Approach catalogue

CONTENTS

Message from the Curator Molemo Moiloa SAHA - South African History Archive SPARCK - Space for Pan-African Research and Knowledge UFC - Urban Futures Centre Rike Sitas Public Programme Acknowlegements

page 6 page 10 - 11 page 15 - 21 page 25 - 31 pages 36 - 41 page 44 - 45 page 48 - 58 page 60

KZNSA GALLERY

A MESSAGE FROM THE FUNDER The NLC relies on funds from the proceeds of the National Lottery.

The Lotteries Act guides the way in which NLC funding may be allocated.

The intention of NLC funding is to make a difference to the lives of all South Africans, especially those more vulnerable and to improve the sustainability of the beneficiary organisations.

Available funds are distributed to registered and qualifying non-profit organisations in the fields of charities; arts, culture and national heritage; and sport and recreation.

By placing its emphasis on areas of greatest need and potential, the NLC contributes to South Africa’s development.

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MESSAGE FROM THE CURATOR

MESSAGE FROM THE CURATOR Approach: Cultural Production in Shifting Social Context Exhibition and Educational Programme 18 April - 8 May 2016 Considering the resurgence of socially engaged creative practice in the South African context, we have the opportunity to reflect critically on the ways in which these practices are being used as part of integrated processes to effect political, social and cultural transformation. Outside of more conventional art contexts, we see the value that these practices bring to other fields of knowledge production: from urbanism to environmentalism, from applied theatre to participatory design in civil society.

The conversation presented by Approach considers and represents three examples of projects that straddle the interesting space of collaborative and collective cultural knowledge production. The exhibition reflects on the range of practices that exist and complexities that shape social engaged creative practices in complex and highly politicised contexts.

Approach presents work from three organisations that use creative practice as a tool for exploring and understanding the various and multiple social realities of contemporary South Africa and the African Continent. The South African History Archive, SPARCK and Urban Futures Network use creative practice to create spaces where insight is generated about how larger social and economic changes affect communities collectively and on a personal level. All three organisations offer citizens, residents and participants, the opportunity to reflect and critical engage in their context through a shared and negotiated process.

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Through a focus on the production of knowledge each of the organisations explore, develop and reflect on methodologies and approaches that take into careful consideration the contextual constraints they are located in. By acknowledging that the outcomes of such processes need to serve multiple agendas, and benefit the multiple communities engaged in this process of producing knowledge, the notion of accountability is central to the process of ethical collaboration.

The exhibition and programme are a provocation to reflect collectively on the following questions, as we as a community of practitioners and thinkers explore the potential of creative practice in tackling the contested and vastly unequal power relations prevalent in Africa.

Participation: In the design of social engaged practice, how you do define the difference between collaboration and participation? In spaces where access and resources are often unequal, how are partnerships being conceived? In its various forms what are the limitations within current thinking around participatory methodologies and practice?

Community: How, through these various practices, are we able to integrate an understanding of community that is multiple and consists of smaller groups that are self-defined, through shared conflicts or mutual interest? What insight do we gain from already established structures and mechanism of self-organising, where agency and access are constantly negotiated?

MESSAGE FROM THE CURATOR

Knowledge production: If through the various processes the interest is to capture new imaginings of place and to develop a more complex understanding of knowledge (co)production, how are conversations around ownership and access being mediated? If we are to understand the complexities of participatory practice through the invited organisations, one should give some consideration to interdisciplinary nature in which they work shifting more conventional understandings of participatory and community engaged practice.

Power: In each of these fields or contexts, what are we learning about how individuals consistently negotiate their relationship to power, as the formation of their identities change in relation to historical racial and economic segregation. What kinds of new engagements with power can creative practice enable?

The exhibition and programme have been designed to encourage dialogue and exchange through creating various entry points for multiple communities. The exhibition provides the visual context, introducing the organisations and presenting projects that they have developed. It is a space to constantly return to as the programme unfolds and to reflect on a changing relationship to provocations of Approach. The public programme provides a more direct engagement with the content and organisation through workshops, screenings, presentations and panel discussions.

The activities have been designed to support the exhibition, creating spaces for critical discussion around the role and value of socially engaged practice.

The exhibition and programme have been designed to encourage dialogue and exchange through creating various entry points for multiple communities. The exhibition provides the visual context, introducing the organisations and presenting projects that they have developed. It is a space to constantly return to as the programme unfolds and to reflect on a changing relationship to provocations of Approach. The public programme provides a more direct engagement with the content and organisation through workshops, screenings, presentations and panel discussions.

The activities have been designed to support the exhibition, creating spaces for critical discussion around the role and value of socially engaged practice.

The READING AREA provides a space for reflection and the opportunity to understand the broader context that organisations are situated in. Each of the organisations have made available publications and journal articles to give a greater insight into the work and processes they are engaged in. The additional books and exhibited essays provide further context for some of the conversations, locating the organisations and their projects in a larger field of inquiry.

Vaughn Sadie Curator, May 2016

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MOLEMO MOILOA

MOLEMO MOILOA

Just over 20 years ago, South Africa attempted to redefine its understanding of the social and of community – our notions of what these are and how we enact them are only starting to establish themselves now. Therefore we can’t really define what we think communities are, or our roles in them.

