Arts Research Africa Dialogues

About Arts Research Africa Dialogues

These dialogues from the Wits School of Arts, Arts Research Africa project, are intended to stimulate practice, enable research, and inspire collective engagement around the question of Arts Research in Africa. Art lecturers and postgraduate students in the Wits School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, are grappling with the challenge of positioning arts research in an African context. These podcasts seek to develop a dialogue with both national and international practices and debates.

Publisher

Arts Research Africa

Category

arts · education

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

1 Aug 2018

Latest episode

10 Dec 2024

Latest episodes

50 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   10 Dec 2024

   Russel Hlongwane: Reimagining Tradition and Modernity

   Prof Christo Doherty speaks to visionary South African artist Russel Hlongwane about reimagining tradition and modernity through his multidisciplinary approach to Afro-futurism and cultural innovation.

2. 

   4 Nov 2024

   Stephen Hobbs: Negotiating the complexities of Johannesburg with art practices

   In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speak to Stephen Hobbs, a South African artist whose work spans a wide range of media, exploring themes of urban transformation, architecture, and social dynamics. Known for his thought-provoking installations and public art projects, Stephen has a distinctive approach that often examines the hidden infrastructures of cities, and the intersection of natural and built environments. Stephen has an exhibition, a survey of his career of almost thirty years, entitled “Man Shouting in Distance” which is running at the Wits Art Museum until 23 November. Stephen earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1993. From 1994 to 2000, he served as the curator of the Market Theatre Galleries, fostering a dynamic space for contemporary art in the city. In 2001, he co-founded The Trinity Session with fellow Wits fine arts graduates Kathryn Smith and Marcus Neustetter. Trinity was an artist collaborative and public art consultancy dedicated to integrating art into urban environments. Stephen’s own artistic practice often explored themes of city infrastructure and social dynamics, laying the groundwork for his later explorations into the intersections of art, architecture, and public space. Recently, Stephen has ventured into bio-art, working with mycelium—the root structure of fungi—to investigate natural systems that mirror urban networks. His innovative approach challenges us to reconsider the hidden connections that shape both our cities and our planet.” In this podcast we discuss Stephen’s beginning as an artist, his family background, education and early influences, and how growing up in Johannesburg shaped his perspective as an artist. We go on to examine his strategies as an artist exploring the urban landscape, and negotiating the complexities of post-apartheid transformations in the Johannesburg geography. We also discuss Stephen’s interest in strategies of deception and camouflage and how these have manifested in his practice. We then explore the range of mediums that Stephen has used to express his ideas and how his practice has evolved over his career. Finally we follow Stephen into a new terrain of practice - BioArt - in which he has been working with mycelia to explore the hidden connections between the structure of cities and the planetary environment.

3. 

   18 Sept 2024

   Physics and the artistic imagination: Ariane Koek and Arts at CERN

   In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Ariane Koek, a prominent British independent producer, curator, and writer, recognized globally for her pioneering work at the intersection of art and science. With a career spanning several decades Ariane is particularly noted for founding the Arts at CERN program, which she designed and directed from 2009 to 2015. This initiative was the first official international arts program at CERN and aimed to foster collaboration between artists and scientists. Under her leadership, the program included various residency opportunities for artists, allowing them to explore and interpret scientific concepts through their creative practices. The project has just been awarded the Grand Prize - Innovative Collaboration at Ars Electronica 2024. The prize recognises innovative collaboration between industry or technology and the arts (and the cultural and creative sectors in general) that opens new pathways for innovation. In this podcast we focus on the Arts at CERN project, a curatorial and political challenge that Ariane launched single-handedly in 2010. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is an intergovernmental organization comprising 24 member states, that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world situated in a vast complex based outside Geneva in Switzerland. CERN's main function is to provide particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research. The lab's most notable project is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider, consisting of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets. The Centre has approximately 2,660 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and in 2019 hosted about 12,400 users from institutions in more than 70 countries. We do a deep dive into the experience of setting up the Arts at CERN programme and the lessons Ariane learnt from working with artists and scientists in such a challenging context. We then go on to unpack Ariane’s more recent insistence that we need to go beyond the acceptance of art-science collaborations as “de facto” positive and the implications of this insight for her current work as a producer and curator. Finally we touch on the continuing importance of aesthetics in both contemporary art and science while recognising the different meaning of the term "beauty" in artistic and scientific discourses.

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