Pass, passing : between frames of memory, cinema and the archive

Abstract

This thesis explores the artistic process of producing a film, All We Have is Now, that is about family and apartheid. The text traces various aspects of the film's production from the points of research, perspective, and representation. The thesis includes the multitudes of challenges and considerations when producing work about a terrible history and the barriers that have formed within the formal and informal sites of memory: the collective memories of family and society, and the national and international state and media archives. The thesis explores how one might produce artwork that is complex and free of essentializing and simplistic representations, narratives, and images of South Africa. Recurring themes within the film and thesis include: memory and forgetting; the notion of a centralizing truth; history and the present; racial segregation; cutting, editing, and creating narratives; the position, power, and intention of the author and artist as producer and presenter of narratives, images, and representations. How are representations considered South African? How are they archived, reproduced, and performed? Who gets to produce and reproduce, present and represent, play and replay imageries and imaginaries in the realms of art and the archive, and for whom, why, and to what end? The text will investigate in and through these questions and themes in an essayistic manner of unfolding vignettes. The work is ongoing. Keywords: memory; cinema; the archive; South Africa; apartheid; race; passing; South African representation; South African art.