Wits School of Arts (ETDs)

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A Beginner’s Guide to Puzzle Design: Creating an applied guide for effective puzzle design in videogames
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Prinz, Erik; Flusk, Timothy; Reid, Kieran
While a vast collection of information exploring effective puzzle design exists, it is riddled with conflicting opinions and inconsistent formats, making it arduous to engage with. This research aims to curate this collection, organizing its knowledge into an applied guide for puzzle design in videogames. This will be accomplished through an amalgamation of design principles offered by selected works of oundational literature, and the insights contained within the design philosophies of three industry professionals (Jonathan Blow, Kim Swift, and Arvi ‘Hempuli’ Teikari). The synthesis of these two families of information will be aided by the simultaneous development of a puzzle platforming videogame. Through a process of iteration and playtesting, this game will be used to assess the value and accuracy of the developing guide. With careful consideration of useful structures present in the foundational literature, the plethora of existing information can be reformatted to be user-friendly and appliable by novel puzzle designers.
A Deep Divide in South African Art Music: Locating the Voice of the Performer
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Nay, Malcom; Olwage, Grant
This essay traces the origins of a “deep divide” (Fokkens 2014: 8) that developed between two central figures in the South African compositional world, originally in the 1980s around accusations of the cultural appropriation of African music. The conflict became entrenched amongst composers, musicologists and performers and has pervaded much of the research and dialogue that has taken place in the intervening years. This came to a head when a selection of South African composers was selected to present works to be performed at a concert at the Juilliard School in New York in 2014. The ensuing fallout characterised the vicious nature of the musical aspersions that eventually degenerated into direct personal conflict. My role as a performer, during this time, had to take into account this unpleasant environment as I had direct interactions with many of the figures involved, often working towards performances and recordings of their music. In more recent times, support for the arts in South Africa has declined significantly serving to intensify the struggle for access to funding, resources, and performance opportunities, exacerbated by a diminishing government mandate for general arts support and the devastating impact of Covid-19. The essay recounts an in-depth personal narrative and performance analysis of my experience when preparing Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph’s Pendulum for Piano and Orchestra (2010). It finds that while an ideal philosophical approach to preparing a performance is commendable, it is not always achievable when confronted with the practical realities of a musical performance.
A Happier Life Through Sad Mode - Designing Automated Players for Single Player Games
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Chola, Saili; Reid, Kieran; Du Preez, Kirsten
Solo games are a keystone of tabletop board gaming for players and designers alike. While they are numerous and enjoyed by many members of the community, there is a noticeable lack of clarity and exploration of what principles make these games uniquely interactive and enjoyable experiences for players. This project responds to this inadequacy through the development of a playable game and a research report. The game demonstrates and tests the virtues of solo game play mechanics while the report expands and discusses the interpretable results and qualities of said solo game mechanics.
A pandemic shakes our pedagogy: Attempts to honour the integrity of a South African tertiary institution’s Applied Drama and Theatre curriculum in online learning platforms as a result of COVID-19
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Mokoena, Moratoa Trinity; Janse van Vuuren, Petro
A pandemic shook our pedagogy. The arrival of COVID-19 changed the face of higher education in South Africa and in many parts of the world. As an Applied Drama and Theatre department whose work is predominantly embodied and experiential, we were faced with the question: How do we migrate our kind of work online and honour its fundamental objectives? A characteristic Applied Drama and Theatre practice is embedded in principles of participation and collaboration, reflection through praxis and immersion in social contexts. All of these are largely experienced with physically present bodies in a common space for the purposes of social transformation and education. Due to the pandemic, the effects of the digital divide were rapidly exposed and its limitations on access, connectivity and synchronicity delayed the progress of teaching and learning. Can we honour the integrity of the complete Applied Drama and Theatre pedagogy online and remotely, especially when the digital divide impacts connection with students and the marginalised communities that the pedagogy is suited for? While we acknowledged that digitising our educational