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Etching from 'Sound from the Thinking Strings'
"Skotnes’s own visual interpretation of the history and cosmology of the |xam formed the last component of this interdisciplinary endeavour and constituted a visual component that drew together the various strands of disciplinary interpretations and presented a perspective on the |xam life she felt ‘was missing from the other interpretations’ (Skotnes 1991: 30). In these images she drew freely on San mythology, accounts of |xam life recorded by Lucy Lloyd, historical and archaeological research and images from rock paintings in a landscape setting. She writes in her preface that these etchings were direct attempts at ‘inverting the museum dioramas’ in the ethnographic halls close to the exhibition and which, through their display of the San’s body casts, rendered them closer to specimens of biology than as members of a highly developed culture (Skotnes 1991: 52). By creating images that combined shamanistic rituals, entoptic spirals, plants, hunting bags, bows and arrows, snakes, eland-shaped rainclouds, colonists, musical instruments, shelters and therianthropic shapes, Skotnes eclipsed the static narratives of the dioramas and the object labels in the exhibition, placing them in a context in which their metaphysical qualities were celebrated more than their physical qualities. These prints stood in striking contrast to the other exhibits, which framed the San as physical types, and they challenged viewers to confront the reality that the San had a rich history and cultural and social life"" (Liebenberg 2021: 157)." -
Miscast
The Miscast archive, both digital and document, includes the documentary material collected as well as made for the exhibition Miscast: negotiating the presence of the Bushmen, held at the South African National Gallery in 1996 and curated by Pippa Skotnes. The Miscast exhibition opened to much publicity and generated vigorous debate during its five month showing. Part of the event was the first major debate amongst representatives of San and other groups from South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Botswana, organised by the curator. While the archive includes the physical residue of the exhibition, it also, more importantly, contains the photographs and documents collected as part of the research leading up to it, as well as the comments of visitors to the exhibition and many of the publications it generated. Currently, the archive includes a large collection of photographs assembled in two categories. One is the documentation of San objects and artefacts from collections in museums both in South Africa and London. These include skin bags, jewellery, tools and other artefacts such as divining disks, engraved walking sticks and decorated eggs. While this is not a comprehensive photographic database, it can give researchers a good idea of what is held, in South African museums in particular. The second is a collection of photographs (copies) of San subjects taken between 1858 and 1952 held in South African museums and museums in London (Pitt Rivers and British Museum) and Windhoek (the State Archives). Again, this is not a comprehensive collection, but is representative of collections held in these institutions. A selection of these have been digitised. There is also a collection of newspaper articles and archival documents on the subject of the San, collected mainly from the first three decades of the 20th century. -
Sound from the Thinking Strings (installation detail)
'Sound from the Thinking Strings' was comprised of twenty etchings created by Skotnes that drew on southern San mythology, archaeological and historical research and rock paintings; poems by the late poet Stephen Watson that interpreted extracts of nineteenth-century recordings of |xam cosmology compiled in the Bleek and Lloyd archive and pre-selected by Skotnes; and historical and archaeological contextualisations of these recordings in the form of essays by archaeologist John Parkington and historian Nigel Penn. The exhibition also displayed associated visual material that Skotnes sourced from the UCT and State Archives, the UCT Archaeology Department and the SAM. -
Sound from the Thinking Strings (installation detail)
'Sound from the Thinking Strings' was comprised of twenty etchings created by Skotnes that drew on southern San mythology, archaeological and historical research and rock paintings; poems by the late poet Stephen Watson that interpreted extracts of nineteenth-century recordings of |xam cosmology compiled in the Bleek and Lloyd archive and pre-selected by Skotnes; and historical and archaeological contextualisations of these recordings in the form of essays by archaeologist John Parkington and historian Nigel Penn. The exhibition also displayed associated visual material that Skotnes sourced from the UCT and State Archives, the UCT Archaeology Department and the SAM.