School of Arts

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"100 papers": an anthology of flash fiction and prose poetry with a theoretical postscript
(2008-05-30T07:24:40Z) Jobson, Liesl Karen
[NO ABSTRACT PRESENT]
3D animation as a medium of cultural representation and education : a case study of Magic Cellar part 1.
(2011-05-03) Kangong, Roland N.
Post-apartheid South African children are exposed to modern technological entertainment – television, cell phones, video games, TV animations and many other forms of popular art and media. This research report analyzes how well Magic Cellar (hereafter referred to as MC) both represents cultural diversity to a mixed audience of South African children from different ethnic backgrounds and cultures, and educates them more generally. A historical perspective on animation is provided, including animation in South Africa, as well as the technical processes of animation, and how these apply to MC. In so doing, answers to two main questions are sought: can 3D animation be used as an alternative or support to the school classroom in educating children through popular media forms? To what extent can 3D digital art technology in the form of animation be used in representing cultural diversity to children of different cultural backgrounds? Drawing on theoretical concepts, as well as comparing MC to successful programming for children that uses animation to educate, this research report argues that 3D animation, a medium that “seems to attract learners’ attention and increase their motivation to learn”(Khairezan 2), can be used to represent cultural diversity and to educate children.
A Musical History Through Vocal Expressions at the Abbey Cindi Cosmology Concert
(Arts Research Africa, 2022-09-16) Moshugi, Kgomotso
This paper reports on a research project that culminated in a concert honoring South African musician and activist Bra Abbey Cindi. The project involved reissuing Cindi’s album, forming a band of young musicians to perform his music, and creating a vocal group called No Limits to reinterpret Cindi’s earlier South African choral works. The paper proposes the use of music to explore the past, present, and future, linking generations and addressing social issues. It discusses specific compositions, their lyrical and musical merits, and the process of arranging them for vocal performance. The paper also highlights the role of community engagement and the value of reimagining historical musical works.
A Return to Practices and Pedagogies: Artistic Research as Untethering and Foraging
(Arts Research Africa, 2022-09-16) Barry, Hedwig; Andrew, David
This paper reflects on the intertwining of artistic research and pedagogies within the context of a collaborative project conducted at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The authors explore the concepts of proximities, grids and flows, confrontations, and time as entry points into the space of artistic research. They emphasize the importance of untethering and foraging, challenging established boundaries and embracing discomfort as a catalyst for creative growth. The paper also highlights the significance of proximities and the relational aspect of artistic research, inviting a communal and interdisciplinary approach. The authors reflect on their experiences during the pandemic and the evolving nature of teaching and learning in relation to time.
'African discourses' : the old and the new in post-apartheid isiZulu literature and South African black television dramas
(2009-02-02T11:38:06Z) Mhlambi, Innocentia Jabulisile
ABSTARCT This thesis sets out to explore the problematic perceptions regarding African indigenous language literature. The general view regarding this literature is that it is immature, irrelevant school-market driven and shows no artistic complexities and ingenuity.1 These disparaging remarks resonated persistently after the first democratic elections in 1994. Both local and international critics expected marked shifts in post-apartheid isiZulu literary productions because factors that hampered its development have been removed. The dominant Western and postcolonial critical approaches from which these critics articulated their views, operated on assumptions that failed to look at the role and centrality of the broader concerns usually covered by this literature. Barber (1994: 3) points out that these Western and postcolonial critical approaches, block a properly historical localized understanding of any scene of colonial and postindependence literary production in Africa. Instead it selects and overemphasized one sliver of literary and cultural production…and this is experience’. Furthermore it is the contention of this thesis that these critics used critical tools that are fundamentally mismatched for the types of narratives with which isiZulu literature and African-language literatures in general are engaged. It is the view of the author of this thesis that if a new set of critical tools are used, a paradigm shift may result which allows for revisiting creative conceptualisations involved in the production of these literatures. The primary aim of this thesis is to read post-apartheid isiZulu novels and the black television dramas using theoretical