Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/37949
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Item 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, DavidThis 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.Item 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 FaithRefugees 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 contextItem Things in flux : Understanding the ontological dynamics of digital heritage objects(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Coetzee, Anton Stephen; Wintjes, JustineProcesses 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.Item Navigating Liminal Space: Embodied Knowledge within Performance Pedagogies in Archival Reconstruction(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Ramsay, FionaI 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.Item Understanding the ontological dynamics of digital heritage objects(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Coetzee, Anton Stephen; Wintjes, JustineProcesses 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.Item 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, BrettThis 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.Item 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, TanjaThe 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).Item 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, PetroA 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.Item A Deep Divide in South African Art Music: Locating the Voice of the Performer(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Nay, Malcom; Olwage, GrantThis 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.Item 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, ChristoThe 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.