagine.

My work also involves the fusion of two divergent ways of thinking, namely the logical, precise and the mechanical on the one hand, and the lateral, organic and open-ended on the other. So in essence the mechanism becomes the vehicle by which other ideas and agendas can be expressed. The Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis summed it up more eloquently when he said, ‘machines become ready for their mythological action only once technology has rendered them useless'. Applying this to clocks, the quartz revolution has effectively rendered the mechanical timepiece obsolete, and liberated now from servitude; its intricate workings can now be put to new uses and made to speak of other things.

The latest generation of clocks focus on the broader context of the material from which they are made.

In this country we subsidise the use of coal while we cut down our ancient forests for woodchips. If there is one practise which unites this region it is deforestation and its consequences, from Brazil, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, mainland Australia and Tasmania, to name a few. Whereas Apartheid involved the exploitation of human labour, our current exploitation of our old-growth forests is its moral equivalent. And as with the Apartheid debate thirty years ago, I notice the same equivocations regarding our current forestry practise. We shape the instruments and the institutions which in turn shape us. It is a cycle we are doomed to repeat unless we critically assess where we are at, and make a determined effort to change course.

My latest range of clocks are made from wood scraps salvaged last year from the forest floor after a clear-fell logging operation in Tasmania.

The final images are of a clock built from material sourced from the Urban Forest. This includes trees that inhabit our cities and suburbs that have been felled to make way for road widening or new developments, and that would otherwise be destined for the firewood pile or the rubbish tip.

We are all linked together; all cultures in their own way are steeped in the mythology of the tree, which has become a metaphor for knowledge and life, habitat and shelter, and the linking of earth and sky.

On the face if it, the actions of artists, craftspeople, designers and makers to realistically change things seems remote. But by patiently and persistently working at what we do best, we can create awareness of these issues by being true to our values, and by creating the objects that reflect them.

Will Matthysen

The South Project is a five-year program designed to develop networks for cultural exchange between countries of the south, including southern Africa, Australia, the Pacific and Latin America. South 1 was the initial gathering of representatives from participating countries to develop the parameters for future south-south exchange. South 1 was a unique opportunity to learn what is happening in our latitude and consider what role Australia might play as a southern nation.
South-south dialogue requires reciprocal exchange between countries. This entails the formation of collaborative partnerships between artists of different countries. And also the development of artistic practices that can encompass the commonalities, physical or cultural between the different continents.

Contact:
William Matthysen
Designer and Maker of Clocks and Furniture in Timber
48 Webb Street
Warrandyte Victoria 3113
Australia

Phone: (03) 9844 1250
Fax: (03) 9844 1515