Black coffee is assimilation of my life. When I take away the empty calories that are supposed to make my life better(?), I’m left with the bitterly simple node of me in my rawest form — without the Ego inflating me: authentic, optimistic and enthusiastic.

Every morning I make a pour-over cup of coffee in a Chemex glass filter set. It’s become part of me. It’s the one part of my day I can control. I fell in love with the simplicity and taste that a pour-over brews. I sound like a typical Cape Town coffee snob, yes — but, thats a discussion for another day.

Enjoying the simple (and often lost) joys of life, coffee is that reminder. A reminder that my work is me. What you see is a collection of all the weird shit I’ve read and absorbed (and of course 24+ years of unwanted mental brainwashing — both from my environment and my consumerist habits), all filtered into a mesh of me in my rawest form.

Please enjoy :)

The Archaeology of Being

This brief required us to examine our environment, upbringing and past beliefs we still hold true. We were required to research world ideologies and manifestos in order to define our own. Based on our ideological beliefs and inspirations, we were asked to create a new and authentic lifestyle brand.

The brand I landed on is called Flow. Flow is predicated on the aspects of life that immerse us in the state of flow: “the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.”

I conceptualised 4 elements of my lifestyle brand: an earthing sandal, a minimal eco-house for the modern human, a mushroom nootropic for enhanced brain power, and a modern travellers bag with a yoga mat for meditation on the go.

This brief was everything I hoped for and more. It was unconventionally tackled with a mindset of brute simplicity.

Flow.

Back to the Future

This brief required us to research current affairs (in the 21st century) and render them in a post-modern art style (from the 20th century). I gravitated towards Pop Art as a medium of expression. Researching current health epidemics globally and being interested in the space myself (my blog is centered around unconventional health), I chose a rendition of a DNA strand using lino printing.

During the infancy stages of my work, at times, I just thought: “This is not going to go as planned, is it?” And that was the point. It didn’t come close to how I envisioned it, but at the same time, it was everything I had hoped for: clean, precise and an expression of my research, style and flow.

D(NA)isorder.

Adaption: 21 Days Later

This brief asked us to explore and document responses to various challenges -- like vices and physical discomforts, and report how we felt. “The ultimate self-discovery.” After research and introspection, a 7-day intervention was aimed at the challenge that made us most uncomfortable. The idea is to discover parts of ourselves we may be ignorant to, so that we can grow.

One of my vices and functioning addictions is coffee. Don’t come near me if there isn’t at least 50mg of caffeine pulsing through my arteries between 6am-12pm. This type of brief had my name all over it. I consider myself a self-experimenting enthusiast. I don’t mean kinky stuff that should not be shown to adolescents. What I mean is: I enjoy trying different ways of refining my lifestyle to, I guess, make the transition from being average to 10% better in all life domains. Emotional, physical and spiritual. I don’t believe I would change much as this video is me in my rawest form doing stuff I love (except not drinking coffee, that sucked ass).

Exquisite Corpse

For this brief, as a group, we had to individually “unpack and understand the person you believe you are through introspection and self-reflection.” We were to conceptualize one artwork that unpacks our personalities in any medium -- we chose video.

This completely fucked and weirdly edited video was made to represent our uniquely different personalities converging at a “dinner party.” In the beginning, it started out coherent -- sounds flowing and very little effects. Towards the middle, our personalities then started clashing, where an influx of soundbites and random edits appear. In the final scenes, we harmonise as a group and enjoy eating in each others’ company.

Surprisingly, this was one of the most fun group projects I’ve done this year. I bonded with my fellow classmates and learnt that I was not as weird or different as I think I am to others (they were weird -- if not more weirder). 

Story Board — “Please Don’t Dine With Me”

YouTube Video

Anthropologia

This first year brief was designed for us, as a group, to understand the city of Cape Town. The main objective was to confront the aspects of our city that we take for granted. We chose Observatory as the suburb of choice.

Being one of the first group projects I did at Vega, this was bound to be tricky. I happily jumped on board to do the video editing for the project. I was pleased with the end result. If I could change one aspect, it would be to include more locals in interview format. We had some great conversations with local ‘Observatorians’ -- but most were too embarrassed or felt uncomfortable in front of the lens. Nothing will beat a Cape Town local telling a story on her home turf..

Observing Observatory: Cape Town’s Suburb of Contrast

Lost in the Abyss

This section of my portfolio is dedicated to the works of art I misplaced during my two year spell at Vega. Over the past two years, considering I tackled nearly every music festival, went to hospital (more than once) and passed every subject, I believe having at least 5 projects to show (+ process work) was a success.

An Unauthorised Biography

This brief asked us to examine our memories, experiences and lessons we learnt in life -- from a different perspective. “The one thing we all have in common is the inherent need to tell a story.” Once this information was gathered, we were asked to tell our story from the perspective of someone who may not know us.

Losing my Unortharised Autobiography in the abyss was probably for the best (if it was any good, surely I would have kept it?) Instead, I have included some inspirations. 

Reading my fair share of autobiographies from people I consider virtual mentors has shaped me in numerous ways. The list includes Arséne Wenger, Elon Musk, Dennis Bergkamp and Nike’s founder, Phil Knight. But, the person who has influenced me greatly -- not directly through a narcissistic autobiographical lens, but rather a series of personal development challenges I’ve seen him play out -- is Timothy Ferriss. 

Tim’s life story and books have shaped my mind and behaviour patterns in numerous ways. Making me a more succinct thinker, clearer writer and more confident person. My favourites include…who am I kidding, I fucking love all his books.

Cabinet of Curiosities: The Memory of Objects

For this brief, we had to consider objects we use on a daily basis and decide what these seemingly meaningless objects mean to us. They could be spiritual, historical, sentimental or consumerist objects. We were then asked to combine some objects we found in our house into a sculpture. Some introspection and research led me to crafting a totem. This totem was to represent a camera on a tripod. We all view the world through unique lenses with different apertures and vocal lengths, this lens represents the way I view the world individually. 

Being the first brief of the year, and with very little creative juice in the system, it turned out to be absolute shit. I remember handing in this mesh of toilet paper rolls, plastic bottles, all tied with masking tape, thinking to myself: “please don’t do this to yourself again. What I can say, looking back, is I now take pride in whatever project I do — I know that everything is representation of me in my rawest form.

To give you an idea of what it looked like, I have used technology to my advantage and illustrated an Adobe Draw version on the right or below (depending on the device you’re viewing it on).