Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

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‘They stood their ground!’ – Professional Gangsters in South African Indian Society, 1940 - 1970
(2019) Heatlie, Damon; Menon, Dilip; Bloore, Peter; Kros, Cynthia
This thesis is one part of a Creative PhD that investigates the emergence of a new breed of South African Indian gangsters in Durban and Johannesburg in the early apartheid period. The second part, existing as a separate creative text, is a screenplay for a feature film loosely based on dynamics and events present in the Durban Indian underworld of the 1950s. In the thesis I argue that while prominent ‘professional’ Indian gangsters were similar to other ‘non-white’ gangsters in certain respects (their self-fashioning in relation to gangster films, for one), these ‘gentlemen gangsters’ were different in terms of their high level of social and economic integration into Indian society. Focusing on the Crimson League in Durban and Sherief Khan’s gang in Johannesburg, this research comprises reconstructions from (and analysis of) interviews and written sources. It shows how these hustlers positioned themselves as protectors of the Indian community, but also cultivated reputations as punishers, capable of brutal violence if opposed. In Chapter 1, I explore the world of changing South African Indian identity in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and the mobilisation of an ‘Indian’ identity by disparate groups to advance collective interests. In Chapter 2, I look at how subjugated Indian masculinity, a sense of vulnerable ‘territory’, and the rise of street gangs intersected in ritualised games of soccer and gang fights. Chapter 3 traces the rise of Durban’s dominant gang in the early apartheid period, the Crimson League, a vigilante outfit that turned to illicit activities and thuggery. Chapter 4 looks at some of the adversaries that the League engaged and ultimately defeated, including the Salots and the Michael John Gang – I dissect the John murder trial to show how the Crimson League seemingly bent the law to their will. In Chapter 5, I move on to a description of Sherief Khan’s rise to power over rival Old Man Kajee in the Indian areas of Johannesburg in the 1940s and early1950s, culminating in an analysis of his gang’s various ‘business’ activities. Chapter 6 finds Khan and company back on the streets in the 1960s - and examines a decisive conflict with contenders, the ‘Malay Mob’, that re- established Khan’s reputation as ‘South African king of the underworld’. In Chapter 7, I look at how mid-century Hollywood gangster films resonated with Indian gangsters, and how a convoluted conversation between Drum magazine, Hollywood films and Indian gangsters developed. Chapter 8 concludes the analysis with considering the thriving South African Indian cinema scene of this period, and how the cinemas functioned as multifaceted fantasy spaces for both gangsters and ordinary Indians.
Seeming, being and becoming: an intimate, autoethnographic rasa-led performance art exploration
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Maharajh, Reshma; Khan, Sharlene; Munro, Allan; Andrew, David
This thesis focuses on the interplay of "Seeming," "Being," and "Becoming" as it relates to past experiences, present moments and future potentialities. In this project, I delve into the concept of my South African ‘Indianness’ from a personal perspective. As a researcher, I engaged performance art and the aesthetic theory of rasa from the Nātyashāstra a treatise on dramatic theory or the science of drama in Sanskrit (a language of scholarship and philosophy across ancient ‘India’) to explore this concept further. The research encompasses three interconnected practices: rasa, autoethnography, and practice-led research and how central living strategies and concepts are used to define body- mindedness as a life force as emergence in performance strategy. Rasa serves as a guiding metaphor, representing the emotional essence of the artmaking strategies and creative process. These pursuits were not merely cathartic but were about reaching a Transcendental Emotional Moment (TEM) in which "being" and "becoming" converged. Rasa has been proven to be an effective tool in exploring my own identity, subject formation and artmaking, with therapeutic benefits. The second line of inquiry delves into my lived experiences as a widow, mother and practising Hindu, highlighting the complexity of South African Indianness and seeks to bridge the gap between "seeming" and "being" while anticipating what might "become" through the lens of rasa. The third line of inquiry revolves around the practice of performance art (combined with autoethnographic reflection), exploring the tensions between two philosophic models of Integrity and Intimacy as proposed by Kasulis (2002). As the artist (both creator and subject), my life and body became the canvas upon which the artwork unfolded. Performance art allowed for a moment of being when the artwork and I came into existence for each other. This process required cognitive and creative engagement with the project’s content, drawing on past experiences, culture, relationships, politics and religion, guided by rasa. The goal created an environment in which the ‘Oneness of Being’ emerged, leading to a TEM in performance. This moment invited the potential for refreshed, emergent insights and meaning through autoethnography and practice-led research. The “Seeming, Being and Becoming” trajectory and the efficacy of the rasa roadmap is proposed as a cultural philosophy that promotes human flourishing, culminating in the moment of TEM.
