Curators Workshop

a new workshop approaches and still no one uses this blog

2008-10-16T09:11:00.001+02:00

sad but true

where is the curators

2008-07-26T20:38:00.002+02:00

MOPP time ---

2008-01-29T21:50:00.001+02:00

Vansa website is live

2007-10-31T17:21:00.001+02:00

www.vansa.co.za
the doors to the international
colourful world is open

FREE LECTURE- by ZAYD MINTY

2007-07-09T17:57:00.001+02:00

IZIKO’s WINTER PUBLIC PROGRAMME

Lectures, Film screenings, Workshops and Walkabouts

IZIKO MUSEUMS OF CAPE TOWN

7–30 July 2007

LECTURE ONE

“An Examination of Doul’ Arts Culture and Urban Transformation Processes” – Presented by Zayd Minty

Date: Tuesday, 10^th July 2007 Time: 17h30 for 18h00

Venue: Whale Well, Iziko SA Museum Entrance- Free

This paper is an examination of Doual’art’s culture and urban transformation practises, using the neighbourhood of Bessengue Akwa as a case study. Doual’art is a non-profit cultural initiative involved in a range of urban interventions in the Central African city of Doualla, drawing on culture to engage the city and its citizens in an act of re-imagination. A pilot community development project in Bessengue in conjunction with a French NGO and the city council of Doualla 1 resulted in two creatively enhanced pieces of basic infrastructure: a water pump and foot-bridge, as well as a series of art interventions taking place on a patch of ground in the extreme north end of the neighbour-hood. Analysing these three projects provides material to understand the organisation’s methodology conceptually as an act of insurgent urban practise that stimulates the residents to reconsider their agency as citizens and provides the impetus for thinking about the connection between imaginaries and transformation in an urban context.

For confirmation of attendance and further information contact: Wandile Kasibe at 021 481 3804 or fax: 021 481 3991 / cell: 083 335 6461. You can also e-mail:publicprogs@iziko.org.za

Consult http://www.iziko.org.za for more details.

TED.COM something to inspire

2007-06-02T14:34:00.001+02:00

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/127

folow this link, u gonna
be blown away.

The fabulous plum shirt

2007-05-31T14:08:00.000+02:00

Christopher du Preez, Abdul Dube and Andrew Lamprecht on Robben Island

What what waht whts whats wathst

2007-05-07T09:36:00.000+02:00

Poison ALL CURATORS with

2007-04-13T14:05:00.000+02:00

2007-02-27T11:03:00.000+02:00

manic it was

but we made it happen. Again i think the important thing is , as Bisi mentioned is do to it and then make changes, growth and change is constant, we are now in the begining stages of geting the MOPP road show on the go, we have managed to design a catalogue(portable exhibtion) that we are donating to libraries around the cape flats, north south east and west, if u have extra time on ur hands and wanna get involved, drop us a email ghettogether@gmail.com

www.arternative.co.za/MOPP%20intro.html

the link will give u alook at the opening nite if u missed it.

many thanks to all involved

and a special thanks to the khamissa kollecktive members

Rozanno

Issi

Francois

Yasser

Mandla

thanks for the post,storm

2007-02-09T23:12:00.000+02:00

hola vanie kaap, just wanted to let u all know wat is wat with the MOPP,
its been a learning curve of note,
The ''new'' is always exciting, we as the collective do this for the love photography , exploration and
the cheek of making it happen against all odds..

we juggle( encrouching crime,making the rent,feeding the brain and the soul) , we pick up and back up who ever or where ever its needed, this is not a solo marathon
Every interaction has become a lesson in life , in the way we see each other, in the way we interact with the world around us,

come and enjoy or be shocked by the ordinary seen extraordinarily.

peace + love + respect

abdul dube.

ABDUL doing a MOPP DROPP

2007-01-29T10:57:00.000+02:00

MOPP PRESS RELEASE

MOPP - Month of People's Photography is an independent visual art movement , we showcase visual artist that would otherwise never exhibit their work . Encouraging individuals to become part of the bigger picture, thus to engage a wider audience to our annual photo exhibition.

MOPP has created a situation in which the man on the street can share in the magic of photography. We use this month long exhibition to highlight the differences that separate us and the similarities that connect us.

Now in its 3rd year, MOPP - month of people's photography will yet again be bringing photography to the people of Cape Town . Cafes and Restaurants in and around the city " CBD" will host photographers young and old, taught and self taught.

OUR THEME: "I SPY WITH MY THIRD EYE"

Come share in our visual feast on opening nite , come get for yourself a MAPP and indulge on a visual treasure.

DATE: 14 FEBRUARY 2007
VENUE: arternative, 112 long street, CAPE TOWN
TIME: 19HOO

FOR MORE INFORMATION FEEL FREE TO VISIT www.nativesoul.blogspot.com
or send an email to ghettogether@gmail.com

Bisi's Got a Blog!

2007-01-28T23:38:00.000+02:00

Check out a new addition to blog world with curator Bisi Silva's chronicles of recent experiences and travel in Africa. Find it at http://artspeakafrica.blogspot.com.