What we do know is that our ways of enacting the social connections amongst ourselves are in constant renegotiation – within the 4th estate, on the service un-delivered streets, and increasingly in our universities. We, the people who live and make life in this place exist in an insurgent citizenship 1. An insurgent citizenship that is in constant negotiation of who we are in relation to one other and the structures defining the bureaucracies of our life worlds. This has been described as an entanglement 2, a kind of mutuality of conflict and inter-reliance. This complex state of being is not particularly unique to South Africa, but is especially difficult to articulate and understand in a uniquely violent, unequal and historically difficult place.

If creative practice is primarily about meaning making 3, and if meaning making is a necessary practice of being human in relation to others, it is necessary then that creative practice should – at least at some point –attempt to make meaning of this entanglement that is so much a part of who we are, but also integral to the way we will be in the next 20 years. If creative practice is also about posing new ideas, giving names to those things that are as yet nameless 4, then at some level creative practice must inevitably entangle itself in the very relations and processes of meaning making that are about life in this place, at this time.

1 2 3 4

James Holston (2008) Sarah Nuttal (2009) Simon Gush (2014) Audre Lorde (1985)

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To entangle oneself is to take on the difficulties and pains of violent, unequal and historically difficult social relations and community making that exist in everyday South Africa. This entanglement will therefore inevitably replicate forms of violence and inequality and will hold us in difficulty with others. This entanglement, and its engagement with the realities of society/community/ relation making, is at the same time agentive and generative – and therefore of value in spite of its difficulty. How we articulate this value, for ourselves as creative practitioners, as people in communities, and for those who might consider themselves as other, is not well established.

The articulation of value, and therefore its inherent valuing, is a necessary and important process of developing and establishing a way of working – for which this exhibition plays an important role. As participatory and community-collaborative creative practice become established in a very particular way in other parts of the world, our contributions and the contributions of other practitioners from the so-called Global South present an important part of extending the potential of community engaged public art practice.

The difficulties in articulating the value of this kind of work are manifold. On the one hand, there is the vital and undeniable reality of socio-political inequality and the resultant power dynamics that will inevitably play out in the ways in which relational work does. Further to this is the, unfortunately quite regular, active exploitation of power dynamics by creative practitioners for career gain or aesthetic vanity. In some cases this is done unwittingly, but regularly it is done due to an unwillingness to engage in ethical and fair practice. The regularity of these examples results in a resounding case against this kind of practice and the on-going abuse of ordinary people who do not benefit in any way from these artists or their work. This argument needs to be made regularly, and practitioners should be held to account and required to self examine their work constantly. However, the fact that entangling oneself in the realities of life is difficult, and potentially messy, does not mean one should therefore simply disentangle. This is not the solution for creative practice, and not for the potential for creative practice to contribute to meaning making in tangible and relevant ways.

MOLEMO MOILOA

Here lies another reason why valuing this sort of work is difficult – what are these ‘tangible’ and ‘relevant’ ways? In the contemporary speak of public action – by the state, by the nongovernmental sector and also the commercial sector – outcomes, statistics and measurable indices are what determine value. If one is to claim value for the participatory and relational – particularly at risk of problematic politics – one must then be able to prove it otherwise. However when a work is in fact seeking meaning in the intangible, the momentary, the fragmentary and the relational – measuring is impossible. When a work is attempting to connect to the things in life that cant be held, or perhaps are not even yet named, trying to pin their value down, and then articulate it is incredibly difficult. It is especially difficult for a practitioner who is steeped in the complexities and emotional energies of work and relation required of them in these processes, as they are not in a position to pause and count.

Creative practice has always claimed space for these ‘frivolous necessities’. It is the seeming contradiction of integrating these ‘frivolities’ into the very space in which other urgencies are so tangible (as opposed to a white cube) that is so immensely challenging but also incredibly important.

It is the contradiction of ‘sustainable urban solutions’ 6 with poeticism, or governmentality 7 with the relational, or infrastructure with the transient, that begins to bring new subjectivities to old ideas. By being in direct difficulty with governance, infrastructure, educational policy or other such serious business, creative practice and its particular approach to meaning making has the potential to rethink and redefine. This may not be in measurable or expansive ways, but just over 20 years into trying to define ourselves, new imaginations are more urgent than ever.

Beyond this, seeking meaning in the intangible, the momentary, the fragmentary and the relational is simply not important enough in the contemporary moment – even if we were able to measure it. The agenda is different in times of innovation, technological advancement and the urgencies of poverty, inequality and violence. Big answers are required, large profits must be made, millions of people need to be employed, fast fast fast! These projects are about small lives, ordinary days, and neighbourhood blocks. They function on micro-scale with micro-intensity and need time. The projects deal with personal lives, everyday existences and may have no physical trace whatsoever once they are over. They demand time and place for the things that make us human and claim back the small sacredness of our lives from the infrastructures of bureaucracy 5.

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Chatterjee (2004)

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Urban Futures Centre (2016) Foucault, Lectures at the Collège de France (1978-1983)

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SAHA - SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE

SAHA - SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE

South African History Archive Founded in 1988, SAHA is an independent activist archive based at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg.

