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CHRISTO MEYER
RESEARCH + DESIGN
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Fook Island [Revisited]
FookNote 001: What the Fook[?]
ABSTRACT
Walter Whall Battiss (1906-1982) was arguably one of South Africa’s most influential artists – a prolific innovator with a diverse body of work rooted in his interests of anthropology, territories, and the imaginary. The most interesting of his works, for the purposes of this paper, is Fook Island (1973-1982), a utopian imaginary island not only conjured up by Battiss, but also for which he designed its own alphabet, stamps, currency, passport, and inhabitants. The concept of Fook Island can be viewed as a form of escapism from society, and although not explicitly ever stated so by Battis, within the context of the South African political climate of the 1970s we can certainly hypothesise how this came to fruition for a well-travelled artists who yearned for liberation, not only from societal norms, but also for artistic expression. Walter Battiss was a friend of Picasso and his studies of Khoi San rock art in the early part of his career was highly influential in the progression of his own paintings from the initial conventional approaches to the later abstracted works.
Despite the collection of artworks that exists of Fook Island’s paraphernalia it has never been designed as a spatial version or even in its most obvious format, an architectural project. My research over the last few years, called Fook Island [Revisited], has focused on the translation of Fook Island as a spatial and architectural construct, revisiting theories in philosophy, narratology, architecture, and related fields. The research has so far largely existed as short-hand drawings (analogue, digital, hybrid), each with a cited site-specific and territorial commentary. Some are more complex and developed than others, but they share an inquiry of speculation.
The paper investigates first steps into the unknown of Fook Island [Revisited] through the design of a fictional navigational tool or instrument to map territories of the unknown or the imaginary. This tool or instrument is an extension of the body, by the body, for the body to immerse a form and method of navigation to imaginary Fook. The output is in the form of an analogue prototype, drawn and filmed to narrate its use, accompanied with experimental drawings. The research paper documents the process, not only of the making of the navigation tool or instrument, but also serves as a report and critique that will reflect on theoretical discourses related to the body and territories of the imaginary.
Keywords: body, territories, island, imaginary, prototype, drawings, narratology