Rijksakademie Call

2007-01-28T23:35:00.000+02:00

The Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam is a working and meeting place for young professional artists from all over the world. Fifty studios are available for resident artists who can work for one or two years on research, projects and production. A work period at the Rijksakademie is most valuable with three to five years of professional experience, following an art study programme.
Focus on the work, reflection and discussion are central to the residency. In addition to advice from internationally-practicing artists, curators and other art professionals, facilities include extensive technical workshops, a library, artist’s documentation and art collections.
Resident artists pursue all major contemporary visual art disciplines: painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video, film, sound and new media, and links with other disciplines such as architecture, theatre, music, dance, literature and film are possible.
Applying
Each year approximately twenty-five artists are invited for a residency. Artists can apply for the residency from January to December 2008 through the online application form. The deadline for application is 1 February 2007.
More information: http://www.rijksakademie.nl

De Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam is een werk- en ontmoetingsplaats voor jonge professionele kunstenaars uit de hele wereld. Er zijn zo’n vijftig ateliers beschikbaar waar resident artists één tot twee jaar werken
aan onderzoek, projecten en productie. De praktijk wijst uit dat een werkperiode aan de Rijksakademie drie tot vijf jaar na een opleiding het grootste effect heeft. Concentratie op het werk, reflectie en discussie staan centraal op de Rijksakademie. Resident artists worden ondersteund door internationaal actieve kunstenaars, tentoonstellingsmakers en andere professionals. Daarnaast biedt de Rijksakademie uitgebreide technische faciliteiten, een bibliotheek, kunstenaarsdocumentatie en kunstcollecties. Er wordt gewerkt in alle disciplines en technieken: schilderen, tekenen, grafiek, beeldhouwen, video, film, geluid en computerkunst. Ook de relatie met andere disciplines komt aan bod, zoals architectuur en openbare ruimte, theater, nieuwe media, muziek, dans, literatuur en film.
Aanmelden
Ieder jaar worden ongeveer 25 kunstenaars uitgenodigd voor een residency. Kunstenaars kunnen zich aanmelden voor de residency januari–december 2008 via het online aanmeldingsformulier.
De deadline voor aanmelding is 1 februari 2007.
Meer informatie: http://www.rijksakademie.nl

2007-01-09T12:53:00.000+02:00

Greetings to you all, and hope that 2007 is succesfull. My first post for the new year is the long promised bibliography which were not included in the reading packs. It does not conform to any standard format, so please pardon the flouting of the Harvard and other methods.

Storm.

BIBLIOGRAPY

1. Luke, Timothy W. “Shows of Force: Power, Politics and Ideology in Art Exhibitions. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992

2. Coombes, Annie E. “Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England”. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

3. “Thinking about exhibitions”. Edited by Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne. London: Routledge, 1996

4. Glusberg, Jorge. “Cool Museums and Hot Museums: Towards a Museological Criticism”; with original drawings by Luis Benedit. Buenos Aires: Centre of Art and Communication, 1980

5. “Museums & History in West Africa”. Edited by Claude Daniel Ardouin & Emmanuel Arinze. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, Oxford: James Curry, 2000.

6. “Words of Wisdom: a Curator's Vade Mecum on Contemporary Art”. Edited by Carin Kuoni. New York: Independent Curators International: Distributed worldwide by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2001.

7. Thea, Carolee. “Foci: Interviews with Ten International Curators”. New York, N.Y.: Apex Art Curatorial Program, 2001.

8. Schubert, Karsten. The Curator's Egg: The Evolution of the Museum Concept from the French Revolution to the Present Day”. London: One-Off Press: Distributed by Christie's Books, 2000.

9. “Art Gallery Exhibiting: The Gallery as a Vehicle for Art”. [compilation, Paul Andriesse, Mariska van den Berg]. [Netherlands]: Paul Andriesse/Uitgeverij De Balie, 1996.

10. “What do you expect from an art institution in the 21st century?” Directeurs de publication, Jerome Sans et Marc Sanchez; edition prיparיe par Vincent Honorי; textes rיunis par Eric Binnert ... et al.] 3. ed. Paris: Palais de Tokyo, site de crיation contemporaine, 2003.

11. O’Doherty, Brian (ed.). “Museums in Crisis”. New York, George Braziller, 1972.

12. Cook, Sarah; Graham, Beryl; Martin, Sarah (ed.). “Curating New Media: Third BALTIC International Seminar”. United Kingdom, Baltic Crumb, 2001.

13. O’Doherty, Brian. “Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space”. Santa Monica, The Lapis Press, 1986.

14. Staniszewski, Mary Anne. “The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installation at the Museum of Modern Art”. Massachusets, MIT Press. 2001.

stop and think befor u toss that next filter...

2006-12-28T14:43:00.000+02:00

decon >> EyE CAnDy >

2006-12-26T16:59:00.000+02:00

wishin all a simple new Year>> simply simplify

Happy Festive!

