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The media as the medium. The medium is the message. These two propositions—the second from Marshall McLuhan—define the principal axes on which South African artist Siemon Allen (born 1971, Durban, South Africa) articulates his archivally-driven yet self-reflexive practice.1 On the one hand, the work functions as a content-driven representation, examining the way South Africa is imaged in the media (here, for South Africa, one may substitute another global issue, such as the Iraq war; while “media” must be construed broadly to include such elements of visual culture as comic books and postage stamps); these documents are often subjected to a spin comparable to a Situationist détournement, that is, a turning aside from their normal purpose.2 On the other hand, Allen’s work deliberately nods to the relative autonomy of late Modernist art, including many of its formal means, such as the all-over composition and the monochrome.
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