practices had become a progressive necessity, would online learning alone be sufficient for the teaching and learning of embodied curricula? Through ethnographic case study and as teaching assistant, I observed University of the Witwatersrand’s Drama for Life department and their Applied Drama and Theatre educators during their encounter of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown periods of 2020 and 2021. By use of interviews, field notes and documentation, this study inquired how we reacted to the pandemic and its anticipated implications on the pedagogy and the academic programme. Furthermore, I established the evident threats that online learning poses to the pedagogy and investigated the disconcerting effects of the digital divide on student access and content delivery. Central to the study is the exploration of these educators’ practical strategies and collective approaches in maintaining the integrity of the Applied Drama and Theatre pedagogy. Through a journey of trial and error, the department and its educators were tasked to re-envision the pedagogy and negotiate appropriate multimodal online modes of delivery, in efforts to save the academic programme and achieve its pedagogical intentions. Even though the data and literature demonstrate the possibilities of migrating similar pedagogies online, remote learning has certainly compromised the practical and physical demands of a conventional Applied Drama and Theatre experience. Additionally, even though the theoretical components could be negotiated online, the findings highlighted that the pedagogical objectives as a whole were fragmented. Thus, in the case of the professionalisation of students and the provision of the full Applied Drama and Theatre pedagogy – the educators’ efforts fell short. The pedagogy, though shaken, still stands. The study concludes that the pedagogy is highly dependent on uninterrupted physical presence and even if the digital divide is managed its integrity remains tainted without connection. The findings emphasise that we cannot do away with contact teaching post-pandemic and any idea of a pedagogical utopia requires a carefully negotiated balance of appropriately designed online and offline approaches. The discussions and findings in this study do not only impact the Applied Drama and Theatre fraternity, departments and practitioners alike, but also shed light on the available possibilities for other multidimensional pedagogies. Institutions are encouraged to take the full repertoire of the pedagogy into account when designing their Learning Management Systems, to provide adequate support for staff and student training and their digital affordances. Moreover, it is noteworthy to address the feasibility and equity of online learning within a particular South African context as a whole.
A transpersonal approach to drama therapy techniques for embodied grief work with women who experience loss and distress from an abortion
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Brollo, Gillian Susan; Pankhurst, Margie
Abortion as a lived experience is not often explored in research or therapy, particularly when women are distressed as a result of an abortion. This research addresses the scarcity of such explorations through developing and testing a workshop model based on transpersonal drama therapy in order to examine how women who are distressed after an abortion express and manage their experience, and also how women can integrate an abortion into their life story in order to find healing. The two key questions are concerned with firstly, how embodied activities can bring unconscious feelings to the surface, and secondly how narrative can work to integrate a distressing experience into a life story so that its emotional impact is managed and the individual finds ways to move forward from the traumatic event. Chapter One is an introduction to the context, one in which women who experience a sense of loss or grief after an abortion find few places for support, healing and most importantly, for expressions of distress. The introduction touches briefly on the hyper-politicised nature of abortion as a phenomenon and how difficult it is to communicate nuance within such a polarised context. Chapter Two is a description of the theoretical framework of the transpersonal approach which also serves a literature review. The literature drawn on includes models of drama therapy, griefwork, embodied grief activities such as rituals, transpersonal philosophies which present a world where the material and the immaterial are connected and draws these theories together within an Afrocentric paradigm. Chapter Three describes the methodology and explains how the workshop was designed and its aims. Chapters Four and Five are concerned with how data was obtained and a data analysis and discussion flowing from that analysis. The final chapter looks at findings including a deep sense of relief and healing in being offered a space to explore their personal experiences of abortion, and in the affirmation iv provided by witnessing other women’s stories and telling of their own; and recommendations for future research such as trying the model with a rural cohort, and extending the process in combining individual and group work in order to dive deeper into individual stories.
