David Brits: from nightclub worker to fearless artist
Twenty questions
Multidisciplinary and multitalented South African artist David Brits
1. Favourite book?
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.
2. Beach or bush?
Both, please.
3. What will our children’s generation just not understand?
What it meant to live in a climatically stable planet.
4. Career highlight?
Being awarded the inaugural Social Impact Arts Prize in 2020 and directing my first short film, Tears Become Rain, as a result.
5. Favourite film?
Fitzcarraldo by Werner Hertzog.
6. If you could read one person’s mind, whose would it be?
That would be too great a burden for me to bear! Having one mind to read is enough.
7. Biggest bugbear?
Wet shoes and cold people.
8. What secret talent do you have?
Emotional intelligence. I can also move one eye at a time.
9. Your hero?
Carl Gustav Jung.
10. Your villain?
Hitler and Stalin.
11. Death-row meal?
High tea at the Mount Nelson Hotel.
12. Most likely thing you did to arrive on death row?
Treason.
13. Worst job you ever had?
Being a glass collector at a nightclub in an English holiday town.
14. What will break the Internet?
A giant electromagnetic pulse emitted by a solar flare.
15. Quote to live by?
“Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work. The moment you fear, you are
nobody. Be here. Always say, ‘I have no fear’. Tell this to everybody: ‘Have no fear’.” - Swami Vivekananda
16. If I were President I would create the Ministry of…
The Eradication of Single-Use Plastic.
17. If I had a 3D printer I would print...
I do have a 3D printer, which I use to create models for my public sculptures.
18. What have you gotten away with?
Giving 267 detentions as a prefect in high school.