With its roots in the United Democratic Front, SAHA was founded on principles of activism, inclusion, pluralism and collective action, and born of a conviction that, within the context of state repression, stories not only of why but also of how the struggle against apartheid was being waged were under threat. This archival instinct to collect and protect records of resistance was fuelled by the idea that these documents could lay the archival foundations for a just future and, one day, contribute to the making of democracy.

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Taking archive out of the basement, beyond the traditional domains of the elite – the academy, the state – into spaces and communities historically excluded from the archive, both in terms of access and representation;

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Using archive interactively and generatively, to prompt and produce new archive, to capture and make accessible those voices that speak to experiences, stories previously silenced or excised;

Today SAHA continues to serve as an archival agent for justice and accountability - that is, archive as both verb and noun, activism and artefact, unsettling rather than allowing the dust in the stacks to settle. SAHA has retained its initial commitment to ensuring that neglected histories continue to be surfaced. In a country in which exclusions and injustices in apartheid society were mirrored in the archive, much work is still needed to redress these gaps in the record, to challenge entrenchment of ‘official versions’ of history, by bringing together multiple, sometimes conflicting, memories, histories, truths, publics in order to create a diverse, inclusive, pluralistic archive.

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Highlighting resonances between past and present struggles for justice and accountability, using history as a lens to activate dialogue, foster education about rights and responsibilities of citizens in a participatory democracy.

The SAHA work on display here speak to various strategies that have underpinned the work of this activist archive:

Archives should be finding and enabling voice, becoming sites of dialogue and debate, noisy with disagreement. Archives should be participatory spaces, encouraging dissenting voices to be contained in the same sphere, to argue over space and time, and draw attention to the processes through which histories, and futures, can be made and unmade.

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SAHA - SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE 16

Activity at water well tank, Mogopa, Transvaal, 9 December 1983

Returning to water well tank, Mogopa, North West, 29 May 2013

Gille de Vlieg

Gille de Vlieg

SAHA - SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE

“I fell into photography because of my membership of the Black Sash and the support this organisation was giving rural communities resisting removal or displacement.

I found a deep urge to record this rural lifestyle before it disappeared and to watch how individuals, some of them elderly, became land activists.

At the beginning of any gathering, people were asked if they were comfortable with me taking images, and permission was always given without hesitation. Perhaps there was a sense that the photographs might help their resistance and allow their situation to be better known...

There were times when I was able to take back prints to show them to the individuals or groups concerned. My hope was that in these images they would see their own abilities and strength in their resistance.

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SAHA - SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE Woman & mielies Driefontein, Transvaal, 15 Dec 1984

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Mine truck & taxi, Driefontein, Mpumalanga, 11 June 2013 Gille de Vlieg

SAHA - SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE

As I went back through these images from that past decades later, I was struck by the sense of stability that they showed, despite the trauma of the threat of displacement, and, as was the case in Mogopa, actual removal.

Returning to the three communities on field trips with SAHA in 2013 gave me a sense of disorientation – as the past images remained vividly in my mind and senses, I struggled to relate them to what I was seeing now.

In Mogopa I went back to the tree where people had gathered for their meetings, the piece of iron that was used as a ‘bell’ was still hanging from one of the branches. I looked over the area and then, accompanied by one of the land activists, went on a walking pilgrimage around the area, visiting the ruined former homes and the graves of those I had known before...

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SAHA - SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE 20

Turkeys & family at home, Braklaagte, Transvaal, 15 Apr 1986

Home with tea, Braklaagte, North West, 23 June 2015

Gille de Vlieg

Gille de Vlieg

SAHA - SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE

In all three communities, people’s earthiness, that earthiness that had shown their reliance for physical and psychological sustenance from the earth, seemed to have withered.

Now there was colour in the washing, the painted walls of the houses – but the colour was alongside dusty barren fields, empty spaces where people had previously gathered, and an absence of the many vegetable gardens previously alongside people’s homes. The focus had shifted from the fields to the nearby towns, from being able to grow food themselves, to the need for a job in order to buy food from supermarkets.

It was, however, encouraging to see how the youth at the three workshops did feel a connection to their history as they recognised people they knew in the images. If the images from the past are able to create an enlarged understanding within the viewers’ mind to the real necessities of the present and future, the land activists of those times will rest easier.”

Gille de Vlieg

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SPARCK - Space for Pan-African Research, Creation and Knowledge - is a programme of experimental multi-disciplinary arts residencies, workshops, symposia, exhibitions, publications, podcasts and performances centred on innovative, ethically driven approaches to urban space.

SPARCK was first conceptualized as a triennial project. In 2007-2008, an initial working paper was produced that set out key themes to be addressed by SPARCK in its first three years of activity.

Entitled “Net/Works: Translocal Cultures in the Making of African Worlds,� it was authored by urban scholars AbdouMaliq Simone and Dominique Malaquais, multi-media artist and educator Kadiatou Diallo, and choreographer Faustin Linyekula.

SPARCK was launched in 2008 and is run by a two-woman team: Kadiatou Diallo and Dominique Malalquais. Together, they are experimenting with novel ways of collaborating. Hierarchies are replaced with joint decision-making and collective responsibilities, physical centres and offices with mobile and virtual workspaces. Process and results are equally important and always experimental.

