ZINK

26/03/2025

If you have been following this page you’ll know that ZINK is over, after about fifteen years.

If you are interested in news of forthcoming work please transfer to my personal page called John Nankin.

I will open the settings of that page to public except when posting personal stuff, photos of family and dog , etc.

I realise that part of the attraction at ZINK was the visit at dusk to Erf 81, Andre’s Farm in its heyday. But want to thank everyone that supported the performances. We only had almost-full or full or over-full houses.

I am carrying on, and will use other venues or pop-up spaces.

The plan is to re-present Lost with All Hands in late January of 2026. I know that many who follow this page have seen it, either at ICA Live Art Festival at UCT Orange Street, or at Theatre Arts in Observatory, in September and November last year.

I am not finished with that performance. I don’t intend to change the text, audio & projection tracks, or structure. Well, hopefully, not much. I want to spend more time exploring the ‘play’. Both previous events were quite labour intensive to set up, and i will plan this one better, with more technical crew and more set up and rehearsal days on stage, to allow me more rest and prep time before performing. The performance will be allowed to develop, if better prepared. It is quite a complex set of actions.

17/10/2024

02/07/2024

Lost with All Hands will be performed in early September, but not at ZINK. Booking details, venue and time will be posted here closer to the event.

17/07/2022

I was lying in bed in the dark with my eyes shut, trying to imagine a new sequence of Lost with All Hands (/aka, etc) when I realized yet again my fundamental idiocy.

At that moment it seemed crazy to try to invent the performance in the mind's eye - or ear - whether at a desk or in bed, or on a bed, daydreaming. It must be more effective to walk around in the actual space, on the set that has been built at ZINK. Wasn't this why one wanted a space to work in?

I had been working there daily until interrupted by the great COVID lockdown.

Last year I worked maniacally on
the remaining tech problems, rewiring the shed, rigging fx props and equipment. In December the daily work stopped - I was burnt out. Suddenly, I felt too old to complete the project. My body was breaking down.

While resting and following various treatments i realized that my mental activity in relation to this project had become focused on task completion and practical problem solving and the invention of objects. It has been my experience that this obsessional practical activity somehow silences the emergence of writing. It is a different way of being. Either a very successful avoidance of the core issues of the - as yet incomplete - text or simply a stubborn denial of my obvious need for practical assistance. This is why I decided to break the pattern and work at home.

It hasn't been entirely wasted. The performance has developed. But the issues at the core of the text remain unresolved. Perhaps the complexity and implications form a barrier impenetrable to the ambition and abilities of my current arrangement of self.

I knew years ago that this performance revolves around trans-generational trauma. If the moments of pain are buried from recall, and their existence can only be assumed from alienation, anxiety and eruptions of symptoms of stress disorder, how does one imagine them as action, as performance? Because I will not show you blood. This is not a bear pit or dog fight. ZINK cannot compete with the slaughterhouse.

I carry on. I hope to find a way, soon.

19/02/2022

Mee-ta have changed the old facebook 'community organisation' page which I used for ZINK into a 'business suite' format. I don't understand any of it. The interface is offensively complex and option laden. One day I will have to scrap what was the ZINK page and transfer the archive and all future activities onto my personal page. If this is a sample of Mee-ta's thinking, heaven help us when they get around to redesigning the standard pages.

14/11/2021

Am in the very last stages of pre-rehearsal preparation for Lost with All Hands (lost without hands). I guess there is a useful distinction between procrastination as avoidance and procrastination as a sort of fallow period of seeding, growth and the interweaving of roots, tendrils and branches.

07/10/2021

A good day at ZINK yesterday - asked for and received help from Ismaaeel Solomon who art directed the Subotzky film WYE a few years ago . We moved the projector back a meter - a bigger job than it sounds - and fitted a new bearing to one of the rooftop heat extractors.

After Saturday's film test some of the rigs need to be adjusted or reconfigured. This is not a setback, and was expected.

Onward, as they say.

23/03/2021

A good day at ZINK. I am now ready to test the power supply. All circuits that previously lead to ESKOM have been disconnected, and reconfigured for generator power.

If all goes well, If I dare, tomorrow will see a test.

19/02/2021

LOST WITH ALL HANDS/Lost without hands : In these COVID days of e-commerce, i have picked up a new nickname, Talkalot. In response, decided to share less here. But speech can clarify, although over-thinking sometimes leads to confusion.

I am working alone every day at ZINK. The installation of the set and technical requirements for the next show have taken up most of the time. Am also making and refining props and rigs.

I don't know when it will be safe to allow an audience into the venue. I assumed September. But that is just a mark, an aid to organising the work.

Most of what I am doing involves transforming the venue for a one-person show running off small generator power. All wiring and switches have been relaid, and the dimmer controls moved. It is now possible for the performer to close the doors, switch off external floodlights and the lights in the foyer/gallery space, then dowse houselights, and run the sound and lighting and projectors, rigs and effects of the show, without need of an usher, front of house, stage manager, lighting & sound operator. I have only the highest regard for the people who perform this work, sometimes to help out, sometimes as a career, but I began to realise that at my age i need to conceive a radically self-sufficient art-making and presentation practice.

This work on the venue and stage is just about done. A problem of having so much time is that one tends to over complicate problems or over articulate solutions and options. If I had a deadline for two weeks hence the show would go ahead without any of these developments. And probably be 'better' for being rough.

I will post here at ZINK during the next few weeks rather than on the page in my own name - it has become too cluttered with advertising and the shares of many people and the noise overwhelms me.

19/10/2020

Last night i dreamed that the current performance-in-making had turned into a play or had accumulated a cast of actors. One of them had kindly dressed and decorated the set with exquisitely chosen old furniture and household objects, even including a spray or fan of fishing rods on the back wall. But these people don't fish, i was thinking. I had to tell them that i thought they had done a great job but most of it was going to have to go. This is one of those chair and table on a bare stage productions.