Jacob van Schalkwyk’s career has led him down a multitude of paths – from punk rock to writing a novel. He spoke to Joseph Bracken about what it is that influences the way he works.
“It was a way of surviving, and it was a way of finding freedom, and it was a way of not participating in the system,” says Jacob (Jaco) van Schalkwyk, who chose creative outlets at an early age to escape the rigid conformity of South Africa. “In Afrikaans, we would say verset, which was a kind of political resistance and refusal.”
Jacob van Schalkwyk in the fine arts third year studio in the visual arts department at Stellenbosch University. After finishing a two-year stint as the head of the fine arts division, he is now a guest lecturer for drawing classes. PHOTO: Joseph Bracken
Van Schalkwyk grew up in Pretoria during apartheid. There he experienced the marks that an authoritarian and fascist state can leave on a regular household dynamic. Van Schalkwyk wanted to get as far away from South Africa as possible, and moved to New York in 1999 to pursue drawing at the Pratt Institute.
From Pretoria to Pratt
When looking for a place to study, Van Schalkwyk realised that most white students looked towards Commonwealth countries for tertiary education abroad. He knew this wasn’t the path he wanted to take. He wanted a completely different experience.
“I went to New York because there were no South Africans there,” he explains.
Moving to New York was not that straightforward, and it took him two years to get everything in order for the move.
Van Schalkwyk settled in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, a predominantly black neighbourhood at the time. As a white person coming from apartheid South Africa, he quickly realised that there was a particular way he would have to navigate his new life.
“I would give somebody at least one chance to just vent all their anger at apartheid…people would have deep, deep, deep reactions coming into contact with me.”
When Jacob van Schalkwyk left South Africa after school, he settled in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It was during this time that he picked up a job as a bartender, an experience which he would one day write about in his debut novel The Alibi Club, according to Van Schalkwyk. PHOTO: Joseph Bracken
One role that Van Schalkwyk took up during his studies was editor of The Prattler, the student-run publication at the Pratt Institute. Starting off as a staff writer and designer, he eventually found himself in the role almost by default.
The student body had a lot of complaints and issues with the institution at the time, and as editor of the publication that was meant to be the voice of the students, Van Schalkwyk decided to deal with the issues in the way he knew best.
Coming from South Africa, he set up an open space of engagement between the president of the university, and the students – Truth and Reconciliation Commission style.
“It went fucking apeshit in like five minutes, where I became essentially like a kind of WWF referee,” he recalled.
Where reality meets fiction
Van Schalkwyk’s debut novel, The Alibi Club, was published in 2014.
“It’s a work of fiction closely related to my lived experience,” he explains. The process of writing the book was one of “stress testing” fiction, and seeing how close he could make it to reality. In the process of writing, he had asked himself questions about the origin of fiction, and where it comes from.
The story follows a young bartender working in a bar called The Alibi in one of New York’s rapidly changing neighbourhoods. Van Schalkwyk says he wanted to capture the creative and cultural decline that he experienced in that time period, which is reflected in the decline of Fort Greene and the characters that inhabit it.
“It felt important that that novel documents, or lays down, a kind of marker of where humanity and civilization was at the end of the 20th century,” he says.
One thing that won’t be found in the book is any reference to Van Schalkwyk’s time at Pratt. “I note that it has very little art in it, if any. And certainly no God, or levity. It’s a document of darkness,” he explains.
‘I write like I draw’
“Drawing is such a wonderful thing in terms of its ability to be applicable to a number of different disciplines,” says Van Schalkwyk.
Throughout his career as an artist, Van Schalkwyk has had many different jobs. Yet, there is a connecting thread in the way he chooses to approach his work.
Van Schalkwyk will often create many quick sketches to help guide his artistic process. His own book was a procedure of creating many versions of the same scene and constantly revising it.
“I would write the same scene 50 times, quickly, to get a feel of it,” he says, adding that the book has no beginning, middle or end, just like a drawing. It’s never finished, but it’s tied together with its structure and tagged onto a simple timeline, he explains.
Jacob van Schalkwyk says his debut publication, The Alibi Club, was written in a similar way to how he draws. This includes many versions of the same scene, in order to get a feel of the content. PHOTO: Joseph Bracken
‘Two art kids making music together’
Jaco en Z-dog, an Afrikaans punk rock band, was founded in 2009 by Van Schalkwyk and fellow artist Zander Blom.
“I just thought we were making rock and roll. Just plain old, good old fucking rock and roll. But it became understood as a punk rock band because we weren’t whining [like] seemingly all of Afrikaans rock and roll at the time,” he says.
Van Schalkwyk brought the technical aspects of his work into the music. Every recording was done in one take, much of it improvisational. The snare and the kick drum were split between the two of them, creating a back-and-forth between the artists.
Jacob van Schalkwyk has had many different jobs throughout his life. But the process in which he approaches everything he does, creates a common thread throughout his work, according to Van Schalkwyk. PHOTO: Joseph Bracken
“It was very loose with everything kept open. It was, you know, two art kids making music together,” he explains.
Although a loose approach was taken for recordings, the music itself was produced in a technical manner with particular care for the sound the duo wanted to create. “It was very carefully sculpted, and actually very complex,” he says.
Finding your way
“Jaco has the ability to articulate insights/ideas with ease, and humour, without minimising the complexity of the concept/s,” says Ledelle Moe, a colleague of Van Schalkwyk at Stellenbosch University.
His students have an appreciation for his approach to the process of making art.
“It was really interesting to study under someone who’s very apparently in love with the process of making, and this idea of letting the work decide what it wants to be and just going along and losing yourself in the process of making,” explains Tara Hall, a fourth year fine arts student at Stellenbosch University.
For Van Schalkwyk, finding understanding in what you’re doing isn’t something that just happens. “It took me six years after I’d graduated before I had my first exhibition. Not even [just] my first exhibition [but six years] before I started drawing again,” he says.
It’s not all about the outcome, embracing the process and finding what works for you as an individual should be the driving factor, he says.
When considering why one should make art for art’s sake, Van Schalkwyk draws on insights of South African artist Ernest Mancobe. “[He] would have said it’s to be able to express our full humanity – you know, the full entire poetry of our humanity – rather than a kind of limited or, let’s say, ersatz or inferior conceptual replacement for the poetic nature of our full humanity,” says Van Schalkwyk.
“From my perspective [art for art’s sake means], the joy of doing nothing, the joy of zoning out, of reaching another state of consciousness. Being able to transcend one’s own situation and reality,” says Jacob Van Schalkwyk. PHOTO: Joseph Bracken