A transpersonal approach to drama therapy techniques for embodied grief work with women who experience loss and distress from an abortion.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Brollo, Gillian Susan; Pankhurst, Margie
Abortion as a lived experience is not often explored in research or therapy, particularly when women are distressed as a result of an abortion. This research addresses the scarcity of such explorations through developing and testing a workshop model based on transpersonal drama therapy in order to examine how women who are distressed after an abortion express and manage their experience, and also how women can integrate an abortion into their life story in order to find healing. The two key questions are concerned with firstly, how embodied activities can bring unconscious feelings to the surface, and secondly how narrative can work to integrate a distressing experience into a life story so that its emotional impact is managed and the individual finds ways to move forward from the traumatic event. Chapter One is an introduction to the context, one in which women who experience a sense of loss or grief after an abortion find few places for support, healing and most importantly, for expressions of distress. The introduction touches briefly on the hyper-politicised nature of abortion as a phenomenon and how difficult it is to communicate nuance within such a polarised context. Chapter Two is a description of the theoretical framework of the transpersonal approach which also serves a literature review. The literature drawn on includes models of drama therapy, griefwork, embodied grief activities such as rituals, transpersonal philosophies which present a world where the material and the immaterial are connected and draws these theories together within an Afrocentric paradigm. Chapter Three describes the methodology and explains how the workshop was designed and its aims. Chapters Four and Five are concerned with how data was obtained and a data analysis and discussion flowing from that analysis. The final chapter looks at findings including a deep sense of relief and healing in being offered a space to explore their personal experiences of abortion, and in the affirmation provided by witnessing other women’s stories and telling of their own; and recommendations for future research such as trying the model with a rural cohort, and extending the process in combining individual and group work in order to dive deeper into individual stories.
An Ecofeminist Reading of Hadestown: The Myth, The Muscial
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) Vos, Abigail; Somma, Donato
Hadestown: The Myth, the Musical has merged two ancient love stories and has presented these stories within a world riddled with environmental damage. The four main characters (Orpheus, Eurydice, Persephone, and Hades) are influenced by the environment in various ways. Persephone acts as the goddess of the natural world and therefore is nature’s ambassador. Hades, the king of the Underworld, has become an industrial mogul and has inadvertently damaged the earth with his industrial kingdom. As a result, Eurydice is left to suffer these consequences and faces poverty and hunger because of the environmental imbalance that engulfs her. Orpheus, in response, attempts to write a song that will bring balance to the world once more. Our characters are situated within an environmentalist fable; therefore, the musical’s narrative centres around how these characters interact with the environment. The music of Hadestown has been carefully selected in an eclectic way. Jazz, folk, musical theatre, and opera have all had various influences on the musical world of the show. This influence is not simply limited to the score, but the histories of these genres bleed into the work. Folk and jazz both carry profound messages of struggle and protest with them, and therefore the use of these genres aids in the environmentalist activism presented in the musical. These genres and their social and geographical histories are layered into Hadestown. The musical allows for deep character analysis and textual analysis through the writing of Anaïs Mitchell. In this research, I will present an analysis of the lyrics of Hadestown to present the embedded themes of environmentalism, anti-capitalism, and anti-industrialism. My analysis will present how the pained Earth and Her inhabitants reflect the pain endured by the Global South, specifically by women. Impoverished women in third-world countries face most environmental consequences accompanying the Global North’s incessant need for more. This effect is portrayed in the lives of Eurydice and Persephone. An ecofeminist framework will be applied to the work as Persephone exhibits inherent ecofeminist traits. Hadestown presents its audience with a mirror of the world they live in and ask its audience what it will do about it.
Articulating Embedded Choreographies: Implicit Knowledges As/And Choreographic Strategies
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Snyman, Johannes Hendrik Bailey; Ravengai, Samuel
This thesis ‘looks back’ to ‘look forward’. I start with the assertion that there is a deficiency of choreographers documenting their processes that emerge in the laboratory. Using mixed methods this thesis focuses on embodied autoethnography to find a means to document and articulate my research and creative process. The first part of this research contextualises choreographic research in South Africa, choreography and embodiment and finally a conceptualisation of my understanding of choreographic strategies. The second part focuses on the embodiment philosophy of Michael Polanyi and articulates a third dimension of knowledge that exists in the gap between tacit and explicit knowledge: embedded-implicit knowledge. A clear correlation is established between embedded-implicit knowledge or ‘knowing’ and intuition. I then crafted Harald Grimen’s (1991) four interpretations of Michael Polanyi’s (1958) ‘tacit knowledge’ into choreographic strategies and used each as an approach in the development of specific creative tasks for the creation of an original choreography: L.I.F.E a history of distance (2017). My inspirations and musings became an invaluable part of this research through articulating my own interpretations of Grimen and my personal history as a source in developing a narrative structure for the work. Finally using a multi-modal reflection framework, developed from various reflexive practices, I reflected on the research and processes to answer the research question: How can Harald Grimen’s four interpretations of Michael Polanyi’s philosophy of tacit knowledge be interpreted as choreographic strategies to articulate the embedded-implicit knowledge within the process of documenting an embedded choreographic practice?
