Wits School of Arts (ETDs)

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Locality Shaping the Institution: Genesis Connection Youth Skills Multimedia, Riverlea, Johannesburg
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Pather, Jodie; Ntombela, Nontobeko; Khan, Sharlene
Following the rich history that community art centres have had in South Africa, this research questions how locality may ideologically shape community-based arts institutions and have a bearing on how they operate and what they have access to. Specifically, this study looks at the community-based arts organisation, Genesis Connection Youth Skills Multimedia (Genesis), in Riverlea, Johannesburg. This research report is carried out to ascertain the extent to which Genesis and the work that they do is influenced by their home community of Riverlea, and how this locality may affect or determine their curriculum, programming, and access to funding. Through episodic interviews, I explore the significance of locality to community-based art centres as is experienced directly by facilitators of different initiatives. The first chapter in this report deals with an overview of scholarship on community art centres; defining and contextualising them, including a historical overview of community art centres that have existed in Johannesburg. Locality, as a concept and its associated literature as related to community art centres is discussed and incorporates perspectives from facilitators working in the field. The second chapter presents a historical overview of the area of Riverlea and builds on the description from Chris Van Wyk’s autobiographical work Shirley, Goodness and Mercy (2004), as a way of complementing, enriching and humanising the academic perspectives on the area of Riverlea. These upfront chapters provide the context for the birth of Genesis, and the terrain that it operates in. Lastly, the third chapter looks at the funding landscape that has sustained community-based arts in South Africa, with specific attention paid to government-funded community-based arts centres, alongside a discussion of how Genesis is funded. The purpose of this is to establish an understanding of the accessibility of funds for arts organisations, what their unique challenges may be, as well as to highlight the sustainability of government-funded organisations in comparison to that of self funded organisations, such as Genesis
An Ecofeminist Reading of Hadestown: The Myth, The Muscial
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) Vos, Abigail; Somma, Donato
Hadestown: The Myth, the Musical has merged two ancient love stories and has presented these stories within a world riddled with environmental damage. The four main characters (Orpheus, Eurydice, Persephone, and Hades) are influenced by the environment in various ways. Persephone acts as the goddess of the natural world and therefore is nature’s ambassador. Hades, the king of the Underworld, has become an industrial mogul and has inadvertently damaged the earth with his industrial kingdom. As a result, Eurydice is left to suffer these consequences and faces poverty and hunger because of the environmental imbalance that engulfs her. Orpheus, in response, attempts to write a song that will bring balance to the world once more. Our characters are situated within an environmentalist fable; therefore, the musical’s narrative centres around how these characters interact with the environment. The music of Hadestown has been carefully selected in an eclectic way. Jazz, folk, musical theatre, and opera have all had various influences on the musical world of the show. This influence is not simply limited to the score, but the histories of these genres bleed into the work. Folk and jazz both carry profound messages of struggle and protest with them, and therefore the use of these genres aids in the environmentalist activism presented in the musical. These genres and their social and geographical histories are layered into Hadestown. The musical allows for deep character analysis and textual analysis through the writing of Anaïs Mitchell. In this research, I will present an analysis of the lyrics of Hadestown to present the embedded themes of environmentalism, anti-capitalism, and anti-industrialism. My analysis will present how the pained Earth and Her inhabitants reflect the pain endured by the Global South, specifically by women. Impoverished women in third-world countries face most environmental consequences accompanying the Global North’s incessant need for more. This effect is portrayed in the lives of Eurydice and Persephone. An ecofeminist framework will be applied to the work as Persephone exhibits inherent ecofeminist traits. Hadestown presents its audience with a mirror of the world they live in and ask its audience what it will do about it.
Where Did Things Go Wrong? An Investigation of the Adoption of the Creative Industry and Creative Economy Concepts in the Malawi National Cultural Policy
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Phiri, Yotam Alston Maweya; Joffe, Avril
The enactment in 2015 of Malawi’s National Cultural Policy was heralded as providing the formalised guidelines that would bring together stakeholders in the arts and culture sector towards the attainment of a common set of goals and a unified vision. However, in the eight (8) years that have followed there is a perception amongst non-state actors that the National Cultural Policy contains a vision and goals that do not meet the realities on the ground, nor the needs of its intended beneficiaries. This research challenges the assumption that the failure of the National Cultural Policy is the result of the failure to reconcile the transition of Malawi’s arts and culture from the margins during the Single-Party era to its alignment more centrally in national development agendas in Democratic Malawi. The central argument of this study is that the failed attempt of the government to mimic the application of the creative industry and creative economy concepts utilised with much success in the Global North, in Malawi’s arts and culture sector is at the heart of the National Cultural Policy’s failure. This research study investigates the failure to mimic these Global North concepts without recontextualizing them to the Malawian arts and culture landscape in the early stages of the policy’s development as being the root cause for its subsequent failure. The study utilises a qualitative methodology in order to analyse the various disconnects within the National Cultural Policy and the impacts these have on the policy’s implementation.
A Happier Life Through Sad Mode - Designing Automated Players for Single Player Games
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Chola, Saili; Reid, Kieran; Du Preez, Kirsten
Solo games are a keystone of tabletop board gaming for players and designers alike. While they are numerous and enjoyed by many members of the community, there is a noticeable lack of clarity and exploration of what principles make these games uniquely interactive and enjoyable experiences for players. This project responds to this inadequacy through the development of a playable game and a research report. The game demonstrates and tests the virtues of solo game play mechanics while the report expands and discusses the interpretable results and qualities of said solo game mechanics.
