Listing(s)

Exuberance Project

Various artists at GIPCA UCT Hiddingh Campus

Convened by Raél Jero Salley and Jay Pather; presented by the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA) as part of the UCT Africa Month celebrations. The Exuberance Project will investigate what is abundant, enthusiastic, overflowing, unrestrained and joyful in contemporary creative and performing arts of Africa.

The Exuberance Project points to a welcome turnaround in the enactment of all that emerges from the African continent. Embracing themes that shift from lack to abundance, from Afro-pessimism to exuberance, from myths of a dark and brooding continent to vibrant, dynamic realism, The Exuberance Projectcomprises a symposium, panel discussions, performances, exhibitions and film screenings.

11-13 May 2012, UCT Hiddingh Campus. Exhibition at Mandela Rhodes Gallery opening Saturday 12 May, 2012 at 18.00.

10 May 2012 - 13 May 2012

Emerging Modernities: colloquium / exhibitions / panels / performances / installations

Various Participants at GIPCA UCT Hiddingh Campus

The Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA) at UCT is hosting the ground-breaking Emerging Modernities event from 18 - 20 February.

"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," said Pather.

The weekend long Emerging Modernities opens with an address by the highly respected Simon Njami, art critic, novelist, essayist and curator, of Cameroonian decent and currently residing in France. Mwenya Kabwe, Peter van Heerden, Andrew Putter, Nandipha Mntambo, Magnet Theatre and Sello Pesa are some of the contributors who will be showcasing their work, combined with panel discussions facilitated around issues relating to performing and creative arts disciplines, as well panels that deal with language, the city, and notions of tradition and curriculum design.

Panelists include academics and cultural theorists Crain Soudien (Deputy Vice Chancellor, UCT), Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi (Africa Institute of South Africa, Pretoria, Deborah Posel (Director: Institute for Humanities in Africa), Neo Muyanga and Ntone Edjabe (Pan African Space Station), Bettina Malcomess, Rael Salley, Gabi Ngcobo, Gavin Younge, Mark Fleishman and composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen.

The topics addressed during the panel sessions will include "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".

In addition to the sessions that critically reflect on existing bodies of work, the event will also host the première 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. A concert will be held on Saturday evening featuring the Ngqoko Women's Ensemble, showcasing their unique music style.

The second half will comprise the Women's ensemble with 13 instrumentalists, conducted by Alexander Fokkens, performing originally composed music by Zaidel-Rudolph, Christo Jankowitz and Kerryn Tracey. ??The conference also hosts the première of Peter van Heerden and Anne Historical's installation work Monument, which will take place at the Castle of Good Hope. Another site specific performance will be In House by Ntsoana Contemporary Dance, featuring Sello Pesa and other performers.

Die Vreemdeling by Magnet Theatre, directed by Mark Fleishman, is also on the programme. The event includes an exhibition walkabout of In Context at the South African National Gallery, led by curator Liza Essers, director of the Goodman Gallery.

Registration for Emerging Modernities is open to members of the public, and the fee for attending all the sessions and performances, is R350. This includes all lunches and teas, the opening cocktail function and transport to the various installation performances throughout the city. A subsidised student registration is available at R70.

The event opens on Friday evening 18 February, and ends on Sunday 20 February. ??The full Emerging Modernities conference programme will be available online (www.gipca.uct.ac.za) by the end of January.

Early registration for the conference is now open, and can be done by contacting Adrienne van Eeden-Wharton on 021 480 7156, or by e-mailing fin-gipca@uct.ac.za.

18 February 2011 - 20 February 2011

'Sketch Assembly'

Andrew Putter and Various Participants at GIPCA UCT Hiddingh Campus

'Sketch Assembly' is a new educational project designed by Andrew Putter which focuses on what artists rarely exhibit: the tests, versions and sketches made on the way towards producing finished products.  In this new project in the 'Hottentots Holland' cycle, Putter and a group of 30 young artists and designers – called the 'Sketch Assembly' - spent four months playfully re-imagining early contacts between ‘Hottentot’ and Dutch youth at the Cape in the 1600s.  No final products were made: only increasingly ambitious sketches, often in the form of elaborately staged photographs.  The 'Sketch Assembly’s' work is carefully based on Dutch merry company prints and paintings from the 1600s, and on the few, rare drawings of the Cape Khoikhoin (‘Hottentots’) that still exist today.  The exhibition shows the many sketches and exploratory processes made by the group, including photographs, drawings, diagrams, costumes, and props.

Artists and designers included: Paul Ward, Swain Hoogervorst, Penny Youngleson, Angela Nemov, Katryn Beaurain, Jen Bam, Leigh Bishop, Anine Kirsten, Jeanne Fourie, Claudio Massenz, Christiaan Conradie, Warren Papier, Karin Williams, Noël Platts, Claire Watling, Pieter Janse van Rensburg, Alessandro Betti, Morne Visagie, Mbongeni Dlamini, Andrew McNally, Leah Hawker, Inge Jansen, Jody Paulsen, Mikkie-dene Le Roux, Melissa Haiden, Joshua McLean,  Dylanne Powell, Chad Petersen, and Seemaa Allie.

Open only Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 October at the Michaelis Gallery

20 October 2010 - 21 October 2010

'Putting the 'S' into Laughter'

William Kentridge at GIPCA UCT Hiddingh Campus

William Kentridge is the guest speaker at UCT’s Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA)’s 'Great Text / Big Questions' public lecture on Thursday 8 April. He will give a lecture titled ‘Putting the ‘S’ into Laughter’, looking at Gogol’s short story The Nose (written in 1836), which is the basis for Kentridge's production of Shostakovich’s opera The Nose which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York earlier this month.

There is no charge to attend but space is limited. To reserve a seat for the 17h00 lecture, email Ashley Miles on ash.miles@uct.ac.za.

08 April 2010 - 08 April 2010

Strange Democracy

Guillermo Gómez-Peña at GIPCA UCT Hiddingh Campus

Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s  is a performance artist/writer/activist whose dynamic 60-minute solo show deals with the end of the Bush era and the challenges facing the US under Barack Obama. Using various performance personae, Chicano humour, hybrid literary genres and multilingualism Gómez-Peña presents the audience with his infamous, border savvy techno-ideology, ethno-poetics and radical aesthetics.

Strange Democracy starts at 8pm at the Little Theatre, UCT’s Hiddingh campus, Orange Street, Cape Town. Tickets are available through Computicket www.computicket.co.za and cost R60 and R30 for students.

21 February 2010 - 21 February 2010