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.
Wayfaring stone: Learning to think with stone, as vibrant matter, in the post-extractive urban terrains of the Witwatersrand ridgeline
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-02) Stone-Johnson, Brigitta; Le Roux, Hannah; Andrew, David
Johannesburg is a stony city that exists because of endless interplays between below and above. Johannesburg is a city of earth, rock, rubble and dust. It is a mining city in a state of post-extractive fragmentation. The fragmented wildness troubles all of its materiality. The smooth and inert bubble over exposes the decomposition created by what has been taken/extracted from it. As its infrastructure weathers and fragments, the city is often read as a wasteland or ruin, where human agency has failed to smooth over and rebuilt in ever increasingly short cycles. The local and global environmental implications of such material attitudes are threatening the long-term ability of the earth to sustain human and other life. The issues of the Anthropocene are as much material attitudes as they are issues of extraction, consumption and waste. Suppose shifting perspective: from imagining humans as separate from the terrain toward thinking of ourselves as an aggregation of matter, and stony matter as an independent actant, co-labouring in urban terrain formation. In that case, these weathering, fragmentation and aggregation processes can be viewed as vital agencies of stony matter. This shift in perspective would enable us to remain present within the extractive terrain. It enables us to think of the post-extractive urban terrain not as a ruin, but as a feral urban ecology growing and entangling vital stony agencies with other than human matter and human actions alike in the ongoing process of making the becoming-urban terrain. In many ways, Johannesburg exemplifies the 'Anthrop' in the current Anthropocene age. It is the triumph of culture over nature; testament to the planetary impact of material extraction. The consequences are exemplified in its urban terrain, dotted with urban archipelagos of residue that are toxic to the bodies that inhabit them. These islands span in scale from the small sites of waste dumping in urban parks and open mining lands, to the vast scale of scarification left by gold mining and industrial decay within the city. Unlike many cities, where such industrial ruination and extraction are far removed from the city, the location of the gold-bearing reef acts as the catalyst for the formation of the city. Sites of mining residue and industrial decay are situated in close proximity to the city centre and drove the romanticisation of the northern slopes as urban forest, and the use of southern slopes as wasteland. Besides its extractive material past, the city of Johannesburg is located within one of the oldest sections of the earth's crust, the Kaap-Vaal Craton. The central Witwatersrand ridgeline, which runs east-west within the centre of the city, has outcrops of some of the oldest rocks on earth and forms the continental watershed between the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Its extractive residues and material attitudes have significance within a broader discussion concerning city-making as human geo-writing, and its climatic impact is of interest within the Anthropocene. Despite its deep geological and mineral context, the city of Johannesburg has, within the post-apartheid spatial discourse, often been framed as if its geological and atmospheric terrain did not exist. The language used in writings about the city includes descriptors that frame Johannesburg as an immaterial city composed only of its human inhabitants, such as 'the transient city' 1, uitval-grond (remainder, non-place) 2 , the restless city 3 , necropolis and elusive metropolis 4 . These descriptors stem from a dualist material perspective of urban terrains and take a centrist humanist position suggesting that humans are the only agents for change in an inert material terrain. Spatial discourse applies philosophy to the built environment practices including built form and design in architecture, together with urban, town and regional planning, and urban design. Within the context of Johannesburg, through writing in the post-apartheid space, spatial discourse has become critically entangled with the social sciences. Within such spatial discourses, issues of urban terrains, extraction, degradation and materiality are often relegated to the margins, despite their impact on urban inhabitants and epoch-altering consequences for climate and future geological strata. Research risks becoming increasingly abstracted, and ungrounded in the living and active world in which the city's inhabitants move through and touch. In this work I respond to issues of surface, materiality and our human impact on urban terrains in the age of the Anthropocene, and question how spatial thinking contributes to issues of material denial and the degradation of urban terrains. Given Johannesburg's mining and deep geological context, I have chosen to work with the materiality of stone as a representative