Arts Research Africa Conference 2020 Proceedings
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Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Arts Research Africa project in the Wits School of Arts consists of a range of activities designed to spark dialogue, stimulate practice, enable research and inspire collective engagement around the question of artistic research in Africa. With over 60 presentations, this first conference on artistic research in Africa, was held at the University of the Witwatersrand in January 2020.
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Item Matshikiza’s King Kong Re-heard: A Pianistic Inquiry(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Mnana, YonelaHow did Todd Matshikiza, the famed Drum magazine reporter, pianist, and composer of King Kong, the South African hit musical of the 1950s, straddle these multiple worlds in his music? Drawing on my own experience as a jazz pianist, I attempted to answer this question through a performed analysis of an unreleased solo piano recording by Matshikiza. As a performer, my research aims to be not only about, but in the culture of South African solo jazz piano tradition.Item Educational Emcees in the Academy: Spoken Word Poetry as Scholarly Praxis(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Endsley, Crystal; Keith, AntonyThis new form of scholarship explores the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological possibilities for spoken word poetry to function as a social justice pedagogy and leadership praxis. Collectively, this research situates critical race theory, Black feminism, participatory action research, Hip-Hop, and artivism as epistemological positions that decolonize White, American, patriarchal ways of knowing and empirical methods of discovery.Item ‘Godot-Logue in Gauteng’: Performance Practice as a (Re)presentation of Artistic Research(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Lecogo-Zulu, Bongile; Ratladi, CalvinTo what extent can devised collaborative performance practice be considered research? How does an artist whose practice is housed in interdisciplinary collaboration be recognised as a researcher? A performance demonstration (by Bongile Lecoge-Zulu and Calvin Ratladi) of Lucky’s monologue in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot will serve as commentary on the association of research with academia. Is there scope for reframing the associations around arts research to include the actual doing of the art?Item Itinerant/Iterative Cartographies: Explorations in Cinematic Practices(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Mntambo, NdukaThe performance lecture served as an exegesis for the installation project on the city titled Asymmetries (2018/19/20). The installation and its various iterations were conceived as a making-thinking-spectatorial research project on the urban, premised on strategies developed through modes of artistic research. The project explores various forms of contemporary film practices in order to explore and re-imagine city life beyond the confines of teleological conceptions. In particular, the installation and its iterative explorations relates to cinema aesthetics and its political confrontation with the mono-focal conception of cinema and its projection norms.Item Trash, Boer, and Brat – A Redemptive Theatre Performance(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Khutsoane, Tshego; Nkosi, Les; Janse Van Vuuren, PetroCan an arts-based research enquiry reach into the silences between us as South Africans? This workshop on “Redemptive Theatre” showed how playing with dominant, habitual, and unpopular narratives can disrupt boundaries, challenge stereotypes, and, potentially, redeem us to each other.Item Practices, Pedagogies, and Desires: Untethering Research(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Andrew, David; Barry, HedwigWhat does it mean to engage in artistic research over a period of a one-year Master of Arts in Fine Arts (MAFA) project? In this discussion, a student (Barry) and supervisor (Andrew) reflected on this digressionary trajectory from the vantage point of the Global South.Item Dear Irreducibility’ … Approximating Uncertainty as a Queer Ethics of Relations(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Athene, NicoThis performance-lecture explored embodied, relational practice as an experiential site of queer, non-exploitative modalities.Item Unintended Artistic Research on Memory, Masculinity, and African Beauty: The Case of Serurubele(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Shoro, Katleho KanoWhat does it mean to re-evaluate ideas of beauty in Africa? Using performance as a research methodology and the idea of serurubele (“butterfly” in Sesotho and Setswana) as a heuristic device, this performance-lecture explored the value that critically engaging with people’s relationships with butterflies, butterfly-games, songs, and memories holds in the context of decolonial, African-centred scholarship. Could interrogating the idea of butterflies, as well as the tenderness that comes with black African men’s memories of butterflies, offer a more nuanced perspective of black masculinity and gender identity?Item Opening Performance & Dialogue: Chant(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Mahlangu, Nhlanhla; Taylor, JaneChant is an astonishing piece, combining a potent engagement with Ritual as Theatre/Theatre as Ritual, and is a work through which Mahlangu explores his multi-dimensional and cross-generational relations as a source of performance energy. It thus has some elements that draw on a psychological and resolutely archaic mode of staging. Yet, the work also explores a