(eat that Tonik Wojtyra!)

Steven Cohen with Nomsa Dhlamini and Ann Cohen (a nice family picture I found)

Keeping in mind that I get embarrassed at re-runs of "I love Lucy" (it always made me squirmy and slightly sick and I'm not the only one), I was expecting to be cringing my way through this work when I went to see it.

First of all, Cohen's timing and edits were impeccable, he starts by leading us down the garden path with such a sweet elderly shuffling woman, slowly showing us brief glimpses of images and objects in her world that indicate the struggle against apartheid. The tenderness of that sequence, Nomsa's frailty and the subtle indication of the historical events she has lived through made me cry. Of course he's set me up for the cleaning-stripper sequence.

When Sally writes that he "is merciless to his audience, and delivers the debasement of this woman he cares about with unrelenting shots of her cleaning the filthy toilet, crawling on the carpet to sweep up cigarette butts". I can only partially agree with that, I thought he showed incredible restraint, this wasn't twisted cruel granny porn that he was producing. Each shot and angle went just far enough to torment the audience, make us fear what may be exposed next, but he's too much of an artist to debase her as a performer.

I saw the stripper sequence with the disco fuck me soundtrack as defiant, yet that defiance was oddly contradicted by her slow purposeful cleaning activities. She floated above Cohen's art video set-up, and he knows it. Defiant, as well, in the context of a national domestic economy that takes a huge servant class for granted, rendering them invisible, inconsequential and even despised. (That's before you even take into account the national legacy of slavery and abuse.)

I also had less of a problem with the sight of an almost nude 84 year old woman, in fact I was reminded of an early work by Lisa Steele, Birthday Suit - with scars and defects from 1974. She'd probably agree that eventually getting outfitted with an old body is a major sign of success.

I wish there had been a transcript of the phone interview between Steele and Cohen because I had a hard time understanding his accent so I know I missed a lot of additional information, but there were a few things he said that were very powerful. Several times he described her actions as "cleaning the uncleanable" --a brilliant metaphor for the larger political conditions of South Africa-- "with optimism and commitment".

There's one other thing that came to mind with Cohen's statement that the piece is truly a South African work. Participation in a international art scene does not have to simply translate to star-fucking festivals, V-tape has all my admiration for programming an artwork that purposely contains the peculiarities of a specific place, and I am so glad that I saw this video because I left the screening thrilled and moved.