image (c) Moeneeb Dalwai
“If you know your history,
then you would know where you coming from,
then you wouldn’t have to ask me,
who the heck do you think I am.”
- Bob Marley
The original Buffalo Soldier was right, and not only about his time and place. When it comes to our own heritage, love , hate and history, we are told much about who did what to whom and why, and how it changed, continues today or disguises itself, as Bob Marley might have heard (and disputed).
image (c) Mark Wessels
Try and break it down into socio-political eras to get more clarity, and you often get more confused than anything else. Colonialism? Post colonialism? Evolution? Stagnation? To dissect these co-dependent discourses (and their not-so-distant, naughty cousin, Neocolonialism) in order to try and better understand the world we live in, one must first demystify them.
image (c) Mark Wessels
To demystify them, one must constantly reframe the gestures and offerings of contemporary culture in the context of the performing and creative arts. At least, this is The Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA)’s position on its latest offering into the ether of perspective – Emerging Modernities.
image (c) Mark Wessels
Emerging Modernities is a practical platform for discussion and discovery – a meeting of minds, hearts and art at UCT’s Hiddingh Campus from 18 – 20 February 2011.
“Attempts at theorising cultural formations that emerge through oppression and violence are tantamount to making artworks out of scabs and scar tissue,” the Institute offers. To that end, it is engaging respected artists, academics and cultural theorists in its colloquium. Together, representatives of different disciplines with common concerns will attempt to unpack and open out topics like “Emerging modernities and the contested curriculum in the post colony”, “Re-presenting the other, artistic collaboration and identity construction as process in the visual arts”, “Intercultural composition and Pan African re-emerging and merging in music”, and “Performance and the African city: multiple tongues; hybrid formations and translocations”.
“Emerging Modernities is a creative platform where academia and the arts meet in an interactive way to explore current conceptual issues surrounding the notions of redefining contemporary identities and art,” says GIPCA Director, Jay Pather. “The event is structured in a unique way, in that it combines performances, installations and exhibitions with panel discussions. We want to give attendees an opportunity to observe some of South Africa’s cutting edge artists in action, and then also reflect critically on the experience, with its conceptual implications, with a panel of experts,”
These include Neo Lekgotlalaga Ramoupi (Africa Institute of South Africa, Pretoria), Deborah Posel (Director: Institute for Humanities in Africa), Neo Muyanga and NtoneEdjabe (Pan African Space Station and Chimurenga magazine), Bettina Malcomess, Rael Salley, Gavin Younge, Mark Fleishman and composer Bongani Ndodana-Bree.
The colloquium kicks off with an opening address by Achille Mbembe, acclaimed scholar, and co-convener of The Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism (JWTC) who won the Bill Venter/Altron Award for On the Postcolony (2001) . Artist/curator, Gabi Ncobo, is confirmed as panellist, and Clive Kellner (former head of the Johannesburg Art Gallery and current curator of the Gordon Schachat Collection) will serve on the visual arts panel on Saturday 19 February.
As a treat, the colloquium sees the very first of a work composed by Wits University’s Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph and UCT’s Anri Herbst as part of a research project on indigenous knowledge systems, focussing on the preservation of Xhosa overtone singing.
In other words, if – in the spirit of the subjects at hand, if you will allow a hybrid, localised amalgamation of aforementioned lyrics and wise words that skips its colonial post to be truly post modern -
come on, Wildebeest, know thy wealth.
and contact GIPCA for more
email : fin-gipca@uct.ac.za
Tel. 021 480 7156.