Bridging the Digital Divide: Afrocentric Approaches in the 2021 My Body My Space Online Arts Festival for Rural Emakhazeni, Mpumalanga
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Khathi, Nomfundo Linami; Ntombela, Nontobeko
The attempt at online arts festival for a rural community seems to be executed in ways that do not consider issues of digital dissemination in historically marginalised spaces. Those organising events requiring internet access in rural communities overlook that rural areas are not very ‘well’ developed. The study does not reject online arts festivals for historically marginalised areas but suggests that the approach taken should take into account rural issues related to resources. The hindrances with online access for rural communities have not been adequately addressed. The theory of Afrocentrism emphasises that Africans need to make Africa the centre of their own problems and solutions, by advocating that Africans need to locate themselves historically and culturally. They need to acknowledge their context and situation so that they can provide solutions aligned with their problems. The study notices a paradigm shift in South Africa, as the MBMS festival is now being held in the rural Emakhazeni community, moving away from the ‘traditionally known’ urban festival locations. This shift includes moving from an in-person MBMS festival to an online format in 2021, which has been affected by data and internet coverage issues in rural Emakhazeni. While the festival is accessible online by anyone, its original intention was to serve the Emakhazeni rural community. Through a predominantly qualitative research approach, primary and secondary data were examined, exploring the 2021 MBMS online arts festival hosted on WhatsApp for rural Emakhazeni. The stakeholders in this study include the organisers of the MBMS festival, the Department of Arts and Culture, the Emakhazeni community members, and the performers of the festival. I engage d with multiple sources, to explore how these paradigm shifts could be envisioned or executed differently with an Afrocentric perspective. Although the MBMS online festival is curated in a way that appears to respond to the modern discourses on accessibility and audience development, it simultaneously forgets that rural areas are not very well developed in many parts of South Africa. Through an exploration of the 2021MBMS festival, I unpack the way it established online accessibility and address the implications of this for the rural Emakhazeni. This research contributes to the investigation of what was silenced during the colonial and apartheid eras in South Africa, when many individuals were marginalised and denied access. Both practical steps and policy-oriented approaches are suggested by the study.
Catch and release: A Practice-based analysis using interviews from healthcare workers, to explore the impact on self-care, using 5 Drama Therapy core principles and practices.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) ADLAM, ANTONE; Thibedi, Linda (Mdena)
This is a Practice-based Research study analysing the impact of five core principles from Phil Jones’s nine core principles in drama therapy. Data was collected from interviews with healthcare workers within a private hospital in Johannesburg. This research aimed to find the most suitable core principle for each interviewee, in order for them to practice self-care in an explorative and creative manner. While the research identified the importance of drama therapy and the core processes used within the researcher's rehearsals and solo performance based on the answers from interviews with the healthcare workers, the researcher identified the unique approaches and impact drama therapy holds to practice self-care. The integration of the core principles (as named by Jones, 1996) are embodiment, play, dramatic projection, interactive audience and witnessing, as well as drama therapeutic empathy and distancing.
