Sven Christian [SC]: For your installation in the Covered Space, you’ve been toying between the ‘Obstacle’ and ‘Tunnels’ series. I’m wondering how you view the similarities and differences between these two series?

Serge Alain Nitegeka [SAN]: I still don’t know what it’s going to look like. I have an idea — a snippet of a vision — which is a combination of the two. I’ve done one or two of those before, but maybe a decade ago. It would be interesting to see how far I can take that language now, or how far it’s gone. I feel like it’s existed on its own trajectory, in a way.

SC: Parallel to the rest of your work?

SAN: Exactly. I want to know what it’s going to look like in the end. There will be a tunnel and a bit of an obstacle. It’s not going to be a happy walk-in tunnel. It’s going to be a tunnel that obstructs movement from A to B, and between A and B — something inside that threshold.

SC: In my head I imagine the tunnel in the corridor between the restaurant and Covered Space, with the obstacle aspect happening near the entrance?

SAN: I don’t know whether it’s going to be at the entrances or inside the tunnel. I just want to entice the restaurant clientele to engage. I’m also trying to figure out how to incorporate the open space, that opens out onto the park. It’s a good viewing point to take in the whole tunnel, but if you’re there I want to create a way for you to be able to access the tunnel, physically.

SC: I was reading BLACK SUBJECT/S (2012) the other day, and Bettina Malcomess was writing about the process of ‘making do’ — using found materials.1 It made me think about your excitement when we found the wood up by the stables, and being able to use wood that has a history. What is it about using that kind of material?

SAN: It’s just that I’m here, and I’ve found materials that I can use in this space. There’s nothing that’s been bought. I remember telling you that this is probably the purest site-specific installation that I’ve done, in terms of using materials found on site. That’s been my approach to art-making thus far — make do with what you have, metaphorically, to make ends meet. Now we’re talking about making an artwork, but it comes from my experience of being in flight, fleeing — of being in refugee camps, in a foreign country. That way of survival. You have to be flexible. You have to find things around you that you can use to your advantage. It’s about being resourceful. That’s what we talk about when we talk about site-specific work; marrying that with my own experience, in the space, and using that to fulfil an objective, which is quite open. I’m talking as an artist but I’m also talking as a refugee, in a way, so it’s quite broad.

SC: Bettina writes about how you traded a calculator for this nutritional biscuit… There’s something about how the currency of a particular thing, its utilitarian function, might change…

SAN: Is that in the catalogue?

SC: Ja.

SAN: Ah, shit! I forgot about that. That thing with the calculator stayed with me for a long time. There were no words exchanged. I looked at him. I had this calculator…

SC: This was at the border?

SAN: No, this was inside Goma, in the DRC. This man was just sitting there. He had these UN biscuit rations. They’re supposed to have a lot of kilojoules, to last a week or something. But they’re quite small and thick and sweet — packed with stuff. It was so good. I don’t know where he found the box. I didn’t even know that he was selling, but something told me he was. And I gave him my calculator. He looked at it and then gave me the ration. No words were exchanged. Nothing. I remember he was also dazed. I think one of his relatives or his child was dead next to him. It was a weird time.

I stole the calculator from my uncle. I took it from his table. It was the only thing I had in my pocket, because I was fleeing. I remember how awesome it was. It was a Casio, and the numbers on the display were green — they were lit! I was like, ‘Fuck, this is awesome. I’ve gotta have this!’ It was early in the morning. We were fleeing. That’s the only thing I put in my pocket.

