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"Visitor: 1-day Residencies at the UCT Irma Stern Museum"

Study for 'Incantation', 2009, (100 word poem engraved on razorblades) by Johan Thom as part of 'Visitor: 1-day Residencies at the UCT Irma Stern Museum'. Photo by Liza Grobler

I am pleased be contributing to South African artist Liza Grobler’s one day residencies as part of her solo exhibition at the UCT Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town. Here is the blurb:

“During the past years, I have often collaborated with others, and although VISITOR is a solo exhibition, I am inviting guests to partake in the show. Various collaborations will take place on specific days, but the most extensive project is the residency programme contained in the heart of the exhibition space: 14 artists have the opportunity to occupy this space for 1 day each. This blog will document each intervention. Liza Grobler”

Other artists participating in the show include:

Wednesday 7 October – Francisca Sanchéz
Thursday 8 October – Lien Botha
Friday 9 October – Abri de Swardt
Saturday 10 October – Adrienne van Eeden-Wharton & Barend de Wet
Tuesday 13 October – Lynette Bester
Wednesday 14 October – Johan Thom
Thursday 15 October – Niklas Zimmer
Friday 16 October – Seth Harper
Saturday 17 October – Jacques Coetzer
Tuesday 20 October – Michael Taylor
Wednesday 21 October – Ruben Gutiérrez
Thursday 22 October – Sonya Rademeyer
Friday 23 October – Katherine Bull

Here is the project’s website: http://dayresidencies.blogspot.com/

And here is Liza Grobler’s personal website: http://www.lizagrobler.co.za/

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Schedule for Fictions of Difference – 31st October 2009

10.00 – 10.30 Registration & opportunity to see the exhibition at NAE.

10.30 Introduction Anna Douglas, curator, Life Less Ordinary

10.45– 11.30 Mika Thom, Johannesburg curator and gallerist provides a personal introduction to the art scene in South Africa today.

11.30 – 12.15 Dineo Bopape, (Life Less Ordinary artist) presents a specially commissioned performance for New Art Exchange/Djanogly Art Gallery.

12.15         Coach to Djanogly Gallery, Lakeside, Nottingham University.

12.30 – 1.30 Lunch (not included), available at Lakeside Art Centre

1.30 – 2.15 Johan Thom, performance artist, South Africa, discusses performance art in South Africa (http://johanthom.com).

2.15– 3.00 ‘The Poetics of Berni Searle’, Marion Arnold, Loughborough University.

3.00 – 3.45 ‘Queer’ – a response to the performance work of Steven Cohen, Gregory Woods, Nottingham Trent University. (http://www.gregorywoods.co.uk)

4.00 – 5.00 Open visit to the Life Less Ordinary exhibition, with all the speakers.

6.30 – 9.15 One-night only, private screening of award-winning South African feature Triomf, by Michael Raeburn, introduced by producer Lyndon Plant, with Q&A, in the Djanogly Art Gallery. The ‘horrendously hilarious film’, after the post-colonial novel by Marlene van Niekerk, tells the story of a poor white Afrikaner family living in a Johannesburg suburb in run-up to the first democratic elections in 1994. “Triomf has a universal quality, poverty is dramatic. The context is a metaphor, it’s the end of one world and the beginning of another”.

http://triomfmovie.blogspot.com/

Tickets for Triomf may be reserved as part of the study day, or as separate entrance. Tickets are free but capacity is limited due to gallery screening.

Study Day is free, booking from Lakeside Art Centre, Box office & Info Line: 0115 846 7777

For more details regarding the exhibition please visit http://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/Exhibitions/ViewEvent.html?e=1407&c=5&d=

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MAPZAR

Participating artists:

Video still 1

Video still from 'Outpost 4' by Johan Thom included in the exhibition.

Johan Thom, Ismail Farouk, Lawrence Lemaoana, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Abrie Fourie, Happy Dhlame and Titus Matiyane.

Alongside the individual artists, an exhibition showcasing relevant work from the MAP collection will be arranged, including works by Maja Marx, Gordon Froud, Andrew Tshabangu, Sean Slemon, Jacques Coetzer, and Shane de Lange. The MAP collection will be accompanied by an exhibition of projects by the Trinity Session. Both MAP and Trinity Session exhibits will act as platforms framing The Heart of the African City and the selected artists chosen to support the event. Each artist will be included into the MAP book for the African Perspectives event, which will become part of the prolific collection of books in the MAP black box collection.

African Perspectives:

African Perspectives is a biannual international event with various programmes and conferences held on the African continent. In 2009 the event will be held at the University of Pretoria in Tshwane, South Africa, and in 2011 in Casablanca, Morocco. The international conference is themed around the African City (re)sourced and the city as resource, and will take place from the 24th to the 28th of September 2009.

