Tapping Pockets

Tapping Pockets Lehlohonolo Nale Experimental Film Photography Dimensions Variable 2025 “Tapping Pockets” is an experimental film-photography project that interrogates my position within South Africa’s middle-to-upper-middle class and the precarity that defines it. Although this socioeconomic location affords certain opportunities, it remains marked by the persistent threat of downward mobility. The project emerges from lived experiences of instability—shifting, at times within the same day, from the security of a bed to the vulnerability of sleeping on wet grass. This oscillation foregrounds the psychological labour of sustaining oneself and supporting others while navigating structurally induced uncertainty. The work is built around three interconnected modes of control. First, the use of film as a medium necessitates intentionality; every exposure becomes a deliberate act shaped by limited resources. Second, digitally inserted text reframes the images, producing a tension between documentary trace and interpretive intervention. Third, the final arrangement of the images—through constructed physical frames—constitutes an additional layer of authorship and meaning-making. These cumulative framings reflect an ongoing negotiation of autonomy in a context where control is both desired and continually disrupted. The project also situates itself within broader South African economic conditions. The “missing middle,” to which I belong, occupies a paradoxical position: insufficiently disadvantaged to qualify for institutional support, yet lacking the economic stability associated with true middle-class security. This tension generates experiences of misrecognition, such as being perceived as unproductive despite extended labour that begins long before dawn. Investments of time, money, and emotional energy often fail to yield expected outcomes, causing meaning itself to become precarious, eclipsed by the demands of survival. The title, “Tapping Pockets,” draws from both personal habit and colloquial slang. It references my compulsive checking of my pockets to ensure my belongings—and by extension my mobility—remain intact. Simultaneously, “tapping pockets” denotes acts of theft, invoking a critique of the economic conditions and government structures that figuratively extract from citizens. The project invites viewers to interpret these tensions through their own experiences, guided by the interplay of image, text, and title. 7