of human/material dualisms, which I see present here. Stony matters’ contribution to human societal formation is one of the most complex material alliances of the anthropocentric age, and connects momentary human actions to planet-altering effects produced by the complex web of alliances, traces, and matter flows facilitating modern city-making. In framing humans and stony matter as co-labours in terrain formation, I consider stony matter to be a trans-corporeal material, spanning in scale from granular to geological. The term trans-corporeal derives from feminist posthuman theory that says matter exists in multiple states and scales5 that span between bodies (collectivities) of human and other than human alike. Applied to the materiality of stone within this context, I considered stony matter to include the geological terrain as a biosphere. I imagine an urban, geological and ecological whole that includes wild stone in situ within 'urban archipelagos', which protrude into the city grid, filled with human-made, connective infrastructure, rubble and piles. I suggest that the stony matter present here collaborates as agglomerative agents in the formation of urban terrain. Furthermore, I consider weathering, rubbling and aggregating as agencies of stony matter that act in the ebbing and flowing process - rather than being static, or moving towards an ultimate ruinous end. I consider the process of weathering and gathering as relational processes for knowing stones' agency, accessible to the human temporal range through bodily encounters with the materials. I draw on the field of environmental humanities in this work, as it also incorporates feminist posthuman theory and new material theory. It emerges from a trans-disciplinary discussion that questions the human/matter and nature/culture duality implied within a cartesian understanding of matter. Creating a theoretical divide between living and non-living things. question this duality with their work on the posthuman. These collective theoretical positions critique the centrality of the human to act within the world and to forward a bio-centred egalitarianism that seeks to hold human and non-human social relationships as equally relevant in forming a response to issues of the Anthropocene. Posthuman studies propose a non-dualist understanding of the nature-culture binary and emphasise the self-organist forces of living matter. The defining features of Posthumanism take as their starting point, after Braidotti, that all matter is one (Monism), and that all matter is agentic and self-organising. The subject is not unitary but nomadic, and subjectivity includes relations with non-human others10. This implies that thinking is not the prerogative of humans alone, but includes non-human 'others', including stony matters subjectivity. I use the theory here to frame the relationship between humans, stony materials, and terrain. The focus is the nature and culture of stony materials as a vitalist material agent in city-making. I favour an understanding of stony matter as a social collective or social grouping, so framing city-making as a collective act of ongoing making between human and non-human actors. The idea of matter as a 'social agent' suggests that stone is capable of acting independently of humans. Stones may form alliances with other non-human entities or collectivities without human consent or intervention. Within this research, I pose the following questions: How can Johannesburg's urban terrains be considered post-extractive urban terrains? What are the vital agencies of stone in post-extractive urban terrains? How can creative practitioners learn about them through bodily entangled creative practice? How can stone agencies be used as a creative practice methodology to become co-labourers with the living matter as a tool for troubling anthropocentrism in extractive terrains? I explore these questions through an embodied creative practice approach to research, examining these questions within philosophy, literature and artistic practice. I use these questions to develop tools for thinking and practising with the stony matter as ways of relating that enable us to live well with other than human oddkin within post- extractive urban terrains. Furthermore, I explore possibilities for re-imagining posthuman ways of thinking about cities. The ultimate aim of the work is illustrated in the diagram below. In this research, I aim to thicken the conversation around the post-extractive terrain by thinking, acting and practising in stony ways. The work aims to aggregate multiple approaches to thinking through and with the stony matter found within the central Witwatersrand ridgeline, naturally occurring and human-made alike, along the path to understanding post-extractive urban terrains as vibrant and feral sites of becoming. As such, the work situates itself between histories and theories of architecture, urban and material practice, balanced against a creative practice project, which can be considered iterative.
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.
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.