2006-12-18T12:35:00.000+02:00

With all positive memories from all walks of life and our vast and various experiences on the face of Mother Earth, I wish each and every soul a moment of joy and happiness. I am looking forward to meeting you in the future, most probably on the e-mail, phones and things like that. Thanks for meeting everyone. I love you all.

Curators Workshop

2006-12-13T18:44:00.000+02:00

Finally
ive been trying to blog for so long!!! i just wanna to tell everyone at the curatorworkshop that i have a great time with everyone!!
i felt the effect of staying at Robben island only when i left!! The power & the eerie-ness of the island!! it left me feeling strangely empowered!
Hope to see you guys sometime in the future!!

price hikes. BUY ART

2006-12-08T20:03:00.000+02:00

Some interesting moments!!!!

2006-12-06T15:08:00.000+02:00

Filling in the Gaps

2006-12-04T21:49:00.000+02:00

So we all got stuck on the island on Friday afternoon after our last session. We happily packed and got ourselves and big luggage to the harbour for the staff ferry back to the mainland at 3:45pm, only to find out that all the tourise boats to the island have been canceled due to rough sea conditions - which meant that angry Robben Island Museum staff and a very tense group of curators had to wait a long time for one boat to make the trip several times to get home.

A couple of very tense hours followed, getting people off the island to catch busses, planes, loved ones, jobs etc on the other side. We were too late for some (Angie and Motseokae missed their bus to Bloemfontein and spent the night sleeping over) and others made it in time (the Joburg flight was substantially delayed, thankfully).

I am in the process now of reconciling everything - including accounts, my professional life, documentation etc. and making sense of the past two weeks. Hopefully others will contribute to the blog once the dust has settled and help make sense of the experience.

Till next time,

Storm

back on the main land...

2006-12-04T16:43:00.000+02:00

the last few minutes felt really weird, ``the want`` for getting home was like
no other,A Rough sea and the tummy ``upside down u turn me``
feeling was lekker KAK ...

reflections of the two weeks on Dat - island "try this ""

Week Two Day Four: Lovely lovely people

2006-11-30T22:18:00.000+02:00

Today everyone got stuck in their proposals again. They are taking it so seriously. I am impressed. I am also slightly worried. Had an intense day again, packed with detailed presentations on fundraising and marketing in the morning. After lunch we set a task which required everyone to write a proper proper proposal, with budget and powerpoint presentation - and about five hours to complete it in. It kind of put a damper on the farewell braai that is currently still underway. Music blaring, quiet island life temporarily disrupted.

Last night Abdul showed a very violent Japanese film - set on an island, 8 km in circumference. The same size as Robben Island. In the film 30 school kids have to kill each other for a single one to survive. For a moment we thought it almost an apt metaphor for the curators workshop... in the cutthroat contemporary art world, with 14 emerging curators in the same small space... cooped up for two weeks...

On a serious note, the two presentations todat were quite informative. Joseph Gaylard had some memorable quips about funding and fundraising. Did you know, that the per capita government spend on arts and culture in Mpumalanga in 2005 was an astronomical 3c, compared to R34 in the Western Cape?

Deborah Weber came in to deliver an impressive presentation on corporate sponsorships and marketing, and provided tools for bridging the gap between contemporary visual arts practice and leveraging corporate support. She also explained how to quantify Returns on Investment (ROI), and a number of good tips on accesing oppertunities within marketing and social investment budgets.

Tomorrow morning everyone will present their final proposals, and they seem very nervous about it. Virginia MacKenny said on Tuesday that we are too kind on people...

Ps. No blogging by bloggers. Useless.

Week Two Day Two: Bloggers on Strike

2006-11-28T21:41:00.000+02:00

We just finished the second day of the second week - its ten at night - with an intense group conversation on relationships with artists. A subject that we have somehow not given any attention to during the past ten days. Quite ironically I think.

Some hillarious anecdotes surfaced - and some tragic ones. Yvette spoke about the difficulty of working with artists with no physical addresses nor telephone numbers and Andrew once desperately bartered artwork for a curated show with a sixpack of beers.

Before supper a decidedly unbalanced game of soccer was played with kids on the island. Big curators pushed small children around on the field, but they got their asses kicked by the motley crew of little ones. Cindy got whacked on the ear. Its still red and half the size of her head. Storm had a beer and occasionally shrieked half heartedly "go team, go team". Joseph permanently damaged his inner thighs.

The formal sessions were fun too. Everyone had to present their projects after yesterdays proposal writing exercise. Some intense feedback ensued - the thread throughout the day were the brutal honesty with which everyone critiqued each others work.

Stacy Hardy presented an intense paper on education processes - which were really interesting and off the wall. She packed in concepts and ideas, peppered with really interesting obsevations and appropriate expletives. Its great hearing such strong convictions and opinions being expressed - on a subject, education, that is usually tacked on most art projects as an afterthought. She urged the enthralled audience to think about educational possibilities at the inception of their projects.