Challenging the Representation of Masculinity & Themes Pertaining to Rape Culture in Film & Televisual Media
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-06) Gondo, Jackson Onai; Heatlie, Damon; Dladla, Tiisetso
This dissertation raises questions around the representation of masculinity and in turn the notion of ‘toxic masculinity’ in film and televisual media, and will result in a project in the form of a screenplay and animated scene that subverts these representations and makes the audience, through viewing the film, question their relationship to toxic masculinity and ‘rape culture.’ The dissertation looks at the narrative and visual conventions pertaining to masculinity that have existed throughout the history of film and television and how they still manifest themselves today. It looks at attempts to subvert these conventions and where these attempts failed. It also looks at literary scholars who have theorized these notions of masculinity and how those ideas have indeed manifested throughout film and television.
Constructing the Afrocyborg in VR 360 Cinema: A Critical Investigation into how Two African Women Filmmakers Collaborate to Construct Prosocial African Science Fiction in Virtual Reality Filmmaking
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-10) Passchier, Shmerah; Koba, Yolo; Sakota, Tanja
The Afrocyborg semiotic construct is a neologism inspired by cyborg scholarship, beginning with Donna Haraway’s 1985, A Cyborg Manifesto, which materialised at the zenith of the Third Industrial Revolution (3IR), and the appearance of the domestic personal computer (PC) in the late twentieth century. This contribution to cyborg discourse re-focuses the Western science/fiction gaze of “cyborgology” by foregrounding African cyborg realities at the centre of the new zeitgeist of 4IR-driven XR technologies, specifically the VR HMD as an immersive computing device, which is a cyborg prosthetic extension of human ocular abilities (Gray 1995: 1). Moratiwa Molema and I formed the Afrocyborg VR Collective as an Afro-technofeminist coalition, and solidarity support group for collective womanist filmmaking. This methodology foregrounds the technological empowerment of women in relation to VR as a medium while focusing on prosocial subject matter in the domains of eco-justice and racial-gender-justice (Ogunyemi 2006: 21). For this reason, the Afrocyborg VR Collective make Prosocial VR films in the genre of African Science Fiction, which is a counter-hegemonic narrative lens through which to generate “cyborg consciousness” about “oppositional consciousness” (Sandoval 2020: 408; hooks 1992: 264). Cyborg oppositional consciousness is expressed as “Fourth VR” (Wallis & Ross 2020: 1). An Afro-technofeminist, technopolitical framework advances filmmaking discourse and praxis by autodidactic online learning of how to operate VR equipment, thereby overcoming our tech-inferiority complex with a thought experiment we call the “Dora Milaje mind trick” (Coogler 2018). As we learn, we also teach VR skills to our students and communities of youth to share knowledge of 4IR tools, specifically with women, to empower them with 4IR STEAM skills as a technopolitical, educational and future-proofing empowerment strategy. The Afrocyborg Collective has made two VR films in the genre of Prosocial VR as part of the creative praxis of Quantum Botho/Ubuntu in the making of The Cosmic Egg, which is a call to elevated environmental consciousness, and The Eye of Rre Mutwa, which confronts “white fragility” about the technological developments of the 4IR (DiAngelo 2018). By experimenting with new gaze regimes offered by the exponential medium of VR, with its multiple lenses that create 360-degree spherical story worlds, we demonstrate how the “medium is the muthi” when used in the mode of Prosocial VR. Therefore, the construction of an expanded prosocial gaze in VR, in the genre of African futurism, contributes to the decolonial undoing of oppressive power structures by generating representations of Africa that seek to apprehend the stereotypes of Hegelian racial prejudice and “poverty porn” that persist in global media representations (Kahiu 2017).
Encountering apartheid publics: an essay film on Hendrik Verwoerd as public symbol 1958-1966 and implications for counter-publics today.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-11-10) Effendi, Karima; Louw, Lieza; Kenny, Bridget
The policies of separate development under Verwoerd created the material conditions for apartheid and capitalism to thrive, but it's the hypothesis of this project that the pomp and ceremony, the suit, his speeches and performative statecraft, created the affective conditions for his thinking to make its way from the past into our present-time. This is a discursive inquiry that draws on political theory, psychoanalysis, feminist theory and essayistic film theory to explore how the slipperiness of apartheid discourse makes it impossible to counter it on its own terms. Verwoerd symbolised a pernicious ‘covering over’ of irreconcilable ambiguities in apartheid discourse that was used to construct and stabilise whiteness against ‘other’ constitutive subject formations. The second part of the creative project is an essay film, Verwoerd’s Smile, that uses an ‘apartheid’ and colonial archive to attempt to show up its own discriminatory logic. The film’s failure in doing this has a productive value that is instructive for understanding how the cloak of invisibility that shrouds whiteness from being seen doing its work, also protects it from being dismantled. Understanding this has implications for radical projects concerned with undoing apartheid.
