Political Candy Floss, Diptych ,2009
Notes : In 2001, I wrote a small dictionary of political terms. Some of these were highly entertaining and some proved quite useful in describing what I believed about some politicians all along. These dictionary entries have been useful in the making of artworks, like for example, Closed Ballot (2004). In this work I used terms like: albocracy – government by ‘white’ men or Europeans, chirocracy – government by military force, or the ‘strong hand’, chromatocracy – government by a group of people of the same skin colour ruling over people of a different colour, argentocracy – the rule of money, coprocracy Koster’s word for ‘the rule of shits’, cormorancy – rule by a greedy and oppressive class, gerontocracy – the rule or power of old men, hierocracy – government by the church, hoplarchy – government by armed soldiers, kakistocracy – government by the worst citizens, kleptocracy – the rule of thieves, logocracy – government by fancy words, oligarchy – government by a small group of privileged persons, phallocracy – the rule of men only, xenocracy – the rule of foreigners.
In Political Candyfloss I tried to write glimpses of political madness as if by the hand of a schizophrenic politician. A certain infantile, shivering quality in my handwriting was made easier because I had to write backwards in the hard ground on an etching plate. The printing of the plate in reverse made the text legible in places.
Willem Boshoff
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