tenets postulated by Karin Barber. Barber’s research on African everyday culture is the key epistemological and cosmological framework with which to study post-apartheid literary and film productions that narrate the everyday life experiences of ordinary South Africans. The basic assumption is that orality which is the maximal point of reference for 1 See Mpahlele, 1992; Kunene, D. P. 1992 and 1994; Kunene, M. 1976 and 1991; and Chapman, 1996 any African work of imagination continues to thrive in black everyday popular culture as manifest in both print and broadcast media. The first part of this thesis deals with the use of oral genres in print media. Six novels are selected to explore the uses of proverbs, folktale motifs and naming as strategies for reading post-apartheid contemporary South African society. The thesis proceeds from an analysis of what these oral forms aim to achieve in the post-apartheid context. It is argued that through these oral verbal art forms the narratives transpose the traditional episteme and re-inscribe it for modern contemporary African society, where traditional morality is made to continue to shape and animate contemporary morality. The second section deals with the implications of some of these traditional epistemologies in broadcast media texts. Four post-apartheid black television dramas are selected. With Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, the thesis, demonstrates how these films position the middle-class as a solution to post-apartheid leadership challenges. The discussion of Gaz’ Lam and Yizo Yizo demonstrates the nature of orality, where oral texts are seen to be endlessly recycling similar themes in different media forms. The emphasis is on how renditions of texts always bring in new elements and topical issues, fresh and precise photographic capturing of key moments in society. In view of the nature of Barber’s theoretical model and that of isiZulu fiction and film, this thesis argues that it is the most appropriate to use for the analysis of Africanlanguages literatures. Barber’s theoretical model has intertextual links with the Black Film theoretical traditions in the Diaspora and the Third Cinema in Africa. These black film traditions, like Barber’s model, centralise the black experience, everyday culture and orality as the basic reference for African work of imagination and aesthetics.
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, Zanele
Can 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.
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, Petro
An 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.
Archiving as Artistic Practice
(Arts Research Africa, 2022-09-16) Batzofin, Jayne
This paper looks at the development of an online showcase repository for the ReTAGS (Reimagining Tragedy from Africa and the Global South) practice-as-research artistic productions, Antigone (not quite/quiet) and iKrele leChiza, and the methodology behind documenting and digitally archiving their processes. The paper reflects on the author’s involvement as the digital archivist for the ReTAGS research and the choices made and implemented on the online showcase repository. It considers the strengths and challenges of these archival choices and explores the possibilities of understanding the archive as a means of artistic engagement in its own right.
Art in Action Research (AIAR): Integrating Tacit Knowledge Into Research
(Arts Research Africa, 2022-09-16) Lammli, Dominique
This paper introduces the concept of Art in Action Research (AiAR) as an alternative paradigm for art practitioners working in sociocultural settings. AiAR aims to accommodate diverse notions of art, theories, and knowledge bases, integrating tacit knowledge into research frameworks. The paradigm is grounded in the issues emerging from the work environment, focusing on real-life challenges to co-create a liveable future. The paper addresses the need for methodological guides in researching art practitioner perspectives and discusses the concepts of knowledge and tacit knowledge. It explores the problem of non-groundedness in art practitioner research and highlights the global turn and the need for retooling disciplinary perspectives. In sum, the paper argues that AiAR provides an alternative paradigm for methodology crafting that considers the global turn and acknowledges diverse notions of art and knowledge bases.
Articulating a Movement Pedagogy in Retrograde: Mapping an Embodied Research Process
(Arts Research Africa, 2022-09-16) Johnstone, Kristina
This paper discusses an artistic research project that challenges representationalism in South African contemporary dance. The author argues against the use of discursive methodologies that reinforce colonial scripts and instead proposes an alternative approach based on embodied practices. The paper explores the concept of choreography as embodied research and its potential to align with a decolonial praxis. The research project involves tracing embodied practices and creating a digital cartography to capture and explore these practices. The author also discusses the emergence of a movement pedagogy that unfolds in retrograde and disrupts conventional understandings of time and pedagogical continuity.