African Perspectives is an ongoing initiative of ArchiAfrika, emphasizing the construction of a global urban narrative, particularly surrounding issues of independence, globalization, and urbanization in an already decolonized, post-industrial, late-capitalist, pluralistic global community that is simultaneously divided and unified by various political, economic, religious, ethnic, tribal and cultural issues. At the same time, new technologies such as the Internet and other global
communications are ambiguously erasing and solidifying such territories and borders, based on the aforementioned issues. These territories form the basis of a dialogue that attempts to dissect the pluralisms and polarities of a constructed global community.

For official information about African Perspectives: http://www.africanperspectives.info/

For more information on ArchiAfrka please visit: http://www.archiafrika.org/

For detailed information on Modern Art Projects: http://map-southafrica.org/home.html

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Video still 2 from 'Challenging Mud' (2008) by Johan Thom to be exhibited as part of the exhibition

Video still 2 from 'Challenging Mud' (2008) by Johan Thom to be exhibited as part of the exhibition

New Media Festival, National Gallery, Dhaka, Bangladesh

16-27 October 2009

Participating Artists/ organizations:

India: Surekha // Pakistan: Huma Mulji and Bani Abidi // U.K: Runa Islam // Indonesia: Krisna Murti // Germany: Diana Wesser // South Africa: Johan Thom // France: Leblanc Sloan // Hong Kong/ France: Cedric Maridet // Hong Kong: Yeung Ngor Wah Anthony // Canada: SAVAC (www.savac.net) // Bangladesh: Yasmine Kabir, Molla Sagor, Mahbubur Rahman, Tayeba Begum Lipi, Raihan Ahmed Rafi, Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty and Imran Hossain Piplu.

Workshop 16-20 Oct.

Presentation/ Talk: India: Pooja Sood [Khoj, New Delhi] // Bangladesh: Shaheen Rashid (tbd)

Galleries: National Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Bengal Gallery, Dhaka.

http://www.brittoarts.org/

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SCP: What’s your opinion of “Art” in JHB? Or the “artists” in JHB? – Firstly in relation to South Africa and then to international trends. In relation to where Johannesburg’s art is going?

JT: I honestly believe that South African artists (designers, fine artists, jewelers, architects, authors etc.) are brilliant and rank amongst the best in the world. South Africa is a bit like a global crucible where everything comes together – in the process releasing incredible energy and generating countless new possibilities. Its like a real magic trick happening before your very eyes. Of course, its also painful to see things that we value (our culture, language and so on) slowly melting away but its wonderful to have that momentary realization that they could become just about anything. My only worry here is that South Africans have become very wealth obsessed and often this means that it’s no longer a question of ‘ergonomics’ but purely of ‘economics’.

As regards the field of architecture I sincerely hope that we can break away from the somewhat colonial idea that there is always more land available. We need to repair and transform the cities, existing suburbs and infrastructure without expanding horizontally. My thought here is twofold. First that we think about the long term sustainability of newly designed structures or even old ones that need replacing. A hundred years is too short a time frame. This will cost money but in the long run it will benefit us all. Secondly, we must protect the land. It is our lifeblood and we all fought so damn hard for it!

Globally I believe that contemporary art needs to discover a sense of urgency again. To paraphrase from a talk by designer Paula Scher, this does not mean that art needs to become ‘solemn’ but rather that it is a ‘serious’ activity. Serious art playfully takes things apart and offers new possibilities. Solemn art entrenches the status quo and accepts its limited place in the world (accordingly politicians and all kinds of bureaucrats simply love solemn, monumental art).

Regardless, Johannesburg has the possibility to be a global leader in terms of contemporary architecture as long as it does not become solemn. There is incredible wealth, a vast amount of people in need of architectural expertise (the wealthy and especially the poor), a general sense of optimism and real hope for the future. Certainly things should be ‘made better’ (a higher quality product and a overall social improvement) than they were under apartheid. Ons kan mos.

Read the full interview on this site HERE or on Kagablog by clicking HERE (link opens in a new window).

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Making Sense: For an Effective Aesthetics

Little Hall, Sidgwick site, University of Cambridge

Friday 25 September 2009

This conference will explore what it means to make sense of the world around us through the medium of art, and especially contemporary art: its creation, transmission and reception. In a completely new approach to this question, we propose to bring the artist, philosopher and curator together within the academic community. We thus hope to find new directions for discourses about art. Questioning the barriers that so often exist between these different disciplines, and attaching particular importance to the contributions of graduate students, we will seek a common language as we debate and experiment with the idea of ‘making sense’.

