Art Or Fart Poem by Adorn Keketso

TRADING FART FOR ART NOT SMART

I've always rebelled that art can't be a candle with blurred distorted illumination; but rather art should be independent from all forms of corrupt activities and influence from other sources of power. Art should be a light of grandeur on top of a societal table to bestow wisdom, knowledge and intelligence on the human species. I am aware that there exist a strong religious, semiotic and linguistic dichotomy between what is being referred to by knowledge, intelligence and wisdom, perhaps that can remain a debate for lexicographers, linguistics and philosophers for they are the cardinal sinners guilty of ‘connotation, meaning and denotation'.
Art should challenge social norms while at the same time portraying the world as changeable and help in changing it; its purpose should be to discredit authority as the truth and credit truth as the real fundamental basis where authority ought to be built. The actual quandary faced by art and artists is to create the real in the ideal. So in the best artistic space there exists no conflict between the real and the ideal, between the thought and the dream. For the ideal is nothing but the manifestation of logic and solid reason.

Art, in the dignified sense of the word, shouldn't exist to disappear in a month or a year. Fame and money impaired our artistic qualities and betrayed our moral, ethical and sophisticated judgment to distinguish between fart and art as Goodenough Mashego once decried in his essay were he blatantly critiqued ‘abstract poetry'. Unlike fart, art must maintain its presence through its time-immemorial essence and aesthetic qualities. Only a few certain intellectual artists, whom I can boldly claim understands the fundamental nature of art and its purpose, do not live, think or write only to appease the now-moment and walk away with an award to claim fame on the mainstream.
They do not write on the range of the moment, but they produce art that indisputably challenges social orders and bestow the next generations with new voice of dissent and fertile grounds for intellectual growth. I do not attempt to endorse the tired-narrative proposed by those artist who come from a capitalist school of thought who espouse the notion that art is not meant to inform, educate, liberate and help change socially constructed norms but to entertain so that the commercial markets can reap lucrative rewards. No matter how much detrimental and perilous the art threatens to be on the mind of the consumer. Rather what I fundamentally champion is the fact that art is obliged to betray the fat rat on the red carpet and expose covert agendas designed by the fat cats. Art is not meant to perpetuate the social detriments imposed by the evil agenda.
That most of our artists produce their artistic works like bird droppings and claim artistic superiority is one of the sorriest aspects of today's art. These kids are reluctant to learn and cultivate the necessary skills needed on the artistry space, they make self-conscious effort to evolve and mature but their artificial growth on the artistry space proves awful when their art qualifies as fart.

It is empirical that longevity - predominantly, though not in every respect, is the privilege of an old school of art which is practically non-existent today. Only Pac, Biggie, Nas, Dree, Uncle Mda, Uncle E'skia, Ausi Nadine, Noria Mabasa, SharpShut, Michelangelo, Jackson Hlungwani, Brother Molelekwa, Uncle Abdullah, Koko Achebe and many other intellectual artists you can think of produced art that still enjoy our confidence today.

These flea markets produce rotten potatoes and employ public and media relations to dupe us to celebrate these lazy worms for artists. I mean when we elevate mediocre (intellectually paralyzed) artists like Emtee, ‘Malume' Cool Cat and Casper Nyovest on the pedestal and use them as qualified criteria of artistic success then you realize that our art is following our politics deep in a dark abyss of ruins - a serious creation of a junk state.

Art deals, not only with the ordinary challenges of the day, but with the eternal, essential, international problems and values of human existence; art is dominantly altruism and partially egocentrism. It does not document, thumb-suck or photograph; it creates and projects. It is concerned - in the words of Aristotle - not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be. Above all, these smartest dummies who label their abstract mish-mash of gibberish junk art ought to be conscious of the fact that art value philosophy and reason, but it also recognizes the fact that there is more to life than reason: there is passion, there is pain, there is hedonism, there is wisdom, there is friendship, there is sex, there is betrayal, there is lust and there is love.

Adorn Keketso Mashigo is an anti-social construct activist.