Entangled Intimacies: An Experimental Curatorial Project of Transdisciplinary Becoming-With
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Thomas, Rory Lee Stewart; Twalo, Sinethemba
Employing strategic modes of textual and curatorial “opacity” (Glissant 1997: 189), this project endeavours to consider how arts-based research methodologies may be uniquely positioned to explore the chaotic embodied implications of the so-called Anthropocene. This work of arts-based knowledge production and explorative enquiry is centred around an exhibition I have curated entitled Entangled Intimacies: art, more-than-human embodiment, and the climate catastrophe, which constitutes this project’s practical component. The exhibition is being held from 10 February to 6 May 2023 at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg gallery and features newly commissioned artworks by local practitioners Tzung-Hui Lauren Lee, Io Makandal, and Natalie Paneng. This research report considers the ongoing process of curating this exhibition via a varied textual pathway that follows through a number of different considerations and references. These include an assessment of individual and collective grief, the potential of utilising curatorial opacity as a means of relating to the chaos of ecological degradation, and a discussion of a selection of previous curatorial projects from the last two decades which have engaged this reality through contemporary art. These projects include DON’T/PANIC (2011), Sex Ecologies (2021-2022), and the ongoing work of Johannesburg based not-for-profit arts organisation POOL (founded in 2015). The diverse, and at times perhaps disorientating, form of this research report is a curatorial and written reflection on the chaotic implications of more-than-human embodiment in the Anthropocene. This is conceived as an actualisation of curator Stefanie Hessler’s (2020: 249) assertion that “[t]he uneven, uncontainable climate crisis obligates curators to rethink ways of working. Exhibition making in times of ecological disaster … needs to differ from previous curatorial modes.” This project works to remain aware of the city of Johannesburg as its site of emergence while also engaging with the globally interconnected reality of the Anthropocene. It thus offers a propositional, mutable, and exploratory gesture towards what contemporary curatorial practice within this uncertain time and place marked by ecological violence may entail.
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.
Lil_ith- A love story for South Africa’s queer, misfit youth
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) de Jager, Robin Claude; Wessels, Christopher
This project takes the form of an explorative filmic investigation into and reflection on the archetype of the queer misfit in South African cinema. The film and research take the standpoint of the South African misfit archetype being a post-queer-theory subject in relation to the country’s historical, socio-economic, sexual, traditional and technological landscape. I will compare the appearance of the queer misfit through the arrival of the neon and caustic characters of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s to South Africa’s contemporary emergence of this archetype, positioning Queer Theory and the New Queer Cinema movement of the early as the primary emergence of a ‘true’ queer voice. I will engage with the influence of socio-economic, political and technological stimuli as well as the emergence of post-Queer Theory in the West and South Africa and its contribution to the evolution of the queer and misfit in post-colonial South African cinema. Through a practice-led, autoethnographic approach I combined these findings with core theoretical frameworks on post-modern sexuality by Queen and Schimel to inform and fuel the development of the film Lil_ith. The film stands as a creative execution expanding on the South African Misfit archetype in relation to the global history of Queer Misfit representation as well as its relationship with South Africa as a nation in the process of de-lonialisation within a digitised and globalised world.