Brendon Bell-Roberts, a very busy guy, presented on his art publishing experience. Getting him to the island proved a logistical nightmare. I will one day write a book. Urgent calls to the director of the RIM finally got access to a later ferry, as Brendon has an important meeting earlier in the day and could not rock up at 7:30 am.

Virginia MacKenny gave a well-oiled talk on basic priniciples of writing media releases and curatorial statements. A 'nuts and bolts' presentation that went down really well, with very usefull 'how to' tips. She's bright. An exercise was set late in the afternoon, and I expected a riot to errupt from a very tired and exhausted group. Only Rita stormed out.

After a while everyone regrouped, strangely energised and all eagerly read back their five line media releases. And here came the brutally honest feedback. No one held back, nor from presenting, nor from criticising. I liked the maturity of everyone and also the honesty with which this was handled. Mavis I think, offered an interesting and rounded reading of her project.
Supper included, unusually on this particular island menu, rice and stewy stuff. I am finally gaining weight, after 34 years of unsuccesfull dieting.

Ps. The documenting teams are useless. They have not blogged a single line for two days. Only Abdul, but he's blogbefok.

2006-11-28T01:15:00.000+02:00

here we are

WEEKEND

2006-11-26T23:35:00.000+02:00

Thankfully the task of blogging the carousing curators weekend was omitted. However, comments are welcome.

Friday 24 November

2006-11-26T20:42:00.000+02:00

Overcast, last day of the week, interest is by no means flagging despite some of the days going on ten hours at a go. This is the workshop where there are no sloppy participants.

Carol Brown Director of Durban Art Gallery

Carol outlined the historical development and background to the Durban Museum and highlighted the gaps and discrepancies in the early collections. She mapped the progress of the museum in terms of better representation of artists in the collection as well as staff development. The museum building remained an intimidating building until the AIDS convention in 2000, when the entire structure got wrapped in a massive ribbon. The ribbon was made by 1000 people ranging in skills, age and background. This effectively rendered the space more welcoming and accessible, and the performance pieces that were delivered in the environs, added to this.

Carol is currently curating the South African component of an AIDS art exhibition Make Art/Stop Aids . This exhibition is about representations of the AIDS pandemic in USA, India, Brazil and South Africa and is being organised by the Fowler Museum in UCLA , in California countries that are contributing works are :India, Brazil and the USA and South Africa. The exhibition includes the work of Churchill Madikida, Pieter Hugo, beadwork by Siyazama, Zapiro, Clive van den Berg, Langa Magwa and David Goldblatt.

Carol introduced the Red Eye www.redeyeart.co.za initiative which began in Durban in 1998. It was born out of a need to include the disinterested young adult population in Durban in the activities of the gallery. Options were workshopped with people with various specialties and they came up with a risky multi media event. In its 8th year it remains an annual success ! Red Eye has evolved into a platform for curators , performers and artists.
Carol Brown is quite a somebody!

Sylvie Groschatau-Phillips - Art Therapist
Our proudly South African Parisian!
Always do your best -- Don't make assumptions -- Don't take anything personally.
Voyage Ensemble - A Journey Together www.voyageensemble.blogspot.com
The exhibition project was aimed at fostering relationships between refugees and local artists. By doing so it helped to break down xenophobia and to introduce the displaced artists into a South African art network. It reflected on the movement of African people and their cultures and examined the political and social realities refugees find themselves in as a result of that movement. The project had a multi-disciplinary approach encouraging artists to work in different media. The exhibition had been planned to co-incide with the opening of TransCape in order for it to show on two platforms. Even though disappointed that the TransCape event did not occur they went on to show at the Scalibrini Centre, September 2006.

Sylvie emphasised the importance of the documentation process from the outset to the actual exhibition. She got the media involved at an early stage and this paid good dividends. Media coverage was good, funders were happy, artists were inspired even though sales were not what they had expected. Sylvie motivated to take the exhibition through the country! We hope she is successful in doing this as we would like to see it in Jozie and Maputo!!

Watch out for Sylvie, she is getting together a group of artists and preparing for another exhibition to show in March 2007. We wish them success.

Sipho Mdanda - Museum Curator, Freedom Park

Sipho, being the last speaker of the day and for the week, felt that an anecdotal presentation would be more beneficial to the group. He started his presentation with the question 'What is a curator'?

He goes on to relate his experience as a 'long distance assistant curator'!! His story reveals the heterogeneous nature of the curators 'job'.

It begins with a desperate phone call from friend in New York "to save his skin", and asked to curate an exhibition in two weeks on the theme: 10 Years of Democracy in South Africa. He was pleased to be invited. In spite of being nervous to be set up for failure, he decided to accept.

And so the journey begins.

Trials:
The difficulties of operating with zero resources.
Needed to be clear about what he wanted to achieve and what he wanted to represent.
Decided to use work of lesser known South African artists and those that are not living in central urban areas.
Dealing with artists who were contracted to particular galleries.
Assisted some of the selected artists to create biographies.
Negotiated the tricky terrain of those artists disappointed by rejection.
Insurance of works where the value of the artworks were difficult to determine by the artists.
Getting artworks created with animal products through customs.
The disappointment of not having a voice in the final selection.