The Historical Contribution of Black Musicians to Orchestral Classical Music around Johannesburg and the Implications for Cultural Policy
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Bokaba, Shadrack; Pyper, Brett
This study documents the historical contribution of black musicians to classical music in Johannesburg. It places the spotlight on South Africa’s cultural policy (explicitly or implicitly) over the last century and provides ongoing reflections on this period. The thesis analyses the conditions, within and beyond the prevailing policy that enabled black orchestral musicians to practice this art form. By exploring the complex origins of these practices, the study suggests that the dichotomous thinking about culture as either Eurocentric or Afro-centric may be misplaced due to the possibility that Western classical music may have become part of black South African cultural life as a result of having been translated, transferred, hybridised or acculturated. In addition, the study places the government’s arm’s length funding model under scrutiny and finds this approach continues to be applied inconsistently since it was first presented in the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage (1996). As both a classical musician and orchestral administrator, the author has lived part of the history described in the thesis and, through analysis, attempts to establish a dialogue between professional experience and what scholarly reflection can do to that practice. He presents narratives through insider lenses, with carefully selected interviewees, and interrogates situations and sites over a century-long period of the history of black orchestral music practice in South Africa.
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.
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?
The Steel Fig Leaf: Exploring the Grotesque Ambivalence of the Male Body and Its Masculinities through Sculpture, Performance Art, and Theatre
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Genovese, Nicola; Doherty, Christo
The practice-based research described in this thesis sought to develop imagery in visual and performative artworks capable of engendering and embodying new perspectives on the male body and performed masculinities. The project involved three phases: pure sculpture, sculpture activation using the male body in performance, and theatre performance, the latter focusing on northern Italian masculinities. The key concepts to emerge from the investigation were ambivalence, parody, and the aesthetic category of the grotesque. During the research, I developed a sculptural practice characterised by a craft approach and deploying heterogeneous materials – including textiles, a medium historically associated with the fabric art movement and feminism. As far as performative practice is concerned, my first approach was to challenge the rules of the white cube by attempting to transform spectators into an audience. My next approach was to engage with the specificities of the theatre as a performance context and the challenges for a fine artist working on a stage. The development of my practice was supported by theoretical reflection resulting from a critical engagement with feminism, queer discourse and masculinities studies, culminating in a partial affirmation of the direction taken by the new materialist strand of feminism. This research approaches the male body and its grotesque features through the figure of the flaccid penis as the starting point for questioning the dominant theoretical paradigm of the male body, the phallus, and violence. The materiality of my sculptures and performances addresses the entanglement of biology and culture, challenging the hegemony of the social constructivist approach in contemporary art. By exposing and highlighting the varieties of Italian masculinities, this research critiques the tendency in current academic discourse to depict straight white men as a monolithic category of oppressors. The imagery I develop through my sculptures and performance exposes behavioural, aesthetic, and bodily nuances that gesture towards the complexity occluded by contemporary understandings of masculinity.
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).
