The name Suzy Bell is synonymous with the phrase “Red Eye”. If you were too young to know what Red Eye is or was, allow me to paint a picture for you:

Imagine turning the entire Durban Art Gallery and the surrounding City Hall premises into a multidisciplinary art experience. From performances in an old cranky service lift, to using hard hats as you navigate your way through spaces you’ve never known existed, or having supper in the middle of Smith Street, surrounded by dining tables and food vendors at night?

These were some of the visionary ideas brought to life by the brilliant arts writer & cultural activist Suzy Bell, who founded and project managed Red Eye events which took place in Durban in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and again in 2014 and 2015. 

Suzy has worked as a human rights and cultural activist in the South African community for 15 years. She founded Red Eye Arts at the Durban Art Gallery that set a new Arts model for the youth in arts in South Africa and launched a Digital Arts Festival at DUT (Durban University of technology). She is the founder of African Artists Unite as One and the Amani Arts Festival, Khayelitsha, Cape Town celebrating cultural diversity. With a team of African journalists Suzy co-founded African Arts Journalists Network (AAJN) with Arterial Network, and served on Arterial Network’s Exco.

In a series of divinely aligned interactions I managed to get hold of Suzy who is currently based in the United States, to knit pick her brain and hear her thoughts…

Q1. Please give us a glimpse into who Suzy Bell is. Where did you grow up and what did you study?

I was a shy nature-nerd, foster child who had moved from home to home and then sent to a surreal boarding school in KwaZulu-Natal in Ixopo with a German headmaster. But I was born in Durban, facing the beautiful Indian Ocean.

In the school holidays I used to roller skate up and down the long & sticky-floored corridors of John Ross House and street-skated up Dr Pixley KaSeme Street and all the way down to North Beach for white bread and Salt & Vinegar Simba chips. I lived in Durban's City Center very close to the Durban Art Gallery where Red Eye was born.

I was first published at 12-years-old in the Indaba Zethu. I studied Journalism at DUT, did my Masters in Creative Writing at UCT, then studied TV and Film Screenwriting at UCLA.

Interesting fact: I always had three part-time jobs as a teenager, a habit I have maintained as an adult. One though is usually unpaid and that is activism and volunteering, which is where Red Eye comes in.

Q2.  How did you come up with the Red Eye concept? And how long did it take you to implement after inception?

Six months of daily, deep planning. After my father died in my 20s, I was ripe with wanting to do something super special and memorable. It became Red Eye. The energy from death can transform into something magical and meaningful. Interestingly enough after my Mother died, I resuscitated Red Eye in Durban again in 2014 and 2015. We also did a Red Eye Drakensberg with RAISE art workshops.  

I was a spicy new arts editor of a newspaper for a changing nation (after being head-hunted from the Mail & Guardian where I worked as an investigative arts journalist). I was supremely proud to be working under the first African Editor, and poet, Kaiser Nyatsumba in South Africa at the Independent on Saturday and then under the incredible editorship of Cyril Madlala.

Being an Arts Editor in a beautiful art-soaked, culturally diverse, sub-topical city like Durban really helped Red Eye shine. The visionary Durban Art Gallery director of the time was Carol Brown. She wanted to team up with youthful energy to celebrate young art and put Durban on the art map. We created a small Red Eye collective which included Leonie Hall, Carol Gainer, Clinton de Menzes and Nicolette van der Walt and a few young DAG curators.

It was perfect timing and a beautiful creative collaboration with an trad colonial space that was ripe for decolonization through dynamic South African art from hip-hop to bhangra dance to indlamu to comic book art, poetry, performance art, fashion, graffiti-art, Afro-beat DJs, theatre, contemporary dance, body art, fire-eating, stilt walking and way more.

Even His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was at the Red Eye launch! Why? I sommer cheekily invited him! We were after all tryna remix the Durban arts scene and inject it with a fresh chili bite of a kwaito sandwich and all that groove maskandi.

Q3. What caused you to stop producing Red Eye?

Never stopped as I took it to Cape Town and did satellite red eye events like Red Eye Library etc while Durban continued but it was no longer monthly in Durban.

When I left for Los Angeles, I handed it over to young talent I had mentored over the years who are artists and musicians working in Umlazi and KwaMashu in Durban and in Khayelitsha in Cape Town and Red Eye events continued up to 2021. When Covid-19 hit, things naturally halted. We loved to call ourselves the Red Eye Fam!

Q4. What were some of the challenges you faced in bringing the Red Eye concept to life?

Red Eye @rt started in 1998 in Durban as a monthly youth pop-culture arts festival founded by myself and a small collective at the Durban Art Gallery. It was a time when there was no budget for new acquisitions at the national galleries. We knew that no new art would be bought to reflect the art of a changing nation unless we did something. I was privileged to witness art on a daily basis, but saddened by the lack of audiences for each creative discipline, whether visual art, dance or theatre and I was most disheartened by the lack of young people in these audiences. The answer, I reckoned, was simply, give them young art.

Q5. How would you describe your creative journey/unfolding?

After being an Arts Mid-Wife to creatives with Red Eye, I pursued publishing my poetry, writing and screenwriting. I have also analyzed Screenplays and Novels for Trevor Noah's Day Zero Production Company with my husband, Peter Russell, a Screenwriter and Professor of Film and TV at UCLA. We run an online Film and TV school called: www.peterrussellscriptdoctor.com

Q6. What are your top 5 practices for maintaining your wellness/peace/joy/sanity in this autocratic industry of ours? 

 Nature. Meditation. Yoga. Vegan chocolate Cake. Roller skating.

Q7.  What is your advise for younger creatives? Specifically within the South African/Durban context?

Focus. Be disciplined. Creative. Have fun while doing it. Never give up. But pace yourself. Be Kind to everyone you meet.

Written by Lex LaFoy