Programme:

8.30 Registration and coffee (Lecturers’ Common Room)

9.00 Lorna Collins – Introduction to ‘Making Sense’ (Little Hall)
9.15 Elizabeth Wright and Susan Sellers – ‘Painting in Prose: Performing the artist in Susan Sellers’ Vanessa and Virginia’ (Little Hall)
9.30 Ian James – ‘The Technique of Thought’ (Little Hall)
9.45 Jean-Luc Moriceau and Jennifer Milligan – ‘I could only tell, by the skin of my body’ (Little Hall)
10.00 Kathleen McKay – ‘A Budding Architectonic’ (Little Hall)
10.15 Laura McMahon – ‘Architecture of sense: Kapoor’s Memory (2008)’ (Little Hall)
10.30 Discussion. Chair: Lorna Collins

11.00 Coffee break (Lecturers’ Common Room)

11.15 Caroline Rannersberger – ‘Unsettling country: Landscape painting in Northern Australia’ (Little Hall)
11.30 Faith Lawrence – ‘The Art of Listening’ (Little Hall)
11.45 Discussion. Chair: Dr Martin Crowley

12.15 Buffet lunch (Lecturers’ Common Room)

1.15 Margalit Berrier and Uta Forstat – ‘Mémoire de l’Avenir’ (Little Hall)
1.45 Discussion (Little Hall). Chair: Elizabeth Rush

2.15 Hugo Azérad – ‘Making Sense of Epiphanic Images’ (Little Hall)
2.30 Patricia Ribault – ‘Making Makes Sense. Craft as an exploratory mode of thinking’ (Little Hall)
2.45 Performance by the PhD programme of the Slade School of Fine Arts (Michael Delacruz, Penny Florence, Errol Francis, Tim Long, Jane Madsen, Laura Malacart, Bruce McLean, Johan Thom and Veronica Vossen) – ‘Senses as Mobilising Forces’ (Little Hall)
3.00 Discussion. Chair: Elizabeth Rush

3.30 Coffee break (Lecturers’ Common Room)

4.00 Poster presentations (Alain Ayers and Cécilia Gelin, Beatriz Cantinho, Bruno Couderc, Nolwenn Denizot, Florian Forestier, Sophie Gosselin and David Gé Bartoli, Ryousuke Kakinami, Isabelle Vodjani) (Lecturers’ Common Room). Chair: Dr Emma Wilson
4.45 Roundtable discussion involving Robert Luzar’s artwork, Pause Records (Little Hall)

5.00 Jean-Luc Nancy and Making Sense (a text by Nancy read by Dr Martin Crowley in Nancy’s absence) (Little Hall)
5.45 Questions

6.00 Drinks (Lecturers’ Common Room)

….

Here is the link to the Conference’s details at the French Department, University of Cambridge (click to open in a new window): http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/french/research/sense.html

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Double-Body--Invite-2

Press Release

The Double Body: being in space is an exhibition of new and recent installation and performance art by South African artists and explores the implicit relationship between physical performance, or presence, and architectural spaces.  Drawing from a body of recent writing that makes a case for a corporeal “knowledge” of space, the works in this exhibition are invested in how the body locates itself in space and develops a sense of place, how installation environments may bear the traces of bodily presences and the different levels at which a viewer experiences an artwork. Many of the works, Alexander Opper’s installation, Auseinandersetzung, in the upper-level of the gallery, for instance, consist in an immediate sensory encounter for the viewer that takes place prior to a formal or analytical engagement with the work.
Nevertheless, each contribution to the exhibition has been rigorously conceived and carefully chosen to create an immersive network of spatial environments that exist in a carefully hewn poetic conversation with each another.  This conversation will ring most clearly at the exhibition’s opening event, where Lerato Shadi, and Bronwyn Lace will present performance works and new video work by Nina Barnett, Same Seine, will be projected onto an outdoor “screen”.  This exhibition has been designed to read best after dark, and uses unconventional lighting selected to meet the display demands of each work individually.  In this way, the exhibition breaks with the temporal conventions of gallery viewing and relies on its external environment to determine the conditions of its legibility and meaning.
Participating artists are Marcus Neustetter, Bronwyn Lace, Alexander Opper, David Andrew, Nina Barnett, Johan Thom, Lerato Shadi, Phillip Raiford Johnson, Murray Kruger and Rodan Kane Hart.
Curated for the FADA Gallery by Anthea Buys.
A digital catalogue will be available from May 20 on the FADA website.

Opening: FADA Gallery, Johannesburg, Wednesday May 20, 6.30pm.
Contact: Andthea Buys
antheabuys@mweb.co.za; 082 460 3427
With thanks to Leora Farber, Lauren van der Merwe, Gordon Froud, Rosalind Cleaver, David Paton, Lucille Pillay and Avita Padiachey.