SPARCK actively rejects notions of centre and periphery. With this in mind, one of its primary goals is to work with cultural practitioners by going to them rather than asking that they come to SPARCK. Residencies and related projects take place across the continent and beyond, in a radically de-centered approach to collaboration and production.

Live-feed Internet connections, public film projections and social networking set-ups of various kinds (from Facebook to blogs and trans-continental artworks that travel in taxis) are intended to allow wide-ranging participation by heterogeneous and far-flung publics and to foster horizontal networks of exchange and engagement.

As people, institutions and places, projects, art works, performances and texts come together, novel ideas and undertakings emerge, increasing the richness and complexity of a groundbreaking experiment in Pan-African exchange.

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SPARCK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE

SPARK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE

SPARCK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE

SPARCK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE Kongo Astronauts are a Kinshasa based crew - part artists’ collective, part think-tank and experimental living facility - and the protagonists of SPARCK’s editorial “Speculate this” (2014) in the Toronto-based art, culture and politics publication, Fuse Magazine . http://fusemagazine.org/2014/08/37-2-editorial Photo by Renaud Barret for Kongo Astronauts

COLLABORATIONS SPARCK projects are developed in partnership with an expanding network of artists and cultural practitioners at work throughout Africa and the diasporas, in a call and response pattern that privileges out-of-the box, self-sustaining initiatives.

At the core of SPARCK collaborations is the notion of mutual benefit. The goal is to build upon ongoing conversations in ways that allow diverse partners to test in a range of contexts ideas fundamental to their own practice. Key also is combining and jointly inventing skill sets, making space, in the process, for a move beyond pre-conceived roles.

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SPARCK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE

IN/FLUX is a series of three DVDs centering on experimental film and video from the African world, created in partnership with the award-winning Paris-based film production company Lowave.

INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICES SPARCK engages with creators working in and between image, sound, word and video, installation, transient architectures, cutting edge technologies and emergent media on projects that question the status quo, refusing clichĂŠs and easy answers.

Projects consequently dissolve boundaries between disciplines and types of knowledge, opening up spaces of democratic exchange to foster dialogue across age, class, gender, spatial, occupational and ethnic divides.

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SPARCK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE

NET/WORKS SPARCK deliberately chooses not to operate from any one physical centre or even a particular city/ country. Understanding itself as a node in a growing network of like-minded creators and practitioners from very diverse backgrounds, SPARCK actively invests in lateral relationships across the African world.

SPARCK docks with individuals, initiatives and institutions, brainstorming, co-developing and participating in projects that run the gamut from artist collaborations and public events to academic gatherings and publications, both on paper and online.

Since its inception in 2008, SPARCK has staged projects in over a dozen countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.

Ground | Overground | Underground (GOU) is a project of Congolese/ French transdisciplinary collective Mowoso. Built in, around and through a range of different spacetime-states, GOU emerged from three distinct places/ perspectives: Mbandaka (DRC), a city set astride the Equator, directly below the Geostationary Earth Orbit, which hosts a majority of the planet’s communication satellites; Kinshasa, the capital of DRC; Mikili: a hybrid, mythic “third space” located in Western Europe. http://sparck.org/about-gou

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SPARCK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE

Chocolate Banana is a video installation created by Congolese visual artist and writer Bill KouĂŠlany and by Goddy Leye, Cameroonian multi-media artist and founder of the Art Bakery (Bonendale, Cameroon), during their joint residency in Guangzhou, China in 2010. Reflecting a thematic focus on the movement of bodies and goods within and between cities and continents, Chocolate Banana was displayed on small flat-screen LCD screens in the back of taxis from Dakar and Brazzaville to Basel. http://sparck.org/chocolate-banana-guangzhou

MULTIPLE SITES Projects are rarely showcased in typical, often exclusive art world settings.

Instead the focus is on experimental, unexpected and unconventional setups: a taxicab in Brazzaville, a German ethnographic museum, a marketplace in Kinshasa, a Joburg bioscope, a podcast, a book you can carry around in your back pocket‌setups that aim to open up conversations with widespread and at times unpredictable audiences.

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SPARCK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE Overground | Underground . Melding fiction and faction, Mowoso’s performance | installation | architecture tells the story of a very particular journey: the psychic path that a man must travel to make his way from the continent he calls home - Africa - to the “West”, the self-proclaimed nucleus of 21st century digital globalisation. http://sparck.org/work-in-progress http://sparck.org/afropolis

ARTIST-DRIVEN PROJECTS There are no briefs, no commissions, no application forms. Agency and ownership always rest with the creators.

Projects are rarely one-off undertakings; driven by the artists who take part in them, they are encouraged to grow and bring into being new projects within and beyond SPARCK’s ambit. In this sense, SPARCK projects often are a first chapter of a larger and ongoing process.

A single residency, for instance, may grow into multiple residencies, resulting in an installation work shown from Joburg to Kinshasa, at the Dakar and Cotonou Biennales, at Axis Gallery in New York, and finding a permanent home at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C.

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Night Moves I explores the nature of life lived without electricity in Central Africa’s largest city: Kinshasa. Published in the Pan-African journal Transition, chaired by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, it is a 35-page intervention curated for SPARCK by Dominique Malaquais and designer & photographer Cédrick Nzolo (Kinshasa).