SC: I guess that shift in purpose — what it meant to you versus the life it served prior to its exchange… I’m thinking about what it means to make use of materials that have a former life, for example this wood: neither of us know what it was used for. Maybe it was a fence or…

SAN: The gold for me is that it’s been used, and that it was put somewhere temporarily as repurposed wood, for future use. It wasn’t burnt. It was just stored out in the open. It’s also about giving something a second life; knowing the value of discarded material and how to extract that. I don’t know if it’s in that catalogue, but there’s a memory that sticks with me when making my installations. I remember this classroom in this school we had moved into, and how it quickly changed. Imagine a whole lot of people moving around, looking for where to stay. You can’t really turn back. You’re just being corralled, pushed from the back like cattle. You’re just following forward. People say, ‘Oh, there’s a way here,’ or ‘there’s a way there.’ I remember I was in one of those groups and I saw an opening. I just walked and there were people behind me. It turned out to be a primary school. There were two girls that were standing in the parade grounds. They saw me and came up to me and gave me some money, some zaire — that’s what the currency was called then, because it was Zaire; it wasn’t the DRC.

I can’t remember how much it was, but no words, again. They just gave me the money. Within two or five minutes, all the classrooms, all the kids, teachers, they all left, and they left the whole school to us. I went into this classroom. Within a matter of time the desks and things were all pushed to the side. Mattresses and whatever bedding, whatever they had, they lay down, making a dwelling within the classroom. In a short space of time the whole place had transformed. There was shit everywhere, in the playground, which was pristine. There’s this very dark volcanic soil, and there was just stuff. Fires being lit. All of a sudden we couldn’t use the toilets, because there was tons of people there. It wasn’t a viable thing anymore. You could go out through a window and go and help yourself, but the whole idea of transformation: if you look at Hurricane Katrina, at how the stadiums were transformed; how churches and community halls were transformed; how a basketball court is transformed with all of these single beds, military style, stacked… Then you juxtapose that with the game last week… Transformation of space, interior space, resourcefulness — using what’s around to fulfil an objective… These are all things that come into my work, especially the installations and sculptures. 

SC: With your Black Lines (2012) show, Rita Kersting writes about the relationship between the two-dimensionality of the painted surface and one’s access through the installation Obstacle 1 (2012).2

SAN: Yes. It used to be that the installation would come first. I used to make the installation and then I would paint, carrying the language of what I was exploring in the installation into painting. Now it’s changed.

SC: I want to come back to your paintings, but am really interested in what you’re saying about the transformation of this classroom: how it’s occupied by different people, depending on the needs of whoever is in the space. Your installations transform space too. One is forced to read space differently; to consider the function of the space, too. We witnessed something similar during COVID-19, when spaces like the CTICC were lined with beds and transformed into massive hospital wards. Similarly how those fleeing Gaza are being forced to make do, often amidst the rubble of bombed-out buildings.

SAN: Even how things transform here, when you put on a concert. Thinking about arrangements or compositions, sometimes it’s not thought out. It happens organically, ‘Ok, here is a space that I’m going to use.’ Someone might say, ‘Oh, this is big, it’s the right shape, it can fit here,’ or, ‘Oh, there’s a window here, so we can’t block it, but this space can be used. We can fit another mattress here.’ Those considerations aren’t always spoken. I don’t remember a lot of people talking, actually. I was young, so maybe that’s my coping mechanism. My biggest sense of that time comes through smell. I don’t remember hearing. I think I shut things out. You know how you can look but not see? That’s how it was. But the smell. Smell you can’t switch off — the smell of bodies decaying, and smoke. Everything mixed in. It’s just misery.

I’m still unpacking it. Whenever I get a chance I chat to my parents about it. I realise my sense of time is warped. There was no sense of time. Time didn’t matter. Imagine being somewhere, and you thought you were there for three days, but you were there for three weeks. Where did all the other days go? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t remember. But the question lingers. What stayed with me the most? How do I remember certain events, or being there, and how does that carry into my work? Somehow it filters through, in different ways, and I’m still unpacking that.

