Synopsis

Paris-based artist Katja Gentric shares images and fictions, insights and observations dealing with disorganisation, order and the nature of complex systems, the tension between the finely honed, sophisticated systems of contemporary society and the ever present, pervasive sense of danger and the possibility of catastrophe.

Os Lusíadas, the epic work by the great 16th century Portuguese poet Luís de Camões, culminates in a climactic vision. Near the end of the 8,816 line poem, a grandiloquent celebration of Vasco da Gama’s momentous feat at the turn of the century in discovering the sea route round the Cape to India, a goddess takes the explorer by the hand and from a summit reveals to him a striking image: máquina do mundo – the machine of the world, the structure of the universe. The globe can be seen as a whole, the workings of the universe have become comprehensible.

A key moment: the globe in its entirety becomes something that can be conceived by human imagination; intellectual grasp and practical mastery of the world have been achieved. The chaos of sense impressions and experiences has been distilled into a discernible, explicable and manipulable system. Humans have gained control over the forces of nature, the planet has become navigable, and globalisation has begun.

With a Doctorate from the Université de Bourgogne, Paris-based artist Katja Gentric straddles the spheres of art history, theory and practice, and her work, multilingual and multifaceted, spans continents and cultures. As artist in residence at Hoofstraat Conceptual in South Africa’s Western Cape province during the southern-hemisphere summer of 2016/17, within driving distance from the Cape heroically rounded by da Gama half a millennium earlier, she chose to work with Camões’s notion of the máquina do mundo.

Filmmaker Victor van Aswegen spent the last day of Katja’s residency with her in the gallery and studio spaces as she articulated the thinking underlying her wall installations and spoke about her works in progress. Erudite and playful, with verve and humour, she shared insights and observations, images and fictions that deal with disorganisation, order and the nature of complex systems: the moment when some form of coherence or organisation sets in and chaos becomes society, or vice versa, and the tension between the finely tuned systems of contemporary society and the ever present, pervasive sense of danger and the possibility of catastrophe.

A line of ants, as a system observed from the outside and photographed, and the various vocabularies and layers of meaning that can be brought to bear on it. The Paris metro as another system, this time experienced from the inside as a regular passenger and imaginary art-maker. From Kandinsky and Klee on line and point and the “thinking strings” of San poetry, to 20th century anthropologists Dorothea Bleek and Marcel Griaule, from the mythical menacing giant Adamastor to the pressing modern-day topics of migration and urban terror in Europe and student protests on South African university campuses, from mazes in pencil to sculptures in hair, she makes connections and highlights counterpoints in a wide-ranging conversation. Observed, described, reflected upon, drawn and redrawn from multiple angles – the machine of the world.

The film documents aspects of Katja’s body of work and the creative and conceptual thinking underpinning it, and offers a tantalising and fascinating glimpse into the world and mind of the artist.