Arts Research Africa Conference 2020 Proceedings
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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. With over 60 presentations, this first conference on artistic research in Africa, was held at the University of the Witwatersrand in January 2020.
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Item Addressing Artistic Research at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius: Challenges for a Small Island Developing State in Africa(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Ramduth, HansCan small island contexts, through the extreme simplification of more complex processes that occur on the continents (e.g., ecocide), provide unique insights into binaries such as artist versus researcher, fiction versus non-fiction, and art-making versus writing?Item African Spiritual Healing in Drama Therapy: An Exploration of Movement and Sound as a means of Facilitating Healing(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Siko, ZaneleCan African spirituality in African dance be used as a means of facilitating the healing of women’s trauma? This performance explores the possibilities of fusing Credo Mtwa’s notion of African spirituality with the ritualistic elements of the Senegalese Ndeup dance healing method. The notion of embodiment of trauma is the entry point into this consideration of the embodiment of African dance as a healing tool.Item Applied Improvisation in Africa: Facilitating Embodiment Work in Online Rooms(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Apotieri-Abdulai, Oluwadamilola; Janse Van Vuuren, PetroAn important aspect of Applied Improvisation is using and perceiving the body and those of others in the room. Can adaptations be made to enable embodied work online without jeopardising impact? In this workshop, we present different improvisation methods that can be used in online settings.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 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 Artistic Research as African Epistemology(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Stolp, MareliCan artistic research be understood as an African epistemology? Through a mapping of the field of African epistemology together with the key notions of artistic research, this paper argues for the decolonising potential of artistic research in Africa.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 Artistic Research in Music as Doctoral Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Universities in South Africa(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Sandmeier, RebekkaWhat are the opportunities and challenges of doctoral studies in South Africa, in music, through artistic research? What are the definitions of research— specifically artistic research—in the existing educational policies, and how can research and creative practice become one in a doctoral thesis?Item Closing Address: Artistic Research in Africa - rethinking the "avant-garde"(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Deribew, Berhanu AshagrieIn order to implement artistic research in Africa need to recognize the different contexts - cultural, political and institutional – on our continent; and that artistic research is a subject not yet full clear in its function. The colonial model of the university has had the effect of “epistemicide” on indigenous knowledge. This aggravated by Western refusal to recognize traditions understand nature as Mother Earth with her own rights. Argues for a “rearguard” approach to art activism to learn from sources of embodied knowledge in communitiesItem Creating New, Previously Unknown Outcomes: Joy by and by Remade(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Moshugi, KgomotsoHow can new knowledge be produced through processes of musical arrangement that have not traditionally been canonised? Through analysis of the versions of the hymn Joy By and By, which local arrangers have created since the 1980s, the process of re-imagination and defamiliarisation will be explained.Item Creative Practice and Research: An Artist-Scholar Perspective(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Stewart, MichelleHow do measurable methods of research move between theoretical critique, technical reporting and creative practice? This question is explored with reference to her own practice-based PhD, the experimental animation, Big Man.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.Item Darkness after Light: A Visual Portrait of Lefifi Tladi(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Senong, KolodiCan the politics, art, and ideas of a complex figure such as the thinker, poet, and painter, Lefifi Tladi, be explored through a series of portrait studies? Through a series of mixed media and graphic portraits, I seek to show how portraiture can function as a source of information gathering in relation to this seminal figure in the development of Black Consciousness in South Africa.Item Dear Irreducibility’ … Approximating Uncertainty as a Queer Ethics of Relations(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Athene, NicoThis performance-lecture explored embodied, relational practice as an experiential site of queer, non-exploitative modalities.Item Decolonial AestheSis Parcours(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Khan, Sharlene; Asfour, FouadThe Decolonial AestheSis Parcours is made up of exercises informed not only by recent theories around decolonial aestheSis, but by Black and African Feminist creativities, Critical Race Theories, postcolonial histories, liberal arts pedagogies, and anti-hegemonial cultural movements. The workshop invites participants to reflect on non-hierarchical relationships, embodied knowledges, creative theorisation, the African Feminist concept of theorising from the epicentres of our agency, the use of imagination as a tool of freedom and experimentation, the need for interrogation of capitalist modes of artistic production, interconnectivities, as well as the need for critical pleasure.Item Dream Translation and African Artistic Research(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Jacobs, JasonCan dreams provide new ways of representing the postcolonial brown male body in contemporary theatre? When devising the performance, Ek was in die skemer, my body (and the memories contained within the body) became the locus of intersecting and generating memories and dreams as material for the stage.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 Educational Emcees in the Academy: Spoken Word Poetry as Scholarly Praxis(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Endsley, Crystal; Keith, AntonyThis new form of scholarship explores the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological possibilities for spoken word poetry to function as a social justice pedagogy and leadership praxis. Collectively, this research situates critical race theory, Black feminism, participatory action research, Hip-Hop, and artivism as epistemological positions that decolonize White, American, patriarchal ways of knowing and empirical methods of discovery.Item Engaging with Sound Writing(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Liebenberg, VisserHow can forms of sound writing be used for a project in artistic research? Based on the author’s own experimentation with sound writing for the clarinet, this paper argues that sound writing is a manner of engaging with sound that strengthens the link between practice and theory in artistic research.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.
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