The Cosmology of the Bow

The work of Glen Arendse and Garth Erasmus from Cape Town is exemplary for the attempt to free oneself from colonial burdens and to explore a different relationship of man to the world. Identified as "colored" in the still lingering categories of the South African apartheid regime, they fall outside the grid of dominant representations and find themselves confronted with stereotypes that deny their culture and history. In a gesture of self-conscious rededication of these attributions, they identify themselves as Khoi and thus as descendants of the "first people" - in order to refer to a pre-colonial past beyond "ethnic" or "racial" segregation. This is symbolized by their use of the "musical bow of the Khoisan", a musical bow strung on one side, which they take out from the museal context and transform into a hypermodern futuristic tool. Originally a hunting weapon and thus also standing in the context of shamanistic animal-human relationships, its musical variant consists of a one-stringed bow with a calabash as a resonating body; it is plucked, struck or bowed, in some variants also blown. For Arendse and Erasmus, the bow is both the instrument of rehabilitation of the "Hottentots" (as the Khoisan were called by the Dutch and Germans in a history of repression and oppression that still continues) and an instrument of universal human creation.

FURTHER EVENTS

Guided tours
Thursday, 22 September 2022, 6 pm

Sand Concert
Saturday, 24 September 2022, 8 pm
Khoi Khonnexion (Kapstadt)
Kuru (Windhoek/Berlin/Hamburg) – Special Guest: Renu Hossain
Kreidler (Düsseldorf/Berlin)
Songs aus The House of Falling Bones (with members of Khoi Khonnexion & Kante,
Nik Duric, Ruth May, Xhoes)