The result is a series of exchanges between scholars and artists, which showcase an ensemble of diverse perspectives through which an account of African cityness can be advanced.

The second chapter of Rogue Urbanism focuses on SPARCK.

http://sparck.org/night-moves-i https://www.facebook.com/Transition.Magazine/

http://www.africancentreforcities.net/rogueurbanism-emergent-african-cities-2/

URBAN SPACES AND FUTURES SPARCK projects engage with urban Africa as both a focus and a viewing platform – a space from which to look out at the world, so as to imagine the future of cities planet-wide.

Alternative readings of urban space and culture set the stage for new ways of thinking about socially inclusive practices of daily, communal engagement.

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SPARCK - SPACE FOR PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE

Edited by scholars Edgar Pieterse and Abdoumaliq Simone, Rogue Urbanism is the outcome of a research exploration by the African Centre for Cities (ACC). It arises from the need to push forward a debate on how we can think and theorise the specificity of African cities. Its unique ambition is to produce new and relevant theoretical work on African urbanism in a way that works within the border zone between inherited theoretical resources, emergent postcolonial readings and artistic representations of everyday practices and phenomenology in African cities.

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UFC - URBAN FUTURES CENTRE

UFC - URBAN FUTURES CENTRE

The Urban Futures Centre (UFC) does not operate as a traditional university department. While the UFC prioritises doing research, the way in which research is conducted is unusual. The UFC operates much like a network, believing that no one person or organisation holds all the knowledge required for good solutions and meaningful practice.

The UFC uses a participatory action research approach. This means that the very people who the research is about, are involved in the research process as partners. This partnership may include; defining the research problem/questions, designing the way in which the research is done, interpreting the research, and deciding what is to be done with the research findings.

Working in this way allows the UFC to forge strong collaborative relationships with a wide range of individuals, organisations and institutions.

The UFC is committed to having research outcomes that make a difference in the daily lives of people living in urban spaces, in particular Durban. This means that we also have to be committed to engaging with the messy process of everyday life, as well as grass roots initiatives and politics.

Developing a network of partners and resources requires building relationships and trust.

Participatory action research usually takes large amounts of time and personal input. In addition it demands deep ethical reflection, especially in projects where research actively are meant to work towards tangible outcomes for the participants involved.

There are three themes that run through the UFC projects in this exhibition; using a partnership network model, that participants are active partners in projects, and experimenting with participatory and bottom-up methodologies. The first two themes are inter-connected. When research participants are invited into a network of partners tackling key issues the nature of a project changes. A network of this kind enables a space to listen to a multitude of ‘experts’ from both academia and from the community. In this sense creating collaborative multi-disciplinary networks offers enormous potential for participatory and engaged research. These types of projects are co-designed and guided by participants themselves.

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UFC - URBAN FUTURES CENTRE Police speak with families affected by drug abuse at the Denis Hurely Centre after a performance of ULWEMBU.

Mpume Mthombeni’s performance as Portia, a police women and Mother to Sipho (Zenzo Msomi) who desperately

24th October 2015. Val Adamson.

seeks balance between justice, mercy and empathy. The cast are not just actors, but researchers, learning facilitators, and advocates for humane drug responses in the city.

This performance took place at the Denis Hurley Centre on the 24th October 2015. Val Adamson.

THE VALUE OF NETWORKS In the Street Level Drug-Use project the UFC co-ordinates a network of people working on developing harm reduction strategies for heroin (whoonga) users and alternative ways of policing drugs in the city. Network members include; drug users (current and recovering), public health officials, psychologists, faith-based organisations, harm reduction specialists and police officers. Without the expertise of all these partners the project could not begin to grapple with the complexities of street level drug-use in the city. Listening to diverse positions and experiences is essential if we are to design and advocate for programmes that reduce the harms of problematic drug use for users, their families and their communities.

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UFC - URBAN FUTURES CENTRE

INTENTIONALLY IMAGINATIVE To explore alternative and participatory ways to address complex issues requires intentionally imagining different ways of doing things. Sometimes it takes an artist’s imagination, or a dancers poetic movement to shift academics out of our habits. This uncomfortable push can activate imaginative ways of reaching and listening to different audiences, and for producing more responsive and relevant research.

The partnership with the Ulwembu team shown here used a powerful piece of empathy theatre to start deep reflective discussions on whoonga and society ’s responses to drug use.

Zenzo Msomi and Ncgebo Cele’s performances from the Big Brotherhood culminate from over a year of research into street level drug addiction as part of the wider ‘pathways into and out of drug use’ headed by the UFC. UKZN May 2015. Val Adamson.

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UFC - URBAN FUTURES CENTRE The busy intersection of DUT and Warrick Junction. 20 May 2015. Micaela De Fritas.

INTERDISCIPLINARY SPACES Creating multi and inter-disciplinary partnership networks offers more than just rich understandings through diverse voices. Interdisciplinary spaces push people out of their comfort zones, and into experimental and creative unknowns.