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.
The Influence of Fandom on the Creative Producers
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Moodley, Seyurie; Whitcher, Raymond
What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine, this is the world of fandom. Looking at the ways in which fandoms have had an influence on storytelling; do stories really belong to the original content producer once they have developed a big enough fandom or, are they trying to fulfil the needs of the consumers? Once a fandom has become large enough there is a possibility of malcontent within audience members that can eventually lead to the rise of toxic fandom. The aim of this research is to look at the ways in which creators have tailored and filtered their own original ideas to please audiences, specifically toxic fans and how they have potentially compromised authenticity so that they could franchise a certain story and its respective universe. This paper will investigate the following televisual/ filmic icons of popular culture: Harry Potter (2001-2011), Game of Thrones (2011-2019) and finally Rick and Morty (2013-present). They will be analysed to determine the ways in which fandoms possibly become toxic and lose the ownership of the creative producers/authors/show runners/directors. By analysing these three case studies and their respective fandoms the research will attempt to verify whether a story still belongs to the creative producers or whether they have been appropriated by fans, by forcibly adapting the core story to fit the consumers’ needs. All three fandoms will be looked at by taking different approaches, as they could be said to have very different fanbases and therefore it will give this research a better understanding as to how these fandoms work and the ways in which they adapt a story to make it popular or in turn change the story to create shock value. This research will approach a six-phase framework of fan appropriation which will attempt to prove the thesis statement. These phases were created in order to look at and therefore demonstrate how once a story has a big enough fandom, they no longer belong to the original producer but are rather made in the form of participatory culture, as theorised by Henry Jenkins.
Entangled Intimacies: An Experimental Curatorial Project of Transdisciplinary Becoming-With
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Thomas, Rory Lee Stewart; Twalo, Sinethemba
Employing strategic modes of textual and curatorial “opacity” (Glissant 1997: 189), this project endeavours to consider how arts-based research methodologies may be uniquely positioned to explore the chaotic embodied implications of the so-called Anthropocene. This work of arts-based knowledge production and explorative enquiry is centred around an exhibition I have curated entitled Entangled Intimacies: art, more-than-human embodiment, and the climate catastrophe, which constitutes this project’s practical component. The exhibition is being held from 10 February to 6 May 2023 at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg gallery and features newly commissioned artworks by local practitioners Tzung-Hui Lauren Lee, Io Makandal, and Natalie Paneng. This research report considers the ongoing process of curating this exhibition via a varied textual pathway that follows through a number of different considerations and references. These include an assessment of individual and collective grief, the potential of utilising curatorial opacity as a means of relating to the chaos of ecological degradation, and a discussion of a selection of previous curatorial projects from the last two decades which have engaged this reality through contemporary art. These projects include DON’T/PANIC (2011), Sex Ecologies (2021-2022), and the ongoing work of Johannesburg based not-for-profit arts organisation POOL (founded in 2015). The diverse, and at times perhaps disorientating, form of this research report is a curatorial and written reflection on the chaotic implications of more-than-human embodiment in the Anthropocene. This is conceived as an actualisation of curator Stefanie Hessler’s (2020: 249) assertion that “[t]he uneven, uncontainable climate crisis obligates curators to rethink ways of working. Exhibition making in times of ecological disaster … needs to differ from previous curatorial modes.” This project works to remain aware of the city of Johannesburg as its site of emergence while also engaging with the globally interconnected reality of the Anthropocene. It thus offers a propositional, mutable, and exploratory gesture towards what contemporary curatorial practice within this uncertain time and place marked by ecological violence may entail.
Seeing Beneath and Beyond the Red: Exploring the layers and folds in the Atlas I and Atlas II paintings of Penny Siopis through an understanding of affect theory and a pondering of the affective aesthetic experience
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Marakalala, Mamelodi Dolly; Valley, Greer
Emotion has always held a significant role in the creation and then the experience of objects of art. Artists have life experiences that eventually seep into their works through the use of interesting materials and techniques, engaging with a range of mediums, and going as far as their imagination takes them. In turn, under varying contexts, viewers get to relate to the feelings emitted from the paintings. Grounded in art historical and visual cultural theorisations of affect, this study explores the Atlas I and Atlas II (2020) paintings of Penny Siopis (b. 1953) from Stevenson Gallery’s In The Air (2020-2021) exhibition. It is based on the reading that their formal characteristics, especially the scenes, shapes and red colour appearing in a single painting represent specific emotions, which are to be articulated properly through symbols found in the realms of other media, including music, literature, and film. Additionally, research on the aesthetic experience is also explored, including fanatic responses from digital social media platform Instagram, a book on the emotional expression of crying in front of paintings, an empirical study that focuses on emotional content in paintings and the emotional experiences that follow, as well as a look at the contexts that situate affect in a real and diverse world. I make use of a qualitative conceptual research method to ensure that all present information on the facets and depths of this study are assessed and illuminated meaningfully, to produce a well-rounded and nuanced understanding of Siopis’ art as well as the art experience.
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.
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.

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