1. Academic Wits Research Publications (Faculties submissions)

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A history of the decolonised African theatre aesthetic: projections of an emergent African theatre practice - Afroscenology
(Routledge, 2024) Ravengai, Samuel
With the advent of colonialism and its mission to ‘civilise’ Africans by assimilating them into European culture, some African theatre practitioners responded by aping western theatre, the dominant aesthetic being Aristotelian. The rise of Negritude questioned the inferiorisation paradigm, and impacted African theatre by inspiring work based on African material yet still presented in western aesthetics. Later, as Africans resorted to the armed struggle to dismantle colonialism, African theatre also disbanded western aesthetics to adopt Afrocentric ones. The newly formed independent ministries of culture and higher education encouraged the postcolonial university to either start new theatre departments or to decolonise those inherited from the colonial state. Thus, from the 1960s Africanist artist researchers who worked from the academy or practised community service have run experimental theatre companies not affiliated to the academy to create new practice and theories feeding an African theatre curriculum in the academy. Among the first to develop such an African theatre were Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania, where most intellectuals had received western education but worked from African creative modes, with results of a syncretic nature. The processes of decolonisation of theatre in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and more recently South Africa have also had a profound effect on the emergent theatre. This chapter historicises this process and formulates the direction and theory of African theatre of the future.
Addressing artistic research at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius: challenges for a Small Island Developing State in Africa
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Ramduth, Hans
Can 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?
Africanity and Orality in the Films/Videos of Women Filmmakers of the African Diaspora
(Deep Focus: A Film Quarterly, 1998) Ebrahim, Haseenah
In this essay, I consider the role of African cultural heritage and of oral tradition in selected films/videos by women filmmakers of the African Diaspora. for practical purposes, I limit the scope of my analysis to the works of a handful of filmmakers in the United States and the Caribbean: Julie Dash (USA), Euzhan Palcy (Martinique/France), Zeinabu irene Davis (USA), and Gloria Rolando (Cuba).
Afrocuban religions in Sara Gomez's one way or another and Gloria Ronaldo's Oggun
(The Western Journal of Black Studies, 1998) Ebrahim, Haseenah
This paper explores the depiction of Afrocuban religions in two films - Sara Gomez's One way or another(1974/1977) and Gloria Rolando's Oggun: Forever present(1991).A (Western) feminist's analysis of Gomez's One way or another characterizes Abakua and Santeria as "voodoo" - not only collapsing three different Afro-Carribean religious traditions, but also reflecting Marxistbiases that exclude (ironically) a recognition that Gomez's depictions of Abakua and Santeria reflect a gendered perspective.Rolando's Oggun reflects a recent trend in Cuban cinema to celebrate Afrocuban religious practices.Oggun's stunning visuals, compelling song and dance sequences, and fascinating mythology provoke a desire to understand the role and impact of this remarkable religious tradition in Cuban society.
Artistic research and African musical performance: listening beyond Euro-American canons
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Pyper, Brett
Are 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?
Artistic Research and the City Space: New Orientations and Collaborations
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2022-09-16) Winter, Stefan
This paper explores the evolving relationship between artistic research, architecture, and urban design in the context of shifting paradigms in the understanding of architecture and urban development. It highlights the transition from top-down planning to inclusive bottom-up processes and emphasises the importance of perceiving the city as a habitat rather than just a built environment. The historical precedents of artistic avantgarde movements, such as dérive and psychogeography, are examined, and their limitations in the contemporary context are discussed. The potential of artistic research to contribute to sustainability in ecological, economic, and societal dimensions is explored through various examples. Overall, the paper argues for the transformative power of artistic research in shaping future city spaces.
Artistic Research and the Institution: a cautionary tale
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Fleishman, Mark
What 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?
Artistic Research as African Epistemology
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Stolp, Mareli
Can 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.
Artistic research in Africa with specific reference to South Africa and Zimbabwe: formulating the theory of Afroscenology
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020) Ravengai, Samuel
How 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.
Artistic research in music as Doctoral Study: challenges and opportunities for Universities in South Africa
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Sandmeier, Rebekka
What 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?