Synthesising Stanislavsky into the African aesthetics of contemporary South Africa
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Johnson, Bertina
The purpose of this study is centred upon an investigation into the possibility of synthesising African aesthetics, as present in modern-day South African theatre, with the methods and philosophy of Stanislavsky in both the training of actors and in theatre performance, reframing the continuum whereby the two methods seem to exist. Presently, the two are often regarded as separate categories, one for realism, the other for more traditional African-based performance and South African presentational theatre. This research entails an examination into the nature of African aesthetics, which includes both the values and ideas surrounding an African worldview, as expressed in literature and in theatre, as well as the significance of post-colonial thought in contemporary South Africa, such as the theories of Afrocentricity and black consciousness, alongside the deciphering of how these approaches and influences are relevant to the creating of South African theatre. The issues surrounding Afrocentricity in training and in theatre are examined in terms of the codes of interculturalism, post-colonial theatre, syncretic theatre and cultural imperialism. This has included theories that apply to the nature of sacred theatre and the polysemic nature of contemporary performances of traditional theatre. Pertinent to and contained within this study is the question of the methods, philosophy and worldview of Stanislavsky, as well as the influence of his position as the creator of what is known as the System. In the process of further defining how and if synthesis is possible, the concepts and methods of his work are examined about the meanings underlying his terms, particularly in the light of more accurate and detailed recent translations, which more directly relate to the spiritual nature of his concepts. The significance that much of Stanislavsky’s work is based on spiritual concepts has been referenced to the spirituality found in African aesthetics and worldview, with a specific regard to the notion of an animated world that contains a force field of energy, which I have named an animated theatre in contrast to the psychological interiority found in much of Western actor training and performance. I have argued that acknowledgment of the articulation of the soul and the spirit in Stanislavsky as vital to the actor’s work was often 8 eradicated or ignored and the subsequent re-evaluation of translations of his written work from Russian to English has opened numerous possibilities in the training of actors and in performance, especially in the consideration of his concepts of experiencing, the creative state, communion, aktivnost and resonance with the audience in relation to the African world view. Included in the research is an ethnographic study of the work I have done as a teacher and director in South Africa, considered along with the creative research, as a way of comparing my Western-based training in both the USA and Europe to the discoveries I have made while practicing theatre in South Africa. Examining the theories of integration and synthesis, of Afrocentricity, the African world view and the underlying philosophy of Stanislavsky’s methods through the creative research, with the exploration of methods of both African performance and Stanislavsky, contributes to the process of evolving effective actor training and dynamic South African theatre. It has led to the discovery of what I have labelled as ‘an animated theatre’, which conveys the intersection between African aesthetics and the work of Stanislavsky, through tracing the innovative possibilities of a conscious synthesis in both the creation of theatre and in the training of actors. Acting terms, such as ‘the creative state’, which are taken for granted, thus take on new meaning when the concept and theory of the spiritual state, as meant by Stanislavsky, and how it influences expression, is not eradicated but acknowledged. Through working in the specifics of locality, for a comprehension of varied cultures, and within the paradigm of African aesthetics and Stanislavsky, an analysis of the relatedness of values held in each system, integration and synthesis becomes possible. The notion of an acting system driven by the energetic concepts of both African aesthetics and Stanislavsky, which correlate to the neuroscience of the linkage of mind, body and emotions, puts forward new theories for exploration in terms of physical expression and the inner and outer continuum of the actor’s expression and indicates opportunities for reevaluating the training of actors. My aim in this study has been to expand the knowledge of this evident synthesis, thereby contributing to the future possibilities in the creation of performance and in the training of the talented young actors so present in Southern African theatre.
Understanding the ontological dynamics of digital heritage objects
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Coetzee, Anton Stephen; Wintjes, Justine
Processes of digitisation, particularly within heritage-related fields, are frequently rendered as being infinitely thin and consequently mechanically objective. The lack of engagement with their complexity results in what Latour calls “black boxing” of the processes, technology, and practices. In this work I examine techniques and practices of 3D photogrammetric recording of archaeological, ethnographic and art objects and collections. Using two exemplars in the form of a late 19th century “curio” in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum collection, and a San rock art site near Van Reenen, I unpack and attempt to understand what is contained within these black boxes. I offer digitisation as a thoughtful, object-centric practice rather than data-driven process, drawing on ideas from Caraher’s “slow archaeology” and Stobiecka’s “prosthetic archae- ology”. Objects are decontextualised and unanchored in the process of excavation or procurement, and on accession into collections they are inducted into organisational and taxonomic schemas designed to afford them value as epistemological objects. These schemata are both biased and flawed, being natural heirs of colonial knowledge systems, and are thus lacking in awareness of multiple ontological viewpoints. By reframing the original thing and the resultant digital object in an ontological sense, I attempt to characterise these systems and their constructions of authenticity. I look to past practices of three-dimensional recording and copying, namely plaster casting of specimens and sculpture, and their role in not just practices of duplication, but also in furthering the colonial project and its epistemological flows. Collection, casting and digitisation — as acts of physical and material translation — perpetrate violences involving iii removal of things from their context, remaining adrift until re-anchored within schemata and rules. Understanding and challenging the nature of these rules is critical in avoiding the risk of reinscribing procrustean colonial approaches to recording and documentation. Furthermore, as metadata and data become inextricably entangled, it becomes more diffi- cult to recreate compelling narrative and “human-readable” context from these structures. However, these shortcomings might rather offer potential, building on Lev Manovich’s ideas of database trajectories and Ruth Tringham’s “recombinant histories”, allowing new and unforeseen paths through the data. I suggest that by eschewing neoliberal metric-driven approaches to “mass digitisation” in favour of small-scale, thoughtful practices, we foreground the opportunity to learn from and with the thing during digitisation. Opening up the “black boxes” and exposing and recording craft practices helps reconnect the digital object with the original thing, and offers a reconfigured view on digital authenticity. By formally recording these acts and decisions we can also contribute to the communities of practice which have grown around many of the arcane skills of digitisation.