Locality Shaping the Institution: Genesis Connection Youth Skills Multimedia, Riverlea, Johannesburg
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Pather, Jodie; Ntombela, Nontobeko; Khan, Sharlene
Following the rich history that community art centres have had in South Africa, this research questions how locality may ideologically shape community-based arts institutions and have a bearing on how they operate and what they have access to. Specifically, this study looks at the community-based arts organisation, Genesis Connection Youth Skills Multimedia (Genesis), in Riverlea, Johannesburg. This research report is carried out to ascertain the extent to which Genesis and the work that they do is influenced by their home community of Riverlea, and how this locality may affect or determine their curriculum, programming, and access to funding. Through episodic interviews, I explore the significance of locality to community-based art centres as is experienced directly by facilitators of different initiatives. The first chapter in this report deals with an overview of scholarship on community art centres; defining and contextualising them, including a historical overview of community art centres that have existed in Johannesburg. Locality, as a concept and its associated literature as related to community art centres is discussed and incorporates perspectives from facilitators working in the field. The second chapter presents a historical overview of the area of Riverlea and builds on the description from Chris Van Wyk’s autobiographical work Shirley, Goodness and Mercy (2004), as a way of complementing, enriching and humanising the academic perspectives on the area of Riverlea. These upfront chapters provide the context for the birth of Genesis, and the terrain that it operates in. Lastly, the third chapter looks at the funding landscape that has sustained community-based arts in South Africa, with specific attention paid to government-funded community-based arts centres, alongside a discussion of how Genesis is funded. The purpose of this is to establish an understanding of the accessibility of funds for arts organisations, what their unique challenges may be, as well as to highlight the sustainability of government-funded organisations in comparison to that of self funded organisations, such as Genesis
Mapping the Ethnographic Expedition: A Re-Configuration of the Frobenius Archive
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Boshoff, Janus Jacobus; Wintjes, Justine
This dissertation considers the building and dwelling (archiving) activities of researchers working within archive spaces as intrinsically connected to the treatment of pictorial material as a primary archive source. The report focusses on the cumulative work of a group of researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand, called the Frobenius Working Group (FWG), in relation to the historic activities of and archive material produced by a German archaeological and ethnographic expedition group under the direction of Professor Leo Frobenius that visited southern Africa between 1928 and 1930 (known as the 9th Expedition). By exploring past and present tensions and connections between the landscape and archive, and the activities and working practices of the FWG and the Frobenius expedition, and by closely studying pictorial archive material, the aim of this research is to interrogate whether the archive can be re-configured as a space where active participation can lead to new and alternative interpretations and understandings. The paper is written in a theoretical, reflective, first person narrative and processual style which reflects the researcher’s personal journey and the thinking processes inherent in the work of research, and explores the contents of and access to the physical and online Frobenius archive, the geography of the landscape and the archive, and the modes of research of the 9th Expedition and the FWG. The research project is thus situated within a physical and a conceptual landscape which suggests that research activities can be considered dwelling practices. The application of theoretical frameworks of landscape, place and space, dwelling and building, provides insight into the complexities and possibilities of generating new interpretations of and additions to the archive, and makes a case for archives as spaces of dwelling where activity bridges time and space, and the researcher can become both active viewer and contributor. The dissertation postulates that the archive can be a field of discovery where active participation can generate new material and insights which deepen our connection to landscape and social activity. The archive as dwelling place is considered not just as an external entity but also as dwelling in us. The emphasis is on configuration and dialogue as the mode of dwelling through which we not only make the archive a dwelling place, but ourselves a dwelling place for the archive. Archiving is a dynamic process in which the sources are considered in order to be configured into new orders. This dynamism requires the bridging and fusing of horizons into productive and co creative partners. This research report finds that the archive does not require re-configuring for it is already a re-configured space. The archive marks the beginning of the researcher’s journey which does not only look at history but, through the research activity, contributes to the constant and continual re-configuration of the archive. This journey conforms to processes of living which are temporal and shaped by social interaction and the continual formation of the landscape. In turn, these life processes contribute to the constant re-configuration of the landscape and archive space. By contributing new material, knowledge and understandings, the researcher forms part of the making of history, thereby ensuring the continued growth, life, and relevancy of the archive.