Returning artworks to artists who no longer resided at their previous addresses.

Withstanding the above the exhibition 'Sondela: A Decade of Democracy: Witnessing South Africa' www.sondela.net opened in Boston and toured to Dallas, Florida and NSA in Durban, 2004 - 2005.

Advice:
Acknowledge your team
Thoroughly process your ideas
Draw on the resources and expertise of your friends and colleagues; test your ideas on them; let them critique you.
Find out what others have said on the subject you are dealing with.
Write, edit, write, edit, write, edit, reference correctly ..... perfect.
Be generous with your knowledge.
Artists must take themselves seriously and document their processes.

Closing Panel : Giovanni Carmine, Eddie Chambers, N'Gone Fall and Bisi Silva.

The distilled messages drawn from this discussion included the following:

Curators need to be vigilant as to what sort of art infrastructure needed to be created, maintained and pursued in South Africa.
No one model of curator exists. One needs to find ones own way of working with artists.
In order for our institutions to be genuinely credible we need to have a wide range of input.
South Africa need to engage more with other African countries as the connections between us remain largely unexplored.
The importance of networking and documenting was stressed over and over again.
As a curator you have to believe in what you do and have a passion for it.
African members on the panel agreed that this workshop provided a useful framework for similar workshops on the rest of the continent.

And so we came to say sad goodbyes to a number of our esteemed colleagues.

Posted by: Angela, Sarie and Fatima

look who i found, At LOLAS

2006-11-25T18:48:00.000+02:00

lolas is a spot that many frequent, even Carol, Storm And Giovanni
oh, if u in da streets of cape town get a copy of the BIG issue( its only 12 RANDS), there is a spread of us on da island...

The force of images The power of words

2006-11-25T09:46:00.000+02:00

im a visual creature and this is what i captured for the first week, it was really
awesome to interact with some of the headz that make art history.

DAY 4: curating the pink sausages

2006-11-23T21:00:00.000+02:00

Curating Empowerment and Access: New Audiences and Market

Eddie Chambers, an accomplished curator and academic, was not ‘made in Britain’ [or so he claims], his early curatorial career however found it fertile soil for exhibitions that debated the state of blackness, and that mostly from a British perspective.
The piece of Eddie Chambers' curatorial work that stands out from his early career was the first exhibition he curated at the age of 19, 'Black an' done' which focused on bold, strong, urban, rough work about the difficulties of being 'Black British' in the late seventies. He pointed out that at the time this was an abrupt shift in direction for art practice in Britain.

'No More Little White Lies' curated by Chambers in Cardiff Wales was an exhibition held in solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. A poignant work by Keith Piper called ‘As Certain as Sunrise’ captured the spirit of the eventual triumph of the resistance to apartheid in South Africa and featured the reworking of a Peter Magubane image of the Soweto riots in 1976.

Eddie Chambers started his career in a state of black consciousness that made him want to shout it off the rooftops, declaring a state of blackness that needed to be confronted, problematised and most importantly contested. The exhibitions, artist and work showcased reflected this standpoint.

An incredibly powerful work, ‘Soweto Guernica’, done by one of Chambers’ frequent artists that he has worked with. It is a painting that draws on the equivalence of the Spanish civil war with Apartheid.

Another artist that Chambers has worked with more than once is Sonja Boyce. Here, a movement can be sensed from an attack on ‘blackness’ to a direct challenge to that state of being British.

When he works with artists he strives for a normality that can take place in regular places, have regular coverage and be attended by regular folk. This normality has been consistently withheld from the artists with whom he works.
Eddie prefers working independently as a curator, maintaining that when one works alone one can bring something new to the table and question the mainstream obsession with sameness.

Quote of the hour: “I don’t know if I’ve spelled this out … if I haven’t I’ll spell it out…” Eddie Chambers
Another Quote of the hour: “ordinary artist having ordinary normal exhibitions in art galleries” Eddie Chambers

Monna Mokoena (tall, black & not so silent):
Monna, one of the first black owners of an Art Gallery in South Africa. Owner of MOMO Gallery. Previously worked at the Everard Read gallery.

A quote he offered us, "The addition of successive parts to a frame at a certain point produces a bicycle." G.W.F Hegel (1770-1831)

Mokoena's presentation dealt with the arts, the artist, corporate funding and the public.
He shared with us his experiences and challenges with starting his gallery such as the architectural design needed to create a gallery space that it is accessible to people.

Mokoena works on corporate and public art projects within the city together with artists such as the new Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Cell C, & Sunday Times Heritage project. He highlighted the challenges of implementing projects in the public ie. dealing with city procedures, public safety & social responsibility. He suggests that one should arm oneself with these important procedures when dealing in with public spaces before embarking on projects such as these.

Nonto Ntombela:
Ntombela is the Curator of the Durban University of Technology Gallery in Durban.
She discussed two projects that she was involved in namely, the Edinburgh Art Festival in Scotland and the Trevor Makhoba Memorial Exhibition/Competition.
She discussed the challenges experienced and questioned how we can overcome them as curators. Mainly issues of copyright and finding structures to work within.
She raised the issue of building new audiences and the different strategies that can be implemented.

