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The Activist Archivist: Dislocation and Relocation in the Work of Siemon Allen

SIEMON ALLEN IS A COMPULSIVE COLLECTOR AND ARCHIVIST OF SOUTH AFRICAN EPHEMERA. DISPLAYED AS LARGE-SCALE VISUAL AND INFORMATIONAL INSTALLATIONS, ALLEN'S SELF-DESCRIBED "COLLECTION PROJECTS" EXPLORE, AMONGST OTHER THINGS, THE CONCEPT OF IDENTITY-FORMATION THROUGH DISPLACEMENT

Siemon Allen, Makeba!, installation view of Makeba labels on black plastic from ongoing collection project in the series Imaging South Africa

In the end it is somehow poignantly fitting that the FLAT gallery was, quite simply, flattened. Or, to be precise, razed to the ground. A candle left burning by one of the occupants ignited the blaze and FLAT founders, Siemon Allen and Thomas Barry, arrived on the scene in time to see the firemen extinguish the dying embers. The mix of artists, residents, itinerants and vagabonds who made up the unstable, combustible mix of characters that were the keepers of the FLAT flame had been given until the end of the month to vacate the premises [insert address] by an increasingly exasperated landlord. So there is an element of poetic justice in that, after two years of violent experimentation with the parameters of every kind of possibility, the final act was written by the venue that formed the crucible of this creative force field: the FLAT gallery itself. It was January 1995 and the smouldering ruins of a dingy flat across the road from what was then Natal Technikon marked the end of one of the most brief, bizarre and strangely significant moments in recent South African art history. From 1993 to 1995, an unknowable energy catalysed a group of young fine art students in Durban to crystallise into a mysteriously coherent entity. They pooled their meagre reserves, rented a flat, moved into it and embarked upon a journey of exhibitions, performances, installations, happenings and all other manner of spontaneity that characterised the turbulent two years of the FLAT gallery's brief but incendiary lifespan. A comet skimming the planet's
atmosphere at terrifying speed will leave in its wake a blinding bolt of white heat but be gone an instant later. And no-one, even the most knowledgeable astronomers, will be truly able to say what it was, where it came from, where it was going or why it came skidding across our skies for that fleeting instance. Original FLAT conspirator Jay Horsburgh – currently a writer, actor and director in Malibu and FLAT's de facto André Breton – summed up this spirit of abandonment (one thing FLAT was clear on was to NEVER have a manifesto), on a flyer propagating the Situationist-inspired event "The First International Theatre of Communication" when he wrote: "The principle is that it does not matter what you have to say – but it is vitally necessary that you say it."

Alexander Sudheim

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