"... as far as words can give:" Romantic poetry as displaced mystical experience in William Wordsworth's Prelude
(2011-11-28) Kallenbach, Bradley Dean
This dissertation investigates the ways in which a broad and perennial problem – ‘the problem of dualism’ - is approached by three areas of inquiry, namely, English Romanticism, mysticism and contemporary studies of consciousness. By comparative analysis of key passages in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Huxley’s survey of mystical traditions in the Perennial Philosophy and work by contemporary philosopher Colin McGinn on the ‘mind-body problem,’ I explain how each discipline proposes an ideal state of ‘synthesis’ or ‘coalescence’ between the subjective and objective as a solution to ‘the problem of dualism.’ In turn, each discipline discerns a faculty or means towards such a synthesis. These are the ‘Imagination,’ ‘Third Eye,’ and ‘Bridging Principle’ respectively. Thus, this dissertation has three additional aims. First, I argue that the Romantic ‘Imagination’ and mystical ‘Third Eye’ faculty are conceptually similar in an attempt to show that certain Romantic poets (primarily Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley) sought access to a super-sensuous realm via the ‘Imagination.’ However, seminal texts such as Coleridge’s Biographia, Shelley’s Defence of Poetry and Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy imply that the Romantic poet, unlike the mystic, is thwarted from voluntary and veridical access to these realms: the Imagination reaches an impassable threshold which the mystical ‘Third Eye’ traverses. This condition, coupled with an inability to convey mystical experience in language with greater acuity, I argue, may account for the presence of melancholy in key Romantic works such as Wordsworth’s Prelude and Immortality Ode. I thus seek to enhance our understanding of the critical commonplace referred to as “Romantic melancholy.” Second, I aim to illustrate this view by analysis of key passages in Wordsworth’s Prelude and Immortality Ode. Finally, I aim to show that the early Coleridgean understanding of ‘the problem of dualism’ as highlighted in the Biographia can be further elucidated by contemporary theories of consciousness on the ‘mind-body’ problem.
"Bakwena Arts": a case study of arts and culture policy and implementation in the Limpopo Province
(2009-10-13T12:08:16Z) Franks, Daniel Zachariah
Abstract: In this research I examine the legacy of Arts and Culture Administration in the Limpopo Province, specifically with the intention of bringing to light the ways in which the evolution of this administrative structure has been largely framed by a history of domination by manifold colonial states. This fact of history has been shown to have given life to unique phenomena that are the seeming birth right of the new dispensation: corruption, inequality, apologism, blamelessness and rural contempt. The research makes special reference to the difficulties encountered by the emergent Northern Transvaal / Northern Province / Limpopo Province in establishing arts infrastructure and basic delivery. These difficulties are shown to be due to the former Transvaal’s policy of centralized cultural structures, and further compounded by the implications of the transformation of Pretoria’s State Theatre. This specific instance will inform an examination of the disparities between rural and urban realities in postcolony SA. My own practical work is discussed in relation to the above as far as it deals with the everyday production of culture, represented by the intrusion of global modern media into highly disparate social contexts.
Balancing act: An investigation of the in-between space used by selected contemporary artists in South Africa
(2006-11-17T10:46:41Z) Watson, Deirdre
After endless contemplation on the idea of ‘word and image’, the following expression of J.W.T Mitchell in Word and Image (1996: 56) brought insight: ‘[W]ord and image’… a pair of terms whose relations open a space of intellectual struggle, historical investigation, and artistic/critical practice. Our only choice is to explore this space (own emphasis). I shifted my position from the forlorn act of peeling to one of creative exploration. Not necessarily exploring the specific space between word and image, but rummaging ‘the space between’; always hovering amid opposites. This space provides an opportunity to confront and debate the many issues that stem from the relations formed in its fluidity. It is a space that informs my thinking. It is a space of conversation. I see not only my writing, but also the art that I scrutinize as conversation. My conversation is captured in the linear structure of this thesis, but the conversation of art is dynamic. It is informal and flexible – following not one path, offering no answer, giving the potential at each moment for surprises and transformation. The idea is to ponder contemporary art’s dialogue, the manipulators thereof and the indispensable factors constituting this notion: space, grammar, medium, criticism. The notion of dialogue assumes a listener, a participant, an audience. But who is this audience with whom ideas are conversed, and what language do you (presumably) use to communicate the necessary? I have chosen to investigate these questions, the purpose and plan of art, with relation to a selected group of artists: an individual, Terry Kurgan and a collective – Stephen Hobbs, Marcus Neustetter and Kathryn Smith, known as The Trinity Session.