One excellent example of this was the Blue Skies project. Here we were interested in the role of urban design and planning in making city spaces more just and equal places to live. Too often urban planning primarily represents the interests of those who possess various types of recognised capital - economic, cultural or social. Seldom is urban planning designed to serve the people who already live and work in a space, informally or formally, and who already shape the built environment in unique and innovative ways.

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UFC - URBAN FUTURES CENTRE

Pedestrians, Commuters and Minibus Taxis for the Blue Skies project: Early morning image. 19 May 2015. Micaela De Fritas.

Pedestrians, Commuters and Minibus Taxis for the Blue Skies project: Early Evening image. 20 May 2015. Micaela De Fritas.

DESIGNING WITH PEOPLE RATHER THAN FOR THEM The Blue Skies project specifically played with methodologies. After all how do you design a city for the majority of users who have no personal transport if you don’t spend time walking, or riding the taxi’s and talking to drivers and passengers. In the Masihambisane video shown here you will see architecture students moving out of the studios and onto the streets to challenge themselves to design with rather than for people. It is the with part of the research and engagement process, rather than the for, that embodies the work of the UFC.

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UFC - URBAN FUTURES CENTRE The entrance to Kenneth Gardens housing estate. 24 June 2015. Cedric Nunn.

PARTNERSHIPS AND PARTICIPATION The messy practice of building partnerships is best captured in the UFC’s Kenneth Gardens Community Project. This research and engagement project is located in Durban’s largest low income housing estate, Kenneth Gardens. The UFC has acted as a co-ordinating hub for community development projects in the estate, building a network of partners that include numerous Kenneth Gardens residents both in their individual and organisational capacity (there are two incredible NPOs in the estate) , Glenridge Church, Glenmore Primary School, the Flatfoot Dance Company, the Rotary Club of Morningside and Isipingo, Durban Capoeira Angola, the DUT Homeopathy department, as well as the DUT Food and Nutrition department.

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UFC - URBAN FUTURES CENTRE

Washing lines in Kenneth Gardens. 24 June 2015. Cedric Nunn.

SUSTAINABILITY The projects that directly work to make the life of Kenneth Gardens residents better are too many to detail here but in brief include: a free homeopathic weekly clinic in the estate; free food and nutrition advise at the clinic; a dance and capoeira programme run at the local school for young people; digital media projects and skills workshops for youth in the estate, as well as NPO capacity building workshops. Kenneth Gardens residents were very much a part of identifying key areas, designing and running these projects.

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RIKE SITAS

RIKE SITAS

APPROACHING AFRICAN CITIES PUBLIC-FACING CULTURAL CO-OPERATION Cityness is about surprises’ 1 ‘[t]he disruption of normality and creation of a transitional space that invites experimentation is the first step in the process of criticality ’ 2 African cities simultaneously face countless crises, emergencies and risks, and are the hotbeds for creativity and innovation; they are places both of joy and abject desolation and every other state in between 3. They are highly organised and logical – even in their supposed informality – while being insurmountably emotional and irrational and unequivocally full of surprises. The tendency to represent cities through a macro impression of a two dimensional dehumanised world, where people are either victims or victors of statistics; where politics are thought of as rational; and citizenship as sensible engagement with public and civic structures is increasingly being challenged as urban enquiry branches out into more creative realms.

Visual and media geographies have emphasised the importance of visuality and media technologies in analysing the space of cities. These disciplines focus on exploring the role of visual and technological mediation of knowledge about cities; suggesting that content and discourse analysis are important in understanding representations in and of the city. Here, things like film, photography, video games, billboards, graffiti, policy documents, city branding, as well as televised and online mediated technologies and content become essential to understanding cities 4.

The cultural turn in planning has increasingly foregrounded the role of culture and the creative economy in city-making 5. Here the focus has largely been on culture-led development, which has largely revolved around leveraging creative industries for urban renewal. This has been critiqued for resulting in gentrification, and in essentialising culture for tourist audiences – where culture, development and tourism coalesce in grotesque moments and spaces 6. Think of an image of uShaka Marine World: the mall-and-mollification of history in KZN.

Simone, A. (2010). City Life from Jakarta to Dakar. London: Routledge. von Kotze, A., & Wildemeersch, D. (2014). Creative Encounters in Public Art and Public Pedagogy. Studies in Art Education, 55(4), 313–327.

Pieterse, E. (2008). City futures: confronting the crisis of urban development. Cape Town: Zed Books.

4 Adams, P. C., Craine, J., & Dittmer, J. (Eds.). (2014). The Ashgate Companion to Media Geography. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Company; and Rose, G. (2001). Visual Methodologies. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. 5 Landry, C. (2007). The Art of City Making. London: Earthscan.

6 Evans, G. (2009). Creative Cities, Creative Spaces and Urban Policy. Urban Studies, 46(5&6), 1003–1040; Moulaert, F., Demuynck, H., & Nussbaumer, J. (2004). Urban renaissance: from physical beautification to social empowerment. City, 8(2), 229–235; Zukin, S. (1995). The Cultures of Cities. Wiley.

With the relational turn in urban studies, ethnographic methodologies have entered mainstream urban research as a way to gather information about, and represent the fine-grain everyday realities of cities 7. Cities are seen as complex entanglements of the human and material, the real and virtual 8. Urbanists are taking up the challenge to further understand what is happening in every nook and cranny; every crèche – turned shebeen – turned church.