MUCUS (Music Composition User System): Infectious Flexible Creative Interaction with an Algorithmic Music Composing Application
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Armstrong, Douglas Connolly; Crossley, Jonathan; Harris, Cameron
Recent research in the field of computational creativity and interaction design suggests new ways in which computers can contribute to a creative process. Computational creativity has necessitated new rigour in theoretical definitions of creativity for computational applications. Interaction design has evolved from a focus on efficiency and productivity to a user-centred focus on the emotional and hedonistic aspects of interaction with a computer. I set out to design an interactive algorithmic music composing tool that implements co- creative strategies for a human–computer collaboration, as described by Kantosalo and Toivonen (2016). This interactive tool would play the role of a creative collaborator in the development of musical material by the use of rule-based algorithmic music composing models, steering the co-creative composing process using high-level musical descriptors and capturing user sentiment to build a model of the user’s musical preferences. It is suggested that, through this process, an engaging creative interaction between human and computer can be sustained. Three versions of the software were tested in three different settings. The results suggest that a variety of co-creative and creativity support approaches are required to cater for a computational agent that does not match a musically trained human’s ability to identify musical merit in a developing idea. In this respect, it was found that there is further scope for exposing details of the computer decision-making process for development alongside the process of musical development, as a black box process of computational reasoning was found to be mysterious and at times frustrating. A rule-based system of music generation was found to be effective in a steering mechanism that matched higher-level descriptors of the musical variation process to music generation parameters. Engagement was sustained for longer when the duration of the musical output was longer in form. This included the ability to integrate the output of the application with existing digital audio workstations.
Navigating Liminal Space: Embodied Knowledge within Performance Pedagogies in Archival Reconstruction
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Ramsay, Fiona
I am a performing artist and actor existing in a liminal space because although I am African (in that I was born in, live, and work in Africa), I am caught in an in- between space, somewhere on a continuum straddling Western and African heritages. My practice developed in a culturally complicated context during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in South Africa amid turbulent social tensions and complex, intricate and problematic interactions in a culturally divided society within a political system that legally prohibited cultural engagement. I revisit the archive of my work that emerged during my career to examine the methodology which developed and interrogated the shifts and attempts toward a decolonised practice. Awareness of cultures beyond our own can advance comprehensive views of humanity, promote cultural sensitivity and an appreciation of diversity, encourage rigorous critical thinking by questioning stereotypes, increase global connection and contribute to inclusive decolonised curricula. I am situated in this complicated space on a continuum between identities, and I acknowledge this has contributed to my practice. The premise of becoming or transforming into an ‘other’ is a fundamental principle and skill of acting in the tradition I was schooled in but less valued in others. Reflecting on the archive of my work, I examine the process that developed and analysed both broad liminal spaces and more focused liminal nodes that facilitate transformations to inhabit and perform various roles. I investigate the disruptions that occur in these when accessing unfamiliar cultural frames. Theatre, specifically, and the arts, more generally, are partly derived from borrowing or laying claim to previous discoveries, and my archive reflects the work out of which my practice has grown. I navigate this continuum and exist in and not independently from this Western and African complexity. I raise contemporary issues that share relationships with theories of identity and a complicated political history. I examine how these shape my practice and how the findings may be included and contribute to developing and refining teaching methods and curricula in the postcolony.