Thivynnaidoo Perumal Naiken:
Naiken is an artist, teacher, arts curator and the director of the National Gallery in Mauritius.

According to Naiken curating is about helping fellow artists and there is "no set of rules"
His talk was about the issue of taking art out of gallery buildings into public spaces.
He discussed the Open Air contemporary art Exhibition on the beaches of Mauritius. This project involved working with local artists in Mauritius. Artworks were displayed as they would be in the normal museum or art gallery set-up. This also touched on the issue of building new audiences by taking art to the public.
The Exhibition attracted Mauritians as well as tourists and most importantly this involved using the city as a canvas.

Naiken's motivation is inspired by the need to demystify the meaning of art to members of the public.

Christopher du Preez
Du Preez is the curator of the Red Location Museum in Port Elizabeth.
His presentation started with how he curated his first exhibition based on years of research connected to the South End Museum.
His presentation explored the difficulties surrounding the Red Location Museum. He highlighted the relationship between the architecture vs the contents/artifacts and the users requirements of the building and the importance in considering this combination appropiately. This is a very important factor in how museums communicate with the public in the message they are trying to convey about the history of our country. "Content is displaced in favour of architecture."

General standpoint [abridged to the point of touch and go] Panel discussion of today’s participants:

Monna: has a positive take on a viable growing market for art in Africa. Suggests a strategy to capture an audience that becomes brand loyal. Monna’s take on the gallery space is that it should provide a psychological openness, a reprieve from the paranoia of Jozi crime and security, rather a comfort and openness that makes engaging the public more possible. Joseph: clearly there is money

Tivy: there are different markets for different things. It’s less about ‘new’ audiences but making the work, space and environment more open to people, outdoors and open on Saturdays and Sundays.

Nonto: representivity in galleries needs to engage new audiences, and new marketing strategies, such as television to engage them. Nonto suggest marrying audiences that would be open to the suggestion of visiting a gallery space for example introducing art spaces to those who support poetry events.

Christopher: I don’t want people to get the wrong idea…once the space is there you can make it work.

Eddie said he wishes only people interested in art would visit art galleries…the tourists should be sent to Trafalgar square to feed the pigeons. Eddie reckons that attempts to develop additional audiences are important but cannot be done in isolation. Audiences cannot be brought to an unchanged system: “graft a live limb into a dead body” Britain has a culture of indulging people who have a sense of entitlement, and of promoting a sense of ‘normalcy’ that is white, homogenous and singular. Quote of the hour: ‘we often don’t want to own up to the fact that visual art is a highly elitist thing, and that perhaps trying to engage the mass market audience isn’t a really viable thing’ - Storm van Rensburg

Project presentations by emergent curators:

Cindy Poole:
Poole is interested in extending traditional ideas of curatorship. Propose the concept of curator as collaborator. VOORTREKKER 4 is the collective with which she willl be working. The project she proposed is the "jou ma se koeksister" examining the history of the koeksister on Voortreker Road, the differences in the koeksister as a narrative of the diverse cultural heritage of the road.

Ernett Nkwana:
Nkwana's presentation dealt with his experience in the FNB Craft Now Curator Learnship program. This equipped him with the skills to implement a successful exhibition project from beginning to end. His exhibition idea is called "Young Rhino's" and deals with issues of xenophobia.

Motseokae Thibeletsa:
Thibeletsa talks about the difficulty of working in the arts in the Free State Province. He talks about the fact that the arts administrators and curators are not doing enough to promote the visual artists there. He mentions that the visual arts are not properly represented and funded, at the Annual Mangaung Cultural Art Festival (MACUFE).
Proposed project- annual exhibition programme for young artists that will feature a schools competition. The aim is to encourage young artists to persue art as a career.

This was posted by Amos Letsoalo, Cindy Poole and Yvette Dunn

pink sausage exhibition -was a sellout by the rabbits

THE CURATORIAL OBJECT & PROCESS: NEW PERSPECTIVES

2006-11-22T21:14:00.000+02:00

Joseph Gaylard of VANSA introduced the first speaker of the day Giovanni Carmine, reading out a brief summary of his biography.

Giovanni started with a commentary on some of the pitfalls attched to organising and sustaining exhibitions/projects in Europe.

He says ''I don't believe in curatorial schools. I believe in learning by doing process''.

He goes on to speak about his past and current projects, one of his major curatorial projects dealing with 'camouflage' and its implications to the position of the Swiss government during the Nazi era. Giving context to this theme, Giovanni describes Switzerland as an important platform for military action during the Cold War. The most important aspects of military action (such as bunkers, military tanks e.t.c) were situated in the mountains. It was a place where Swiss people could escape to in the face of Nazi invasion. This was a sort of propaganda which gave the Swiss people a source of escape from the enemy (in this case the Nazi's).