form of hyper-modernity, with a vacuum-cleaner as a signifier for his grandmother, who raised him.Item On the topic of interdisciplinary collaboration between art and music(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Duby, Marc; Cooper, PaulThis improvised performance drew from a shared body of knowledge in which the aesthetic outcome (as “product”) is considered as of lesser significance than the underlying artistic and creative processes (the real-time “making” aspect) underpinning the venture. This session explored processes of cooperative and circulatory reciprocity in a triangular encounter between musician, artist, and audience.Item Cultural Kasi’preneur(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Motholo, DimakatsoHow are a new generation of South African cultural entrepreneurs decolonising the perception of what education/knowledge means as they produce other forms of learning, success and survival in the township? This hybrid presentation will be a performance of the reality of the township experience through a monologue from the play titled Ekasi Lam together with the selling of Retrofontein garments.Item Darkness after Light: A Visual Portrait of Lefifi Tladi(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Senong, KolodiCan the politics, art, and ideas of a complex figure such as the thinker, poet, and painter, Lefifi Tladi, be explored through a series of portrait studies? Through a series of mixed media and graphic portraits, I seek to show how portraiture can function as a source of information gathering in relation to this seminal figure in the development of Black Consciousness in South Africa.Item KhuLuLeKa, or The Monomyth of NoBaNtu and the Ppl(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) ka Ngcobo, BalindileCan code-switching destabilize the racist and sexist hegemonies that perpetuate themselves within the English language as it (con)figures the Black Womxn in society, and consequently, on stage?Item Applied Improvisation in Africa: Facilitating Embodiment Work in Online Rooms(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Apotieri-Abdulai, Oluwadamilola; Janse Van Vuuren, PetroAn important aspect of Applied Improvisation is using and perceiving the body and those of others in the room. Can adaptations be made to enable embodied work online without jeopardising impact? In this workshop, we present different improvisation methods that can be used in online settings.Item White Italian Masculinity through the Frame of Visual and Performance art(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Genovese, NicolaThe main goal of this research is to develop a visual, performative language through sculpture and performance that might advance critical perspectives on issues linked to non-hegemonic forms of masculinities. This means dissecting the complexity of the white male privilege trope and investigating the dynamics of the so-called “masculinity in crisis.” Specifically, the research aims to analyse the red line that links national rhetoric, new populism, and masculinity in crisis in the Italian context in the frame of the economic changes and new immigration wave of the last decade.Item Urban Touch(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Sickinger, EddaThe lecture-demonstration URBAN TOUCH understands the prolific practices of screening dance as a way of touching. “Touching” holds a double character as (1) getting into contact and (2) affecting or being affected. To touch, we have to move and the action of projecting helps the dance work move and relate in time and space.[1] While any surface can potentially transform into a screen,[2] the moment of screening creates an ephemeral social entanglement of movement, memory, relation, and affect.Item Exposure to the Unknown: Artistic Research in the European Sphere(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Winter, StefanWhat are the core competencies that be unfolded by artistic research? What are its interfaces with science and technological development? What can artistic research contribute to the transformation of societies? This paper outlines the history of artistic research in Europe as a counterpart to developments in Africa, inviting both sides to articulate axes of difference, similarity, contrast, and accordance.Item “If I’m left alone I will die or will I find new roots, breed, breathe, bleed”(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Taub, Myer, Gayatri, ManolaThe unorthodox relational form of this performed conversation will enable a consideration of Practice as Research (PaR) via a critical reflection on contemporary South Asian and South African performance through encounter.Item Dream Translation and African Artistic Research(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Jacobs, JasonCan dreams provide new ways of representing the postcolonial brown male body in contemporary theatre? When devising the performance, Ek was in die skemer, my body (and the memories contained within the body) became the locus of intersecting and generating memories and dreams as material for the stage.Item African Spiritual Healing in Drama Therapy: An Exploration of Movement and Sound as a means of Facilitating Healing(Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020-07) Siko, ZaneleCan African spirituality in African dance be used as a means of facilitating the healing of women’s trauma? This performance explores the possibilities of fusing Credo Mtwa’s notion of African spirituality with the ritualistic elements of the Senegalese Ndeup dance healing method. The notion of embodiment of trauma is the entry point into this consideration of the embodiment of African dance as a healing tool.