Paper Choreography: My ancestors dance through me - Experimenting with the Unarchival of a South African South Asian Dancer’s Family Archive while Exploring 'Indian-ness’ and Interwoven Dance Cultures and its pedagogical contribution to or implications for the reconfiguring of the Archive
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Govender-Elshove, Anusia; Khan, Sharlene; Taub, Myer
The aim of this study was to challenge the understanding of the concept of an archive of the indigenous/marginalised in territory that was previously dominated by a western/colonial presence, in places and spaces that are considered non-traditional. To explore the archive as a performative process and expansive practice by answering the question: How can the ‘unarchival’ process be a functional framework with which to make meaning in transmuting or liberating the artefacts of my family archive, my embodied self, and the ‘Indian-ness’ of South Asian dance, through reconfiguration of experimental iterations that reflect the current reality of this dance form as it unfolds and develops in the South African dance industry and academy? The idea was to utilise the artefacts of my family dance archive, in creative ways, to highlight the interweaving of cultures, while also disrupting the notion of purity and authenticity around South Asian dance with a melange interweaving of the archive of dance styles present in my body of work. The research methodology utilised was autoethnography/biography, with yarning/storytelling to acknowledge the geneaology/genesis of the perceived Indian monolithic culture in both India and South Africa. This study focused on the process of the ‘unarchival’ of my physical family dance archive and, my South Asian dancing body which is a palimpsestic, embodied, living archive. This involved curating an online exhibition of groupings of artefacts, of re-presenting and re-storying, deconstructing and reconstructing my family archive, thereby making them both emancipated and accessible. I argued that the archive is not limited to ‘Indian-ness’, but consists of an early interweaving and intermingling of cultures. The physical artefacts were used to create various iterations of “paper choreography” as my creative work activates the family archive, using paper to enable movement/dance. There was experimentation with age-old modes and my curatorial role in preserving and perpetuating my family’s dance origins which intersects with South Asian dance history in South Africa more broadly, and particularly its pedagogy. By researching unarchival as a curatorial process, I have attempted to recreate history and socio-political narratives: on a macro-level (the histories of both the Indian subcontinent - its influences and changes over centuries – as well as African history) and a micro-level (my own history) with a primordial conceptualisation. Three chapters focus firstly on the Unarchival process and its formulation. Next, the exploration of the concept of ‘Indian-ness’ in terms of dance, identity and archival implications for this study. The final chapter explores the interwoven nature of the dance direction my family and I chose to take by incorporating many cultures into our Indian dance core curriculum over 61 years. This creative study addressed the dearth in the field in the South African academy. The relevance/importance of the study to the field is that the unarchival process/act is seen as a relatively unexplored area, not just in reconfiguring an archive, but also the embodiment of the culture and identity of South Asian dance and dancers that are often mis/under-represented and misunderstood.
Paradise on Earth as a Motto, the Price of Happiness. What Happens to the Body in Late Capitalism
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-01) Salmon, Audrey; Gillepsie, Kelly; Andrew, David; Sakota-Kokot, Tanja
Isn’t it now guaranteed that ‘paradise’ can be accessible during our lifetime? Haven’t you read, heard, or seen this somewhere yet? I have. Consequently, without thinking, I fully embraced this promise. Paradise is here and there, paradise is this and that, paradise is everything, everywhere. Nonetheless it happens to be a sort of cornucopia eventually resulting in no choice. It is a repetitive and merciless empty promise. Paradise on Earth is a brutal and transformative repetition colonising bodies. Forty thousand and one times the word paradise is written down. Forty thousand and one times is the core of the thesis. It is the thesis, and it forms and materialises brutality. It forms and materialises transformation. It attempts to figure and identify the specific effect of this specific condition on the body while paradoxically trying to give a voice to this same fainting body. Paradise, can you hear, see, touch it or even dream about it? The first image that comes to my mind is comforting. A smile even lifts the corners of my mouth, the object of my desire being almost here. Sadly, paradise on Earth’s ubiquity only reminds us of our failures. Up to today it is still haunting. All the way along, repetition happens to be an organ of torture as much as salvation. This research intends to take us through the work of diagnosis, and the embodied entanglement in these conditions under late capitalism.

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