Challenges facing artists and institutions when showcasing and collecting internet art: a comparative study
(2011-11-02) Vezi, Mazwi
Internet Art is an art form that uses the Internet as its primary medium from its production to presentation. Internet Art characteristics and attributes bring about presentation, preservation and colleting challenges to the curatorial practice; especially if presented in a museum or gallery structure. Strategies used by early Internet Artists were influenced by the characteristics of this medium; these are variability and technological obsolescence. Internet Art is inherently process based, ubiquitous, ephemeral and dynamic in nature. This challenges the traditional role of the curator in a gallery and museum structure. The curator is increasingly expected to create platforms of exchange of ideas between the viewer of the artwork and the project itself. Additional the curator also has to provide some insight in the decision making process regarding maintenance, support, contracts and documentation. Internet Art questions the principles in which galleries and museum structures are based; these include objectification, not touching objects and authorship of Internet Art projects. These projects are collaborative in nature and created by more than one artist, normally geographically dispersed. Internet Art demand for new modes of presentation, documentation and preservation that are more suited for online art. These new modes of presentation fundamentally change the role of the curator. If galleries and museums want to start or continue growing their Internet Art collections, they need to start understanding challenges facing the Internet as a medium, develop appropriate presentation and preservation strategies that seek to address identified challenges.
Challenging hierarchies in Anglophone Cameroon literature: women, power and visions of change in Bole Butake's plays
(2011-09-22) Nkealah, Naomi Epongse
Through an in-depth analysis of selected texts, this study engages with the ways in which the Anglophone Cameroonian playwright, Bole Butake, interprets questions of gender, sex and female power. The study traces the evolution of Butake’s vision of women from his first play Betrothal without Libation (1982) to his latest play Family Saga (2005). The analysis focuses on how women construct power in the imaginary worlds of Butake’s writing and how, in turn, power is constructed through them. Questions of femininities and masculinities are probed in an effort to determine the writer’s ideological leanings. Using a feminist framework, particularly that postulated by acclaimed scholar Florence Stratton (1994), this work engages with Butake’s nine published plays with the simple objective of deconstructing the different layers of meanings embedded in the dramatic narratives’ construction of power politics within urban and rural spaces. This study aims to critique not only Butake’s use of imagery, allegory and other narrative techniques in his creative imagining of women’s identities, but also the gender implications of hierarchical formations within the worlds of Butake’s plays. Essentially, the thesis looks at Butake’s constructions of female power and women’s agency and the implications these have on feminist discourses.
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, Kgomotso
How 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.
Creative Curatorial Practice as a Means of Reorientating Display Tropes in Museums of Natural History
(Arts Research Africa, 2022-09-16) Langerman, Fritha
This paper provides a critical analysis of natural history museums and their display practices. It explores the contradictions inherent in the concept of “natural history” and the dominance over nature it implies. The paper argues that museums still promote authoritative classification and knowledge systems that reinforce hierarchical structures and colonial ideologies. The author, an artist-curator and printmaker, shares her experiences with three exhibitions that challenge traditional display methods. By disrupting linear progression, introducing complex interconnections, and emphasizing sensory experiences, the exhibitions aim to create alternative models of display that reflect the entangled and web-like nature of speciation. The goal is to move beyond colonial narratives and imagine new ways of representing and understanding the natural world within museum spaces.
A critical investigation of an animated South African advertising campaign: Vodacom's Me to the Meerkat campaign 2005-2007
(2011-11-28) Hoffmann, Kim
This critical investigation of the relationship between animation and advertising in South Africa provides both a historic overview and analysis of Vodacom’s Mo the Meerkat campaign. This campaign is documented as extensively as possible, by investigating all relevant aspects and decisions made by Vodacom, their advertising agency, Draftfcb, as well as the creative influence and participation by the animation studios and film companies involved in the campaign. A textual and stylistic analysis of all six advertisements produced as part of this campaign is conducted and explores issues of personality, performance and brand identity relating to the Mo the Meerkat character. This documentation and analysis establishes that a major South African advertiser chose to use an animated character in their campaign to act as a “spectacle” (as the term is defined by Andrew Darley in his text Visual Digital Culture. Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres).
Cultural Kasi’preneur
(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Motholo, Dimakatso
How 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.
Darkness after Light: A Visual Portrait of Lefifi Tladi
(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Senong, Kolodi
Can 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.

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