Arts Research Africa Project
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Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Arts Research Africa project in the Wits School of Arts consists of a range of activities designed to spark dialogue, stimulate practice, enable research and inspire collective engagement around the question of artistic research in Africa.
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Item Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees in Johannesburg and Environs(Arts Research Africa, 2020) Arlander, AnnetteItem Thinking about Research and Creative Endeavour(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Olivier, GerritAre the binary oppositions postulated between theoretical and practical knowledge, and between western and African philosophy—as in the call for this conference—valid or useful for artistic research? This paper asks where this conceptual division should best be located and poses the question of whether it is valid, sustainable, and helpful to distinguish between African and European “modes of knowledge.”Item White Italian Masculinity through the Frame of Visual and Performance art(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Genovese, NicolaThe main goal of this research is to develop a visual, performative language through sculpture and performance that might advance critical perspectives on issues linked to non-hegemonic forms of masculinities. This means dissecting the complexity of the white male privilege trope and investigating the dynamics of the so-called “masculinity in crisis.” Specifically, the research aims to analyse the red line that links national rhetoric, new populism, and masculinity in crisis in the Italian context in the frame of the economic changes and new immigration wave of the last decade.Item Perspectives on Practice-led Research in Visual Art at the University of KwaZulu-Natal(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Hall, LouiseDrawing from Hall’s own experience with the first Practice-led Research (PLR) PhD in Visual Art at UKZN, this paper argues for the potential of PLR to generate a very particular kind of knowledge based on the dyadic relationship between the artist and the intelligence of materials.Item What is the potential of creative practice to enable new modes and strategies of research?(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Moila, Molemo; Mokgotho, Nare; Gamedze, ThulileThis roundtable discussion served as an open sharing session where a selection of young practitioners could reflect on themes such as claiming knowledge in unknowable spaces, claiming knowledge outside the epistemic bounds of the academy, and praxis as a research feedback loop.Item Proceedings of the Arts Research Africa Conference 2020(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Doherty, ChristoAn international conference organised by the Arts Research Africa project in the Wits School of Arts. Held at the University of the Witswatersand, the Conference from 22-24 January 2020, the conference featured a wide variety of inputs, from traditional conference paper presentations and panels, to preformances, interactive engagements and workshops. The conference brought together artists, scholars, and artistic researchers to collectively address the question of artistic research in Africa in the 21st century.Item The Translated Landscape: Interpreting South Africa through Jewellery Praxis(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Groenewald, Joani; van der Wal, ErnstCan a landscape function as a visual text that could, in turn, be translated through various multimodal practices? Through an account of Groenewald’s own creative practice, which translates landscape images into jewellery/sculptural pieces, this paper unpacks the complexities of translation and language within the memory politics of the South African landscape.Item Editor's Introduction - Arts Research Africa 2020 Conference Proceedings(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Doherty, ChristoEditor’s overview of the ARA2020 Conference. Explanation for the strategic emphasis on pan-African outreach, and the conference theme of “How does artistic research decolonise knowledge and practice in Africa?” Justification provided for the experimental format-architecture of the conference, and the use of “performance-lectures” as a new genre of conference presentation.Item Urban Touch(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Sickinger, EddaThe lecture-demonstration URBAN TOUCH understands the prolific practices of screening dance as a way of touching. “Touching” holds a double character as (1) getting into contact and (2) affecting or being affected. To touch, we have to move and the action of projecting helps the dance work move and relate in time and space.[1] While any surface can potentially transform into a screen,[2] the moment of screening creates an ephemeral social entanglement of movement, memory, relation, and affect.Item Artistic Research and the Institution: A Cautionary Tale(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Fleishman, MarkWhat impact do the specific institutional contexts in which we produce research have on the artwork? What would an ethical approach to the work of art-making entail with reference to these institutional pressures/distortions?Item Wayfaring: A Muslim Journey of Becoming(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Hoosen, LeyyaWhat are different ways of doing knowledge production and practice? This paper presents an approach to research that combines ethnographic analysis and poetic analysis. By using the structure as well as the content of the writing, this research seeks to explore the process of unfolding, during the dhikr, or practices of remembering, which occur for Sufi Muslim students as they seek spiritual knowledge within the conceptual and lived framework of wayfaring.Item The Value of Australian Artistic Research: How Works are Assessed, the Place of Peer Evaluation, and the Anxiety of Future Metric Measurement(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Toltz, JosephHow has the issue of value been used to question peer review as a process for recognising quality and excellence in humanities and creative arts research? This paper will address issues of value in data collection, presentation, and evaluation at the national level in Australia.Item Exposure to the Unknown: Artistic Research in the European Sphere(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Winter, StefanWhat are the core competencies that be unfolded by artistic research? What are its interfaces with science and technological development? What can artistic research contribute to the transformation of societies? This paper outlines the history of artistic research in Europe as a counterpart to developments in Africa, inviting both sides to articulate axes of difference, similarity, contrast, and accordance.Item Opening Address: Dynamics(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Schwab, MichaelEmphasises the changing fabric of knowledge and that artistic research has already had an effect on this fabric. Argues for a historical epistemology, and for unsecured forms of knowledge. Uses the experience of editing the Journal of Artistic Research to explain the challenges in operationalizing this concept of knowledge.Item Unpacking the Figure of the Artist-Fieldworker(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Dash, KathyayiniThis paper argues that the meeting of practice and academic scholarship constructs the figure of the artist-fieldworker in critical ways, while also giving rise to particular kinds of ethical, formal, and procedural questions of art-making and research.Item The Philosophy of Art in Ewe Vodu Religion(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Adjei, Sela KodjoHow have miseducation and Eurocentric anthropological scholarship actively deluded Africans into perceiving their religion and arts as “inferior” and “barbarous”? Drawing from years of practice-based investigation into the art of the Anlo-Ewe Vodu religion, this paper interrogates and redefines the misleading theories of “fetishism” that have obscured the appreciation of Vodu art.Item Artistic research in Africa with Specific Reference to South Africa and Zimbabwe: Formulating the Theory of Afroscenology(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Ravengai, SamuelHow can artistic research offer the opportunity to create knowledge based on African practice and produced from the African context? This presentation will delineate seven approaches to artistic research and argue for decolonial imperatives.Item KhuLuLeKa, or The Monomyth of NoBaNtu and the Ppl(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) ka Ngcobo, BalindileCan code-switching destabilize the racist and sexist hegemonies that perpetuate themselves within the English language as it (con)figures the Black Womxn in society, and consequently, on stage?Item Artistic Research and African Musical Performance: Listening Beyond Euro-American Canons(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Pyper, BrettAre certain forms of African music-making inherently advantaged or disadvantaged through engagement with artistic research? How does the quest to advance decoloniality factor into such efforts? What does such belated recognition mean for African musics and more general African arts practice outside academia?Item Cultural Kasi’preneur(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Motholo, DimakatsoHow are a new generation of South African cultural entrepreneurs decolonising the perception of what education/knowledge means as they produce other forms of learning, success and survival in the township? This hybrid presentation will be a performance of the reality of the township experience through a monologue from the play titled Ekasi Lam together with the selling of Retrofontein garments.