The Master is Drowning

The video The Master is Drowning by the South African artist Penny Siopis, is entirely composed of archive footage, both private and public. To the intimate images of Afrikaners’ lives, the artist progressively combines documentary images, narrating the attempt to assassinate H.F. Verwoerd, the South African Primer Minister, “the Architect of Apartheid”, on April 9th, 1960 – the year of the creation of the Republic of South Africa by referendum. One can hear press texts and trial transcripts being read aloud. In her almost pictorial treatment of the image, this work creates a critical tension between reality and fiction, historical chronicle and colonial reverie.