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 Full Proceedings - Arts Research Africa Conference 2020(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Doherty, ChristoThe full proceedings of the Arts Research Africa Conference 2020, held at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, from 22 - 24 January 2020. Description: An international conference organised by the Arts Research Africa project in the Wits School of Arts. The conference featured a wide variety of inputs, from traditional conference paper presentations and panels, to performances, interactive engagements and workshops. The conference brought together artists, scholars, and artistic researchers to collectively address the question of artistic research in Africa in the 21st century.Item Opening Address: Dynamics(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Schwab, MichaelEmphasises the changing fabric of knowledge and that artistic research has already had an effect on this fabric. Argues for a historical epistemology, and for unsecured forms of knowledge. Uses the experience of editing the Journal of Artistic Research to explain the challenges in operationalizing this concept of knowledge.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 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 Perspectives on Practice-led Research in Visual Art at the University of KwaZulu-Natal(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Hall, LouiseDrawing from Hall’s own experience with the first Practice-led Research (PLR) PhD in Visual Art at UKZN, this paper argues for the potential of PLR to generate a very particular kind of knowledge based on the dyadic relationship between the artist and the intelligence of materials.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 Finding the Lost Fishermen: A Study in Recovery and Performance as Preservation(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Nii-Dortey, MosesThis paper engages what strategic/ethical research options can be deployed for preserving, performing and documenting artworks such as The Lost Fishermen, a dying folk opera, which is arguably one of Ghana’s most successful musical artworks, created by Saka Acquaye in the immediate aftermath of Ghana’s political independence.Item A PhD in Practice-based Design Research in Architecture at Wits University(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Felix, SandraHow does the new PhD in practice-based design research in the School of Architecture at Wits position itself? This paper is an account of the author-practitioner’s exposure to the long history of engagement with design research in the school through the example of architects such as Pancho Guedes and others.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 Matshikiza’s King Kong Re-heard: A Pianistic Inquiry(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Mnana, YonelaHow did Todd Matshikiza, the famed Drum magazine reporter, pianist, and composer of King Kong, the South African hit musical of the 1950s, straddle these multiple worlds in his music? Drawing on my own experience as a jazz pianist, I attempted to answer this question through a performed analysis of an unreleased solo piano recording by Matshikiza. As a performer, my research aims to be not only about, but in the culture of South African solo jazz piano tradition.Item The Translated Landscape: Interpreting South Africa through Jewellery Praxis(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Groenewald, Joani; van der Wal, ErnstCan a landscape function as a visual text that could, in turn, be translated through various multimodal practices? Through an account of Groenewald’s own creative practice, which translates landscape images into jewellery/sculptural pieces, this paper unpacks the complexities of translation and language within the memory politics of the South African landscape.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 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 The Norwegian Artistic Research School: Structure and Content(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Strøm, GeirHow has the structure and content of the new Norwegian Artistic Research School built on the two-decades-long experience of artistic research in Norwegian universities and university colleges?Item The Philosophy of Art in Ewe Vodu Religion(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Adjei, Sela KodjoHow have miseducation and Eurocentric anthropological scholarship actively deluded Africans into perceiving their religion and arts as “inferior” and “barbarous”? Drawing from years of practice-based investigation into the art of the Anlo-Ewe Vodu religion, this paper interrogates and redefines the misleading theories of “fetishism” that have obscured the appreciation of Vodu art.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 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 ‘Godot-Logue in Gauteng’: Performance Practice as a (Re)presentation of Artistic Research(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Lecogo-Zulu, Bongile; Ratladi, CalvinTo what extent can devised collaborative performance practice be considered research? How does an artist whose practice is housed in interdisciplinary collaboration be recognised as a researcher? A performance demonstration (by Bongile Lecoge-Zulu and Calvin Ratladi) of Lucky’s monologue in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot will serve as commentary on the association of research with academia. Is there scope for reframing the associations around arts research to include the actual doing of the art?Item Itinerant/Iterative Cartographies: Explorations in Cinematic Practices(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Mntambo, NdukaThe performance lecture served as an exegesis for the installation project on the city titled Asymmetries (2018/19/20). The installation and its various iterations were conceived as a making-thinking-spectatorial research project on the urban, premised on strategies developed through modes of artistic research. The project explores various forms of contemporary film practices in order to explore and re-imagine city life beyond the confines of teleological conceptions. In particular, the installation and its iterative explorations relates to cinema aesthetics and its political confrontation with the mono-focal conception of cinema and its projection norms.Item Thinking about Research and Creative Endeavour(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Olivier, GerritAre the binary oppositions postulated between theoretical and practical knowledge, and between western and African philosophy—as in the call for this conference—valid or useful for artistic research? This paper asks where this conceptual division should best be located and poses the question of whether it is valid, sustainable, and helpful to distinguish between African and European “modes of knowledge.”
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