In addition there have been a wide range of experiments with how to present information about cities in Africa. Chimurenga has produced two publications: Chronic and The African Cities Reader 9 . The African Centre for Cities has experimented with projects such as Cityscapes and the City Desired exhibition, which connected macro data about Cape Town with life story narratives of ordinary citizens. The Open City Lagos project that connects urban planning and design with creative practice (amongst many other examples across the continent) 10.

Although these research agendas are doing much to challenge the binaries that normally permeate urban knowledge, much urban research still tends to focus on rational means of enquiry.

Research questions are set and researchers are deployed to gather data. Sometimes photographers accompany them. Every part of the research process is minutely planned, coded and analysed according to rational criteria. This rigidity to the normal research process may produce some rigorous results, but may not be able to adequately deal with all the surprises of African cityness, in all their aesthetic and affective messiness.

Missing in much of the urban analysis in the Global South is the role of creative practice in rearticulating urban agendas. There have been numerous art projects that have moved beyond beautifying cities for foreign direct investment, moving further into the realm of politics and publicness. The social, spatial and participatory turns in art since the 1960s have resulted in a growing cohort of artists interested in the role of art in critiquing the status quo: in the North primarily questioning neoliberal politics; and in the South largely addressing social and spatial inequality.

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De Boeck, F. (2004). Kinshasa: Takes of the Invisible City. Antwerp: Ludien; and Simone, A. (2010). City Life from Jakarta to Dakar. London: Routledge.

Amin, A. (2008). Collective culture and urban public space. City, 12(1), 5–24; and Amin, A. (2015). Animated Space. Public Culture, 27(2), Forthcoming.

Pieterse, E., & Edjabe, N. (2010). African Cities Reader. Cape Town: Chimurenga and African Centre for Cities.

10 Disu, O., & Umunna, M. (2015). Open City Lagos. Lagos: Fabulous Urban, Henrich Boll Stiftung & Nsibidi Institute.

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But many seemingly inclusive projects have been criticised. Firstly, for being imbued with paternalistic altruism as well resourced and networked artists (who are predominantly White) flood into poorer neighbourhoods or countries: at worst perpetuating problematic power relations or at best doing nothing to dismantle them 11. The second assessment suggests more insidious motives where artists become agents for social engineering; where participatory projects become tools for engineering consent, often for exclusionary development 12.

Although these critiques may have merit in some instances, this is not always the case 13. Increasingly there are a range of projects that attempt to trouble, transgress and transcend the problematic status quo, which is fundamentally important in vastly unequal cities. In these projects, ticking the participatory checkbox as process is not enough: the politics at the core of the engagements are crucial. The politics resonate closely with the idea of public pedagogy inspired by Paolo Freire 14.

Public pedagogy refers to sites of learning that exist outside of formal schooling systems, recognising that much of what we learn on a daily basis may come from elsewhere: from museums, as much as through popular culture; on pavements and pubs; and therefore also in creative encounters with the city. The sites of learning remain ideologically infused and therefore it becomes important to acknowledge what learning is happening; by whom and in what interest?

For Freire conscientization is key. Although the focus on social justice remains important, what becomes vital in cities is connecting this with spatial justice. In addition, consensus cannot be the only imperative. What can be done with the sometimes incompatible beliefs and logics in diverse cities 15?

This involves recasting the learning moment socially and spatially: it requires a different approach to the intellectual project of making sense of our world in all its magic and murkiness. It is important to recognise that the social and spatial are inextricably linked: where learning happens shapes what and how things are learned. The city is not merely a vessel for social interaction: the spaces and things in them matter, but

11 Marie, Z. (2013). 2010 Reasons Why Not to do Participatory Art / Research. In 2010 Reasons to Live in a Small Town. Johannesburg: VANSA. 12 Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso; and Miles. (2005). Interruptions: testing the rhetoric of culturally led urban development. Urban Studies, 42(5/6), 889–911. 3 Pieterse, E. (2008). City futures: confronting the crisis of urban development. Cape Town: Zed Books.

13 Kester, G. (2004). Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press; Kwon, M. (2004). One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity. Massachusetts: MIT Press; and Sharp, J., Pollock, V., & Paddison, R. (2005). Just art for a just city: Public art and social inclusion in urban regeneration. Urban Studies, 42(5), 1001–1023. 5 Landry, C. (2007). The Art of City Making. London: Earthscan.

14 Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum 15 Biesta, G. (2012). Becoming public: public pedagogy, citizenship and the public sphere. Social & Cultural Geography, 13(7), 683–697.

they often don’t matter in predictable ways and research needs to be able to cope with the unpredictability, the incomprehensible surprises. Creative practice has always been better equipped to deal with this as it can move between and beyond the real and the rational; the fixed and ephemeral; and artists tend to understand the relationship between the social and physical worlds.

The focus of many creative engagements with complex urban issues has not necessarily been on learning, but rather creative production. Casting these public-facing creative encounters as critical learning engagements geared towards social or spatial liberation deepens the capacity for knowledge production. Here the production of knowledge is not done solely by experts, but is rather co-produced by collective deliberation. Because creative practice is not intrinsically solution oriented, the capacity for productive dissensus; for confronting the stickier issues; is more possible.