SC: Bettina also writes about how the weight of something carried shapes the body.3 If you’re carrying something heavy, it will eventually leave an imprint, bend the back. She writes specifically about Equilibrium (2010), where you warped sheets of crating wood, to point to the traces of a physical / metaphorical load…

SAN: Exactly, the trace of that trauma on the body. How does it register, and where? Because I think it rests somewhere and manifests itself in a particular way, whether it’s back pain, a stomach ulcer, or some tumour. I don’t know much about this, but if it’s not released — if you don’t deal with it — what does that do to your body? I don’t think it weighs on me as heavily as one would assume, given what I’ve seen, but I think one of the simplest and most helpful processes that I went through when I got to Kenya was the ease at which our family spoke about the experiences that we had been through. There was a point when we were all separated. I couldn’t tell you how many months I didn’t see them. But then it’s like, ‘So where were you? What the fuck were you doing? Do you remember that thing…?’ There’s was a lightheartedness in talking about it. Nothing was off the table. It wasn’t a formal thing, like, ‘Oh, let’s talk about this,’ because it’s healthy. No. Something would just come up. Then there would be an hour or two of just talking. To this day, we talk about stuff that I didn’t know, but it’s not forced. If you have a session with a psychologist, there’s a structure. There was no structure. No one was compelled. I was so lucky and blessed, because we just spoke about stuff. Sometimes there’s a leading question, to extract some more information, so that others know what happened to you or so that you know what happened to others. We were so lucky that we were able to find each other and move from the DRC to Kenya, as a unit. That was the best thing, a one-in-a-million scenario. There were a lot of people who were separated, people who were left behind. There were children all over the place who didn’t know where their parents were. It’s a miracle, really.

SC: It must have been very difficult to then leave that unit and come to South Africa by yourself. Yesterday you mentioned the opportunities provided through the universities here, because at the time those in Kenya…

SAN: Ja, they weren’t reliable. It was especially difficult, because my youngest brother was very young. My sister had just left, and now it was me leaving. So I think he still feels like we abandoned him. It’s not easy, but these are things we have to do.

SC: You’ve spoken about painting as being a cathartic or self-reflexive process, but you also speak about this aspect of control or order when painting. Is that still something you feel from the medium?

SAN: Oh ja! It’s one of the things we were talking about: how a certain experience of trauma might manifest itself later, much later. The need to control every aspect. It’s countering that time when everything was just open to whatever. You had no agency, no sense of control. You couldn’t control where you were going, when you wanted to sleep, what you wanted to eat… You were at the mercy of the elements and other people. It’s like, why do I feel like I should use tape to create a crisp line, to separate the black from the white, in a very controlled way? I prefer it from an aesthetic perspective. It’s pleasing, but then all work is autobiographical. How can I unpack that? How do I understand the way I work? Not everybody works like that. We all work in different ways, and there’s a reason why one chooses to work the way they do. My approach is about control. It’s not just about controlling the paint. It’s there in all aspects of life. At home things have to be perfect, in a way. It’s like, this table has to be this way.

SC: It’s about creating stability?

SAN: Yes, I like that —stability!

SC: Bettina also references a musical term, ‘contrapuntal’, which was used by Edward Said to describe an aspect of his experience of exile from Palestine — how relocation necessitates two parallel streams of experience.4 There’s the life you’ve lived, and the one you’re living, and the two run parallel. I’m thinking about that experience of arriving at a border, entering a new place. I imagine the stability and security that comes with citizenship to be critical for those who are displaced, the protection it can afford…

SAN: I’m actually writing about exactly that at the moment, about barriers and borders. It would be interesting for you to read.

SC: When did you start writing this book?

SAN: I started the text for the book at the beginning of the year. Then I was diligent, but at some point in the middle I let go. Now I’ve picked it up again because I want to get it done. I’m mostly just editing and fleshing it out, making it more readable. It’s nice to revisit a text after a long time, and go, ‘Ah, why you talking shit? What is this here?’ So I’m writing about the Norval work, Structural Response III (2018). It’s like an obstacle work, a labyrinth. There are a few contexts I have to create for it, for it to be fully unpacked and to present it in such a way as to have an in-depth understanding of it — not just the it, as an object, but the making of it, the psychology around it, the story behind it. I’ve never written or talked about it in such a way. I start with barriers, but I’m talking about safety. There are a few paragraphs about the need to wear a harness.

SC: Yes, I remember you telling me about that.

