Wits School of Arts (ETDs)

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Browsing Wits School of Arts (ETDs) by SDG "SDG-11: Sustainable cities and communities"

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    Hoop It Up, Loop It Back, Repeat: A Decade of Memory and Interconnectivity at a Johannesburg Basketball Court
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Cunningham, Alexandra Dolores; Goliath, Gabrielle; Kreutzfeldt, Dorothee
    This research and artwork reflects on my memories of a decade at a public basketball half-court in the Johannesburg inner city. The court has become a home to myself and our larger community: its quotidian, repetitive, cyclical nature has allowed us to form a network and family. In exploring the ways in which our community has intertwined, I also explore the cuts and ruptures that occur. Using loops, hoops and the rhythmic nature of each day, my artwork reflects our communal desire for interconnectivity at the court, which forms a foundational netting. The repetition reflects my experience of family and positionality across dissimilarities, while also resonating with the rhythm of hip hop music: ever present at the court. Through conversations with other court community members, I explore these relationships and memories. In my artmaking, I use crocheted textile, pattern and imagery to reflect our experiences: something strong, durable and able to conduct a sense of warmth and comfort, yet also fragile and easy to unravel.
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    Re-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Msutu, Bongisa; Valley, Greer
    Re-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive is a study that explores the archiving of township (black) architecture, space and geography. The township, as a residential area originally and currently designed for the occupation of impoverished black people, has become a geography of appropriation, and an extension of radical self-care onto space – a spatial care. Bophelong, a township in the Vaal, is the subject of this study because its history – similar to the history of most South African townships - and lack of architectural archives present an opportunity for this exploration. This study provides a decolonial approach to archiving and curating black architecture, space and geography, considered ‘unarchivable’ by the traditional architectural archive that collects and curates in accordance with scientific empiricism. It is this colonial knowledge-producing tradition that renders township geographies epistemically worthless. Through qualitative re-search methods, this study provides and explores strategies of archiving and curating township architecture and space in such a way that it is politically and epistemically valuable to both its people and the architectural fraternity. It is the hope of this re-search that these strategies may lead to the valuing of such an archive, and to the interrogation of traditional architectural knowledge production and its politics of value.