FADA_Directions_Map

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Still from Vox Populi/ Vox Dei (Credit: Hans Wilshcut)

Photographic still  from ‘Vox Populis Vox Dei’

PRESS RELEASE: ‘DYSTOPIA’

Dates & venues:

May 23 – June 30, 2009: Unisa Art Gallery, Pretoria
October 8 – November 15, 2009: Museum Africa, Johannesburg
June 10 – August 8, 2010: Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Mangaung
October 17 – November 21, 2010: Jan Colle Galerij, Ghent

Curator: Elfriede Dreyer
Associate professor, Department of Visual Arts
University of Pretoria
Contact: +27 832712342 (mobile)
elfriede.dreyer@up.ac.za

Assistant curator: Jacob Lebeko
Assistant-curator, Unisa art gallery
University of South Africa
Contact: +27 12 4296255
lebekj@unisa.ac.za

Participating artists: Adelle van Zyl; Brett Murray; Celia de Villiers; Christiaan Diedericks; Christiaan Hattingh; Churchill Madikida; Collen Maswanganyi; Dale Yudelman; Daniel Halter; Diane Victor; Dineo Bopape; Elfriede Dreyer; Frikkie Eksteen; Guy du Toit & Iaan Bekker; Gwenneth Miller; Jenna Burchell; Jan van der Merwe; Johan Thom; Kai Lossgott; Karlien de Villiers; Kudzanai Chiurai; Lawrence Lemaoana; Minnette Vári; Moshekwa Langa; Nicholas Hlobo; Pieter Swanepoel; Steven Cohen; Thando Mama; William Kentridge, Claire Gavronsky & Rose Shakinovsky; Zanele Muholi

Art often serves an observational, analytical and interpretational purpose. Both art’s mimetic function and its imaginative aspect provide powerful means by which any society can introspect, investigate and visualise itself as a capsule of the socio-cultural and political status quo.
Within the geographical boundaries of Southern Africa, Dystopia explores the relationship of contemporary art production to society and ideology, and aims to unmask articulations of dystopia within this cultural framework. A main curatorial intention with the exhibition is to express the view that the dystopian artworks included in this exhibition and the cultural criticism articulated therein seem to have responded to an air of crisis that has been pervading contemporary thinking for several decades now.
In principle, dystopian texts express world views that postulate end-of-utopia, utopia-gone-wrong and even anti-utopia, and entail responses to and a critique of utopia. In the dystopian genre the imagination is tweaked as a critical instrument set on deconstructing existing or potential ills, injustices and hypocrisies in society, mainly brought on by utopian ideologies and legacies. In dystopian texts — whether real or fictive; visual or literary — stories are told about, for instance, societies and places where the impact of the ideological blueprint of globalisation has created diasporic cultures and nomad identities; about unjust utopian political ideas that create social restriction, impaired mobility, repression or oppression; or about postutopian space and loss of religious belief and direction. It might recount posthuman conditions as a result of the dominating influence of the technological utopianism, evident in dysfunctional cyberrelationships and telematic influences leading to rampant violence, threat to self, insensitivity and indifference to critical socio-cultural problems.
Broadly speaking, Dystopia deals with the following themes: political utopia-gone-wrong; teleology and apocalypse; dystopian contestations of gender, race and culture; spatiality and boundaries as postideological zones; the postindustrial city; and technodystopia. The artworks that have been selected for the exhibition function as palimpsests where dystopian maps have been superimposed over utopia, but also as utopian constructions where dystopian realities have been absorbed, negated and transcended in order to generate a new utopian synthesis.
A significant metatext in the conceptual architecture of the exhibition is the role and use of various kinds of technologies from low-tech to high-tech digital tools in the production of the artworks. The objective here is to come closer to an understanding of the way in which culture produces itself and attributes meaning to that self-production. The appropriated technologies reflect social processes, histories and conditions in South Africa and as such provide a kind of technological “barometer” for, for instance, rural village settings, inner city diasporic communities and consumer environments.
The exhibition consists of a combination of recently and newly produced work of South African artists, both emerging and internationally acclaimed, as well as selected artworks from the University of South Africa’s art collection.
A comprehensive catalogue and an educational programme accompany the exhibition. There will be walkabouts on Friday, May 29, and Friday, June 19, at 13h00. A panel discussion will take place in the Unisa Art Gallery on Saturday, May 30, from 10h00 to 13h00.
Dystopia is primarily funded by the National Research Foundation of South Africa under the Key International Science Capacity (KISC) Initiative, as well as by Unisa.

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