There are estimated to be about 40, 000 bunkers spread through the mountains in the area of the Rhine Valley. Two important things changed the thinking in cold war and the second which was quite important to Swiss politics, related to the Nazi war and Swiss relations with Nazi Germany at the time. Despite the fact that they had jewish money in Swiss banks, there were still business being interacted between Germany and Switzerland. These issues touched on nutrality, identity and so on in relation to the Cold War. Giovanni's concept was to have a huge land art project, dealing with the landscape on the one hand and these 'fake' bunkers on the other. Inside the bunker there's a museum set up by a group of people who lived through the cold War era.

''This part of Switzerland was particularly fortified because they were expecting the Nazi's to invade from the rhine Valley''.

The show took place in that particular area and it took one and a half hours to navigate from one space to the other. There were a number of difficulties encountered, such as the problem of bringing infrastructure to a place where it was predominantly natural vegetation, which was also about an hours drive from the city. Instead of having the exhibition over the period of a week, we decided to squat it for one weekend.

''People could come and receive a map which showed them the walking path''.

''We used the first bunker for the show and a 12 volt battery to power electricity''.

''We also had give-away posters showing the bombing in the pacific''.

''This project was reduced in a way. The first idea was to fill the bunkers up with concrete. Since this was not possible, my friend and one of the exhibiting artists, Christoph, chose to use an iconographic symbol of toothpaste and teeth''.

Street lights were used to signify that the area was still under construction. There were two persons 'hanging' around during the exhibition who were installations. They were covered in leaves and moved from one location to another. On top of the bunkers there were also trees as well as some vegetation growing. Visitors were given torches and left alone to 'explore' the space. They had no idea what they would find inside the bunker. One of them had an art work from Boyce, which dealt with the defence of art as a military strategy.

An illustration by Christoph Bucher, a Swiss artist, was derived from a picture of a 'fake' tank in Kosovo, which gave the impression that it was a 'real' tank. Seen from the NASA satellite it looked authentic and they would bomb it. The last bunker was close to a restaurant so there was electricity. The ceiling in red is a painting by Olivier Mosere. He painted the ceiling with anti-rusting paint. It was a kind of conceptual idea of painting. Another artist did a performance inside a cage where he was acting like a monkey. He then projected the image. Downstairs there was another video work done by monica Bombiccini. All works were produced for thi sparticular project. Bombiccini made a three dimensional animated movie inside the bunker, that was a semi-erotic movie about two soldiers.

The third bunker was an installation by two artists. One from Milan and the other from Britain. There were sound installations inside the bushes, of the sounds of the river and birds. It is a work about camouflage and nature. The last work is an installation by Norma Jean. She wanted to make the bunker 'disappear'. It was a bit difficult to achieve this, we had to wait a year for nature to effect this 'disappearance'. The bunker was covered first by snow in the winter then by grass.

''I really like to work at different times with the same artist, because you build up an intellectual as well as a deeper relationship''.

''My second curatorial project was commissioned by a museum in Switzerkand - helmhaus Zurich - the Museum of Modern Art. It was a complex show, in three parts about the body. It was titled NORMA JEAN BODY PROXY. Norma Jean was the 'alias' Marilyn Monroe used. Norma Jean in this context is a name used for artists who are in a way 'prospected' for projects based on their areas of specialisation. It does not refer to one particular artist but to a collective group of artists.

Of this particular show Giovanni says ''we were working on a show about bodies that would not exhibit any bodies''.

It was decided that we would use the blue liquid used in hospitals as a representation of the body as aesthetic. What we wanted was for visitors to feel that the body which was exposed was their own body. A lot of articles, films and information about the body were collected. It was also decided that the space within which the exhibition would take place should be in form of the 'white cube' because museums and curators always talk about the cube but it never really exists. The space was very clinical, every surface was covered in white. At the entrance to the room there was a nurse explaining the concept to visitors. A sensor was also given, with which the 'guest' could navigate through the space.

''The basic idea of this installation was to put the heart outside the body''.

We encountered some difficulties with regards to the sensor placed against the visitors heart and the sound of the beating heart magnified over large speakers. We did'nt take into consideration how the vibrations from the speakers could make the ceiling cave in when turned up.

One of the displays was a cheese made from human milk. To achieve this we had to find the best 'cheese maker'.

''To produce this cheese you need so much love but we know this is not always true. We know how cows are trteated''.

The next room was equally white and clinical. On a table in the room was 135 pieces of 'daily' contact lenses, collected over a period of one year. At the other end of the room is a work titled 'To Die For', which is a jewelry set done in pyrex and synthetic glass filled up with sulfuric acid. The implication was that if the jewelry broke, you would be badly injured or die. Pyrex and synthetic glass are the only substances that resist sulfuric acid.

''We chose objects that were sleek, thin and lit up by special lighting with a lot of space around it''.

''The show in New york was more about energy''

There were some significant displays at the New York exhibition, such as the diomona sofa from the Don Giovanni film 'Fellini'. It was made of pheromones. Whever a visitor sat down on it, pheromones would 'glue' to their clothing. The other piece was the RPN- a motorbike- designed and built by a group of mechanics and artists. The installation was regarded as the 'object of desire', and whenever a visitor got close to it the sound would come on loudly and aggressively, depending on the proxomity of the visitor to the motorcycle.