Things in flux : Understanding the ontological dynamics of digital heritage objects
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Coetzee, Anton Stephen; Wintjes, Justine
Processes of digitisation, particularly within heritage-related fields, are frequently rendered as being infinitely thin and consequently mechanically objective. The lack of engagement with their complexity results in what Latour calls “black boxing” of the processes, technology, and practices. In this work I examine techniques and practices of 3D photogrammetric recording of archaeological, ethnographic and art objects and collections. Using two exemplars in the form of a late 19th century “curio” in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum collection, and a San rock art site near Van Reenen, I unpack and attempt to understand what is contained within these black boxes. I offer digitisation as a thoughtful, object-centric practice rather than data-driven process, drawing on ideas from Caraher’s “slow archaeology” and Stobiecka’s “prosthetic archae- ology”. Objects are decontextualised and unanchored in the process of excavation or procurement, and on accession into collections they are inducted into organisational and taxonomic schemas designed to afford them value as epistemological objects. These schemata are both biased and flawed, being natural heirs of colonial knowledge systems, and are thus lacking in awareness of multiple ontological viewpoints. By reframing the original thing and the resultant digital object in an ontological sense, I attempt to characterise these systems and their constructions of authenticity. I look to past practices of three-dimensional recording and copying, namely plaster casting of specimens and sculpture, and their role in not just practices of duplication, but also in furthering the colonial project and its epistemological flows. Collection, casting and digitisation — as acts of physical and material translation — perpetrate violences involving iii removal of things from their context, remaining adrift until re-anchored within schemata and rules. Understanding and challenging the nature of these rules is critical in avoiding the risk of reinscribing procrustean colonial approaches to recording and documentation. Furthermore, as metadata and data become inextricably entangled, it becomes more diffi- cult to recreate compelling narrative and “human-readable” context from these structures. However, these shortcomings might rather offer potential, building on Lev Manovich’s ideas of database trajectories and Ruth Tringham’s “recombinant histories”, allowing new and unforeseen paths through the data. I suggest that by eschewing neoliberal metric-driven approaches to “mass digitisation” in favour of small-scale, thoughtful practices, we foreground the opportunity to learn from and with the thing during digitisation. Opening up the “black boxes” and exposing and recording craft practices helps reconnect the digital object with the original thing, and offers a reconfigured view on digital authenticity. By formally recording these acts and decisions we can also contribute to the communities of practice which have grown around many of the arcane skills of digitisation.
The search for ‘Ichambawilo’ (an encounter) with refugee and asylum-seeker parents whose children are vulnerable: an African Drama therapy intervention programme
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Busika, Nonkululeko Faith
Refugees and asylum-seeker parents in South Africa usually find it difficult to adequately fulfil their parental responsibilities because they face many challenges. ‘Three2Six’ is a project in Johannesburg, which focuses on refugee and asylum-seeker children’s right to education and psycho-social well-being. I, as a drama therapist, have personally observed that drama therapy makes a meaningful contribution to the ‘Three2Six project’ because it assists teachers to address the therapeutic needs of refugee and asylum-seeking children who are manifesting psychosocial and behavioural problems at school. Unfortunately, the parents of the children I rendered drama therapy to did not seem to be able to help their children make good progress. The main purpose of the study was thus to design an African Drama Therapy intervention programme with the ‘Three2Six’ parents so that they could adequately fulfil their parental responsibilities. The need to engage the parents of these learners increased even more because the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged children to be at home. The research methods selected to fulfil the study's main purpose was action research in the field of Drama Therapy. The study used multiple approaches in three different phases. Participants were purposively selected and included the parents and school staff members at the Holy Family College and Sacred Heart College, where the Three2Six project is housed. The main theoretical and conceptual frameworks underlying the research were Moreno’s Role theory, the concept of African spirituality and Ubuntu. Data were gathered during the three phases of the research process by conducting personal, semi-structured interviews with school staff members and a Visual Mapping discussion with parent participants using drama therapy techniques, role embodiment and a recorder. The study findings are an African Drama Therapy Intervention programme, (the API-R5), that takes into consideration Ubuntu and Spirituality being central to African well-being. The findings further demonstrate how the Western approach to Drama Therapy, can be adapted to the African context