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Assembling emergence: making art and selling gas in Bulawayo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2019

Joshua D. Rubin
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Abstract

This article is an ethnographic investigation of the labours of making art and selling liquid petroleum gas (LPG) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It locates these activities within a shared social world, centred on one of Bulawayo's major art galleries, and it demonstrates that artists and LPG dealers use similar strategies to respond to the political conditions of life in the city. This article frames these conditions as unpredictable, insofar as they change frequently and crystallize in unexpected forms, and it argues that both groups are attempting to act within these conditions and shape them into emergent assemblages. In adopting this term ‘assemblage’, which has been elaborated theoretically by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and their many interlocutors, this article emphasizes both the mutability and the unpredictability of these formations. The artists who work in the gallery, for their part, make their art by assembling their chosen media. The processes by which they choose their media constitute assemblages as well, in that artists have to adapt their artistic visions to the materials that Zimbabwe's market can provide. Street dealers in gas also produce emergent assemblages against the backdrop of unpredictability. If they want to make natural gas available to consumers, dealers must shepherd their medium through an always emergent process of distribution. They participate in transnational networks of trade, but they also theorize innovative strategies of procurement, develop circuits of trust and loyalty, and conjure up visions of a predatory state. Like artists, they use their work to construct dynamic representations of the world around them. Artists may produce images, and dealers circulate gas, but this article shows that conceptualizing these practices in terms of ‘assemblages’ calls their commonalities into view. In doing so, it also demonstrates that these practices complicate easy distinctions between aesthetics, economics and politics.

Résumé

Cet article est une enquête ethnographique sur le travail de création artistique et le travail de vente de gaz de pétrole liquéfié (GPL) à Bulawayo (Zimbabwe). Il situe ces activités dans un univers social partagé centré sur l'une des principales galeries d'art de Bulawayo, et démontre que les artistes et les vendeurs de GPL utilisent des stratégies semblables pour répondre aux conditions de vie politiques dans la ville. Cet article présente ces conditions comme imprévisibles, dans la mesure où elles changent fréquemment et se cristallisent en formes inattendues, et soutient que ces deux groupes tentent d'agir dans le cadre de ces conditions et d'en faire des assemblages émergents. En adoptant ce terme d’« assemblage », théoriquement élaboré par Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari et leurs nombreux interlocuteurs, cet article souligne à la fois la mutabilité et l'imprévisibilité de ces formations. Pour leur part, les artistes qui travaillent dans la galerie créent leur art en assemblant les supports qu'ils choisissent d'utiliser. Les processus de sélection des supports utilisés constituent également des assemblages, en ce que les artistes doivent adapter leurs visions artistiques aux matériaux que le marché zimbabwéen peut fournir. Les marchands de gaz produisent aussi des assemblages émergents dans ce contexte d'imprévisibilité. S'ils veulent mettre du gaz naturel à la disposition des consommateurs, les marchands doivent le faire à travers un processus de distribution toujours émergent. Ils intègrent des réseaux commerciaux transnationaux, mais ils théorisent également des stratégies innovantes d'approvisionnement, développent des circuits de confiance et de loyauté, et inventent des visions d’État prédateur. Comme les artistes, ils utilisent leur travail pour construire des représentations dynamiques du monde qui les entoure. Les artistes produisent des images tandis que les marchands distribuent du gaz, mais cet article montre que la conceptualisation de ces pratiques en termes d’« assemblages » révèle leurs éléments communs. Ce faisant, il démontre également que ces pratiques compliquent les distinctions faciles entre esthétique, économie et politique.

Type
Ethnographies of emergence
Information
Africa , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 479 - 498
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2019 

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