Cascoland Journal

Saturday 4 February

The day starts early in the morning with breakfast in grand cafe Obs in the Cape Town neighbourhood of Observatory. Half of the Cascoland crew lives there in a house on Trill Road. A week after arriving in Cape Town it is necessary to congregate and see what progress each individual member of Cascoland has made. It is not clear to all what kind of object each member is exactly going to make. And more importantly, what will link all the different artistic objects together

Our project site is New Crossroads, a township on the sandy outskirts of town. The idea is to mobilize the people and have them work together with Dutch and South African artists, architects and designers to intervene into the public spaces of New Crossroads.

The Cascoland workplace is situated on the compound of the Mayenzeke center in New Crossroads. It is a very interesting place to be. As a matter of fact the people that live in New Crossroads where forced to move here from what is still known as Crossroads in the apartheid era. Their physical replacement came with a lot of hope for a better future. Better houses would be build and all kinds of different communal facilities would see the light of day. It never happened. Looking at the houses and comparing them to the townships with shacks you would think that the people in New Crossroads must have a better life then before, but this is not true. Josette Cole, a long time ANC activist during apartheid and working for Mandlovu Development Institute, the organization inviting the Cascoland project, explained it. In Crossroads they had a hospital, a swimming pool, a police station, bars and other facilities that could be used by the community as a whole. In New crossroads there is none of that. The only communal places are the churches, schools and shebeens (drinking places).

When in the first week a big red container, to store our equipment, was brought to the Mayenzeke center, it was not surprising that this triggered a good feeling amongst the people around the center. When it was finally placed some elderly people went inside the container and started dancing out of joy. Clearly something was happening and seeing all the working tools and equipment being put in the container it was obvious that Cascoland was not there to do a lot of talking but would focus on doing practical things. No workshops with lots of talking.

All of us are getting ready for the big day tomorrow. The official presentation of Cascoland to the people of New Crossroads. Yesterday we bought two sheep that where slaughtered according to tradition. The blood was poured unto the soil. Our endeavor has now been blessed according to Xhosa tradition. The spirits will protect us. Besides that we just have to be sharp ourselves.

Ritual slaughtering at the Cascoland site