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The Flipside: Getting and generating our true creative value. This will be the title of a discussion held on Wednesday by founder and chief executive of Marutlulle and Co, Sizakele Marutlulle.
It will include a panel discussion with some of the panellists being designers Nkuli Mlangeni and Shaldon Kopman, intellectual property and copyright lawyer Sara Samsodien, film producer Zikethiwe Ngcobo, Nkgabiseng Motau, curator Lungi Morrison and gallery owner Monna Mokoena.
This is the second instalment of a four-part series and will be hosted at Kaya House in Johannesburg. The first Conversations discussion was hosted at Gallery Momo early this year addressing topics around art and how art is valued.
“This one is about creativity as we understand it. Is there a thing called African creativity, if it is what does it look like, how do we attach value to it, how do we make certain that we can find this thing I call politics of recognition – so how do we recognise that art is a cultural currency, that it speaks to peoples identity, it speaks to people’s agency and it speak to peoples sense of living,” she said.
“We think of them as having platforms for having difficult conversations but also platforms for surfacing solutions, because it’s not helpful when all we do as a community of black people we are always angry – because we live up to the stereotype or live down to the stereotype.”
One of the continuous issues in creative work is attributing ownership and often language has played a role in such instances. Marutlulle has spoken at length about the issue of naming when it comes to creative work.
“We were attempting to address this thing I call misnaming because what we name things can attach value or demote value ... In this instance I wanted us to recognise that creative outputs that come from this part of the world aren’t just craft, they are creative outputs. Because the minute we start calling it craft we’re going to start calling it curio, we’re going to start calling it all these other things that imply a demotion in value.
Marutlulle said things called by their proper names so that generations that come after can recognise and reference those things properly.
“In the same way that we don’t want our work used without reflection let’s also not use other peoples work without reflection.”
Marutlulle said part of the principle for the discussion on Wednesday is an attempt at reversing erasure.
“If we are not seen and not written into creative history then it is assumed that we are absent so we have to insist on our recognition and our visibility. We also have to insist on a narrative that is congruent with what we believe about ourselves.
“If you are not visible, as in narratively visible but also physically visible, then it is assumed that you are absent. Every time a body of work from the continent is used without credit we are erased, we are kicked to the curb.”
Cultural appropriation has been a buzz for some years now, with celebrities and companies being repeatedly accused of being offenders.
On this, Marutlulle said: “Appropriation happens when you claim for yourself something you had nothing to do with. It doesn’t belong to you, it doesn’t belong with you, it is nothing of you and that to me is a definition that helps me discern when to become really upset or to just laugh at something.”
“The areas in which I borrow from my culture to advance a commercial goal, I guess we should be asking what my intention is.”
Marutlulle said those attending the event on Wednesday can expect provocative questions, healthy discussion and collective offerings of solutions.
“There surely are a lot more effective ways to get ourselves heard and seen without being destructive, either to society, or to neighbourhoods, or to property, or to language. There are other ways that we can move our cause ahead – and we’d love to use Wednesday’s platform as on other way to do that.”
Marutlulle said the plan was to have four Conversations this year, the next one to take place around September and the other closer to the end of the year.