SAN: Yes, it’s about the process of making art and the risks that have to be taken, even though you’re dealing with these external stimuli, and unsolicited comments. If you’re working, the studio is like the world. You’re not enclosed in a room, working by yourself. You’re open to all of this, so there is a bit of that background history. Then there’s the actual work. It’s not just about academically dissecting a work.

SC: In a museum context, there’s pressure to uphold certain safety protocols, right? There’s an institutional structure to maintain that, and you wanted to keep that aspect of danger alive…

SAN: Yip, you’ve got to resist.

SC: But there’s another aspect of danger that we’ve spoken about: when you erect these structures they’re not nailed to the wall. They rest, and you rely on structures to support themselves, so the precarity is inbuilt, right? In that someone could bump something, it could fall…

SAN: But that’s an illusion. It won’t fall if you bump it. It may look like it will, but it’s an illusion, as much as borders are an illusion.

SC: Will you use the walls in the Covered Space?

SAN: No. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I’ve always resisted using the wall. It’s important for the structure to rest on its own weight. Even the work at Norval had no wall support. It was just resting on itself. On the first day I was making it, I had to let go of one of the three assistants helping me, because of these unsolicited comments, like ‘Oh, this is going to fall. You should support it this way.’ I’m like, ‘This is not going to work. This is not the first time I’ve made this. I know what I’m doing. I don’t want to have this discussion with you.’ Those things can make or break a work. It’s a very delicate moment. When on site I’m in the studio, even though I’m not. It’s my little bubble, and I have to be fierce about it, because if I allow some stuff to get to me, there might not be an installation at the end of it all. I was prepared to say ‘Hey, listen, I’m not going to wear a harness, and then this is it. I’m gonna walk.’ I was prepared for that. You have to take a stand against some of these things, like the harness. The art that I make doesn’t come from a safe space, and that’s what the harness implies. These regulations are not part of my work, and I need to be true to my work. For it to have meaning, especially for me, this is what has to happen.

SC: It reminds me of Staircase Installation (2010), where you introduced that sense of precarity for the audience.

SAN: Yes, I love that work. There were three of them. One was down a staircase. I divided the railing that you hold, and suspended it so as to divide the staircase in two. In the other I turned two stairs into one, by placing a box neatly across them. You had to step extra-high going up or extra-low going down. In the third, there were little planks on the staircase. It was a bit awkward, trying to walk on planks laid on top of stairs. It subtly changes the way you move around a place — this threshold or liminal space. You’re already constricted. It’s like what I was saying about being corralled.

SC: Yes, a staircase is already a delimited space — ‘this is the passage you have to take.’ It relates to what you were saying about the primary school: there was this channel and everyone was being pushed from the back and there was this offshoot…

SAN: Yes, it’s like a dam breaks and you find a little opening or crevice, and you go into it.

SC: There’s a risk aspect too. Stairs are dangerous.

SAN: Yes, sometimes you miscount. Somehow your mind subconsciously knows how many steps there are, even though you’re not thinking about it, but the moment there’s a glitch and you think there’s another step, you hurt your knee. It’s amazing to think about these unconscious processes that your brain is running, without you being aware of them.

SC: Routine is important to you, not just in your practice or your work, but the cycling…

SAN: Yes, it goes back to discipline and stability. I put a good session in this morning.

SC: You’ve cycled already?

SAN: Yeah, and I killed it! It was my best time so far.

SC: Where did you go?

SAN: I go out to Kloofzicht, turn around the circle, fly down all the way past here again and go to the caves, then turn back. Today I averaged 34.9 km/h. My friends are like, ‘What the fuck is going on with you?’ I’ve been trying to hit 35. I’m getting there, but my graph is gradually improving. Marginal gains. The last time I went home I got an aero-suit that’s tighter around my body. I have to capitalise on each second. They add up. Again, marginal gains. It’s also a way of relaxing. I can zone in on things, like, ‘Nobody is going to go past me. Nobody is going to hold my wheel.’ Sometimes, when I see someone up ahead, I empty myself out trying to reach them. My vision becomes blurred and I can’t see properly.

SC: That also sounds dangerous.

SAN: It is.