Creative practice can also be less threatening than formal research and political processes: there are no clipboards and consultative forums. Participation may take some initial courage, to take the leap into the surreal or strange, but it can be orchestrated through laughter. As Benjamin claimed, ‘there is no better starting point for thought than laughter. In particular, thought usually has a better chance when one is shaken by laughter than when one’s mind is shaken and upset 15.

We must be cautious of expecting too much from creative practice 17. Creative practice may not have the capacity to provide large scale service delivery; ensure land and resource distribution; or reverse things like the logic of the property market, all so needed in many African cities. But recasting creative encounters as learning environments can foster more interesting spaces for cultural co-production that are able to compliment other forms of research working towards a more progressive social and spatial African urban agenda.

Benjamin, W. (1970). The author as producer. New Left Review, I(62), 1–9.

Miles, M. (1997). ART , SPACE AND THE CITY: public art and urban futures. London: Routledge; and Pinder, D. (2008). Urban Interventions: Art, Politics and Pedagogy. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(3), 730–736.

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PUBLIC PROGRAMME

PUBLIC PROGRAMME

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PUBLIC PROGRAMME 49

PUBLIC PROGRAMME

EXHIBITION OPENING

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PUBLIC PROGRAMME 51

PUBLIC PROGRAMME

WALKABOUTS

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PUBLIC PROGRAMME

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS: SCHOOLS WORKSHOP

As part of the ongoing SAHA in the Classroom workshop series, the South African History Archive will be facilitating four interactive workshops with Grade 9 history learners exploring the legacies of the 1913 Land Act in South Africa.

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PUBLIC PROGRAMME

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS: TEACHERS WORKSHOP

As part of the ongoing SAHA in the Classroom workshop series, the South African History Archive (SAHA) facilitated a workshop with history teachers exploring the legacies of the 1913 Land Act in South Africa.

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PUBLIC PROGRAMME

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS archive (V) - SAHA

Catherine Kennedy (SAHA director) in discussion with photographer Gille de Vlieg and curator Vaughn Sadie about SAHA’s work in activating visual archive to facilitate participation and dialogue in order to forward struggles for justice and accountability.

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PUBLIC PROGRAMME

ULWEMBU - UFC

ULWEMBU is a collaborative documentary-theatre project, that brings together theatre-makers, citizens and civil society to engage the interface between street-level drug-addiction, policing and mental health in the city of Durban, South Africa. The play ’s intention is to make visible the invisible life worlds of vulnerable people in Durban, and its surrounds, as well as create new social learning opportunities for the Police, Department of Health, NGOs, families of users, and other groups. The creative team for Ulwembu consists of award-winning playwright and director Neil Coppen, top local actress Mpume Mtombeni, the Kwa-Mashu based community-theatre group, The Big Brotherhood, and educational sociologist Dylan McGarry.

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PUBLIC PROGRAMME

ARTICULATIONS OF PARTICIPATION - SPARCK, UFC and Vaughn Sadie

If we are to understand the complexities of participatory practice through the invited organisations, consideration should be give to interdisciplinary manner in which they work and how this shifts more conventional understanding of participatory and community engaged practice. The panel, which consist of SPARCK, URBAN FUTURES CENTRE and curator Vaughn Sadie, reflected on the potential of creative practice in tackling the contested and vastly unequal power relations prevalent in Africa.

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EVENTS

KENNETH GARDENS – WHAT IS IT TO BUILD PARTNERSHIPS - UFC

Participatory projects require partnerships. The aim of the panel was to provide some honest discussion on what it takes to build sustainable partnerships within the context of participatory community projects. Building relationships and trust between universities, communities and other organisations takes time and commitment from all sides. Like any relationship it also means engaging in debates and negotiations to find a way forward that suits everyone best. Partnership building in this context is both challenging and rewarding. In this panel discussion university researchers, community members, and church members involved in the Kenneth Gardens Community Project come together to reflect on this partnership process.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS EXHIBITION Exhibition curator Public educational programme management and faciliation Technical and insallation Administration Documentary photography Financial administration Graphic identity

CATALOGUE Editors: Graphic design: Layout: Text: Photography:

KZNSA GALLERY Postnet Suite 150, Private Bag X04, Dalbridge 4014 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban 4001, SA Tel: +27 (0)31 277 1705

Vaughn Sadie Vaughn Sadie, Sumayya Rawat Vaughn Sadie, Johan Smit Sumayya Rawat Vaughn Sadie, Mandisa Buthelezi, Liza du Plessis Monique Kurvers, Angela Shaw Greg Lomas

Sumayya Rawat , Angela Shaw Greg Lomas BYLWANSTA Vaughn Sadie, Rike Sitas, Molemo Moiloa Vaughn Sadie, Mandisa Buthelezi, Liza du Plessis , Val Adamson, Cedric Nunn, Micaela De Fritas Doung Jahangeer, Gille de Vlieg, Renaud Barret

Email: gallery@kznsagallery.co.za; Web: www.kznsagallery.co.za fb: KZNSA Gallery twitter/ instagram @kznsagallery Exhibition Educational programme: kznsasocialart.blogspot.com

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