Arts Research Africa 2022 Conference - Introduction
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2022) Doherty, Christo
In the two years which have elapsed between the first and second Arts Research Africa conferences, the recognition of creative practice as a research modality in South Africa has increased in leaps and bounds. The question of what to call this research modality, be it practise-based, or practice-led, or artistic research remains unresolved, but these two conferences have gathered together a stimulating array of approaches to this new mode of research, while raising the banner for ‘artistic research’. This second conference, with its focus on how artistic research has transformed pedagogy as well as art practice in Africa, recognises that many academic practitioners, who have themselves completed advanced degrees with a creative practice component, are now looking to pass these learnings to their students through a transformed pedagogy. The 2022 conference thus provides an opportunity to assess the pattern of this development, still largely limited in Africa to the South African arts and education environment. The first ARA Conference was held as a live event on Wits campus in February 2020.1 Unknown to the organisers or any of the participants, the world was on the brink of the Covid-19 epidemic, and the draconian responses to the crisis by national governments, which locked down most of the world for the rest of 2020 and 2021. As a live event, however, the 2020 conference gave the ARA organisers the opportunity to experiment with different formats of presentation, breaking with the conventional mode of paper presentations and instead offering space for workshops and what we called ‘lecture-performances’ or ‘lecture-demonstrations’. The second conference, planned during the uncertainty that followed the waning of the pandemic in 2021/22, was initially envisaged as an entirely online event; but as the effects of the pandemic began to subside, we chose to offer the first two days as a purely online event to facilitate international engagement, and a third, final day, again on Wits campus, as a live face-to-face event. Sadly, as a result of this structure, the bulk of the 2022 conference presentations were conventional textual outputs, albeit often reporting on creative research that was embodied or performative in nature.
Arts Research Africa 2022 Conference Proceedings - Full
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2022) Doherty, Christo
In the two years which have elapsed between the first and second Arts Research Africa conferences, the recognition of creative practice as a research modality in South Africa has increased in leaps and bounds. The question of what to call this research modality, be it practice-based, or practice-led, or artistic research remains unresolved, but these two conferences have gathered together a stimulating array of approaches to this new mode of research, while raising the banner for ‘artistic research’. This second conference, with its focus on how artistic research has transformed pedagogy as well as art practice in Africa, recognises that many academic practitioners, who have themselves completed advanced degrees with a creative practice component, are now looking to pass these learnings to their students through a transformed pedagogy. The 2022 conference thus provides an opportunity to assess the pattern of this development, still largely limited in Africa to the South African arts and education environment.
The cinematic life of the Sistren Theatre Collective: Forays into biographical documentary
(2016) Ebrahim, Haseenah
This article explores two biographical video documentaries produced by the Sistren Theater Collective of Jamaica. Together, the documentaries, Miss Amy and Miss May and The Drums Keep Sounding, document the lives of three Jamaican women activists: Amy Bailey, May Farquharson and Louise Bennett-Coverley. Although video/film production never attained a prominent role in Sistren’s approach to its activism, which focused on participatory drama to address issues of concern to working-class black women, the documentaries produced in the 1980s and 1990s allowed the Collective to expand its reach beyond the limitations imposed by the geographical proximity necessary for live theater. The article examines the structuring devices of these two biographical documentaries and interrogates how the utilization of the medium of video raises class-based ambiguities within the Collective’s mission to celebrate the lives of Caribbean women.
Closing address: Artistic Research in Africa - rethinking the "avant-garde"
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Deribew, Berhanu Ashagrie
In 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 communities.
Creative practice and research: an artist-scholar perspective
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020) Stewart, Michelle
How 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.
Cultural Integration for State Identity in Nasarawa State's Choreographic Approach to Nafest "Danceturgey"
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2022-09-16) Tume, Tosin Koshima
This paper discusses the concept of “danceturgy” and its role in the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) in Nigeria. NAFEST aims to promote national unity and identity through the performance of Nigerian cultural heritage. The guidelines for participation in the festival emphasize the reflection of cultural peculiarities and the use of authentic dance stories. The danceturgy at NAFEST involves stage and DVD presentations, with specific criteria for judging. The text highlights the creative process of the Nasarawa State Performing Troupe (NSPT) in developing their dance entry for NAFEST 2009, including the study of the festival syllabus, conception of the story idea, assembling choreographic devices, rehearsals, and the final performance. It is suggested that the NSPT choreographic approach be adopted and modified to suit NAFEST danceturgy.
Decolonial AestheSis Parcours
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Khan, Sharlene; Asfour, Fouad
The 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.
Editor's Introduction - Arts Research Africa 2020 Conference Proceedings
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Doherty, Christo
Editor’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.
Engaging with sound writing
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2020-07) Liebenberg, Visser
How 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.
Finding My Voice Through Practice-Based Research: A Critical Look at My Film Shattered Reflection
(Arts Research Africa (ARA), 2022-09-16) Sakota, Tanja
This paper presents the author’s exploration of memory and autoethnography in her film “Shattered Reflection.” The author, an artistic researcher, delves into her personal experiences, lineage, and ancestral memories to answer research questions related to memory and its depiction in film. The paper reflects on the complexities of the author’s identity and how this influences her approach to research. The paper focuses on using the self as a tool for answering research questions through remembering and autoethnography. The author explores topics such as accessing memory without archives, using film to depict fragmented memories, and uncovering invisible memory through visuals and sound. The paper also mentions the author’s limited budget and her guerrilla filmmaking approach. The film is presented as part of a larger book project and is analyzed in the context of practice-based research.

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