Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [54]
Oh, he knows about the animal rights thing, that's his baby anyway. He's always been a rabid defender of our furry friends. He was hectic PETA before we got into working with kids. And the station protest has been a long time coming. But he's not in on the picture on the optional extras, the stuff that is gonna make the news.
The point is that the kids are homeless already. As long as we don't get caught, they have nothing to lose. They can't be disconnected because they don't have phones. The disenfranchised will get their moment of glory.
I've discussed it at length with Zuko and some of the other boys, Ibrahim and S'bu, not with all the details, but they're up for it. The only worry is the dogs, but there are ways, skyward* says, of dealing with gen-mod animals.
And making headlines at the same time.
Kendra
There is already spillage out of the doors by the time I get to Propeller, which can only be a good sign when it's just gone six-thirty. I feel fractal with nerves, or maybe it's that I'm on my fourth Ghost in under an hour.
'You're late.' Jonathan latches onto my arm at the door and swishes me inside through the crowd. I can't believe how many people there are, crowded into the gallery. There is a queue up the stairs to see Johannes Michael's atom mobile, but the major throng is in the main room, and not, I regret to say, for my retro print photos.
They're here to see Khanyi Nkosi's sound installation, freshly returned from her São Paulo show and all the resulting controversy. She only installed it this afternoon, snuck in undercover with security, so it's the first time I've seen it in the flesh. It's gruesome, red and meaty, like something dead turned inside out and mangled, half-collapsed in on itself with spines and ridges and fleshy strings and some kind of built-in speakers, which makes the name even more disturbing: 'Woof & Tweet'.
I don't understand how it works, but it's to do with reverb and built-in resonator-speakers. It's culling sounds from around us, remixing ambient audio, conversation, footsteps, glasses clinking, rustling clothing, through the systems of its body, disjointed parts of it inflating, like it's breathing, spines quivering.
It's hard to hear it over the hubbub, but sometimes it's like words, almost recognisable. But mostly it's just noise, a fractured music undercut with jarring sounds that seem to come randomly. Sometimes it sounds like pain. It is an animal. Or alive at any rate. Some lab-manufactured plastech bio-breed with just enough brainstem hard-wired to respond to input in different ways, so it's unpredictable – but not enough to hurt, apparently, if you believe the info blurb on the work.
'It's gratuitous. She could have done it any other way. It could have been beautiful.'
'Like something you'd put in your lounge, Kendra? It's supposed to be revolting. It's that whole Tokyo tech-grotesque thing. Actually, it's so derivative, I can't stand it. Can we move along?'
I run my hand along one of the ridges and
the thing quivers, but I can't determine any noticeable difference in the sounds. 'Do you think it gets traumatised?'
'It's just noise, okay? You're as bad as that nutjob who threw blood at Khanyi at the Jozi exhibition. It doesn't have nerve endings. Or no, wait, sorry, it does have nerve endings, but it doesn't have pain receptors.'
'I meant, do you think it gets upset? By all the attention? I mean, isn't it supposed to be able to pick up moods, reflect the vibe?'
'I think that's all bullshit, but you could ask the artist. She's over there schmoozing with the money, like you should be.'
Woof & Tweet suddenly kicks out a looped fragment of a woman's laugh that startles me and half the room, before it slides down the scale into a fuzzy electronica.
'See, it likes you.'
'Don't be a jerk, Jonathan.'
'There's some streamcast journalist who wants to interview you, by the way. And he's pretty cute.'
My stomach spasms. This is another thing Jonathan does to keep me in