King Kong

Since his first appearance on the silver screen in 1933, King Kong has represented Western notions of the exotic and the monstrous. In Peter Friedl’s video installation the original King Kong story is interwoven with two variations on the theme. In the video, the US musician Daniel Johnston is featured with a song he composed in 1983. The song is the laconic and fatalistic retelling of the King Kong story that concentrates on the monster’s love for a (white) woman. Johnston sits on various park benches in Triomfpark, Johannesburg. The park is located in former Sophiatown, which was crucial in the history of South Africa, and also the location for the controversial jazz opera King Kong (1959) based on the tragic life of the heavyweight boxing champion, Ezekiel `King Kong’ Dhlamini. Once the `Little Harlem’ of South Africa, Sophiatown was gradually bulldozed by the apartheid government, transforming it after 1960 into the white-only suburb called Triomf (Afrikaans for `triumph’).
On show in Witte de With.