The last installation was a light, and the space used was the museum in Freiburg which was a former Nazxi swimming pool. The light reacted to sounds around it. If a visitor screamed really loudly the lights would flash brightly.

The last project by Giovanni, in the kunsthalle, emanated from the project ''Operation Ex-Voto''. ''We wanted to dismantle the little chapel in a small town called Vita and transfer it to Baghdad but the people of this little town revolted''. The Biennale organisers for the United Emirates knew about this project and wanted us to do it there but it was not possible.

''We decided to work on the propaganda strategies that the Americans and British are using, mostly Americans''.

Giovanni ended his talk by leaving us with words from a slogan from the American army psychological propaganda strategies;

''Capture their minds and their minds and their hearts and souls would follow''.

He says, ''I also think this slogan would work for the arts''.

ANDREW LAMPRECHT

''I think there's a strategy in curation''.

Andrew states that he was part of a group of young people that collectively started the 'Gallery Puta' (Gallery of prostitutes). This group constituted of artists who had experienced numerous rejections, and decided to do something about it. Their first exhibition was held at Green point (where you can pick up sex workers I'm told). We had a 'dirty' exhibition and invited all sorts of important people.

This first exhibition was titled 'Contra Mundi' (against the world) and was held at the Association of the Visual Arts (AVA). The exhibition showed a group of young artists who have been outside the mainstream. The show was opened by Brett Kebble. Some of the artists featured in that exhibition have become quite 'popular' in their own rights in the present day.

Printtttt in 2005 was the second exhibition. A print-making exhibition, which was impromptu and happened due to a cancellation at the AVA. It had to be planned within a period of two weeks.

The last exhibition which grew out of the cancelled Trans-Cape Biennale, held at a previously booked venue for that event. The venue had been booked for a month, instead of cancelling, Andrew decided to go ahead with a mini-biennale.

''There's something serious about the work that I do. It's either done on a shoe string budget or no budget at all''.

One of my major curatorial projects was FLIP, an exhibition I worked on for six years and which took place at the Michealis Gallery. The Michaelis is one of South Africas oldest galleries. Opened in 1913, by a dutch magnate. He had works from old Dutch masters. His thinking was that this sort of exhibition would show the similarities between Dutch and Afrikaners, and act as a 'unifier' between the two groups.

''I decided that this would be a good curatorial and heritage exercise''.

Andrew thought it would be interesting to show the back of the paintings instead of the front, as the back had more historical details about the work than the painting itself. For instance the cost of arms painted on the back of the painting. The exhibition got a huge amount of press attention.

''I did'nt think it would be such a shock. It triggered a nerve''.

FLIP was according to Andrew, ''merely a curatorial gesture which requires the visitor to tour around the works''. It was also meant to highlight the ways in which people take art for granted, and bring it to their attention.

''Curating should not only be about creating access. It is also about taking access away''.

Andrew sees himself more as a theorist than an artist.

ZAYD MINTY

''I've done many things. people ask me what I do and I call myself an Independant Cultural Producer''.

''I am driven by my convictions that the world has to be a better place''.

COMMUNITY ARTS PROJECT: I actually did a BA in law, Speech and Drama. I also did a course in Cultural Studies at University of Cape Town, the second best of its kind. The first beimg offered in Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The course was very grounded, situated in the anti-apartheid struggle. Media representation e.t.c. one of the places looked at was cape Town.

''As a Durbanite I was very fascinated by Cape Town''.

I came to Cape Town in 1994, it was'nt quite clear what was going to happen. It was in that context that I entered into the community Arts project. It had over fifteen years of community service.

''It was also a majorly important time of thinking about what kind of country we wanted. It was very fresh, very forward thinking''.

That was how I got involved in CAP. I am grateful to Mario Pissara for that and also for leaving CAP. I came to Robbem island after CAP.

''It was a very interesting time to be on Robben Island''.

On Robben Island I started an artists outreach programme. We started a project producing works about and on Robben Island. There were musicians, poets, animators, all sorts of creative people. It was wonderful.

My first co-curatorship was on the ISINTU project. Which i co-curated with Tumelo Maseko. At the time I had no real curatorial experience. We got together a group of artists on Robben Island, we had a very rich dialogue. The exhibition took place at the National Gallery.

''It was a rich time for a lot of as on many levels''.

At the time Zayd left Robben Island he was very angry with the changes that were taking place. he says; ''I have a lot of issues with Robben Island. I was very interested in effecting institutional change on many levels. I was very angry with the changes in the museum, which I perceived as moving away from cultural and artistic considerations to a more managerial approach to culture''.

ISINTU was the first all-black curated and all-blck show in 1999 at the National Gallery.

After leaving Robben Island I started my own organisation like the Trinity Session. It was called 'One' because I was the only member. I questioned why in the face of the various changes that have happened in South Africa, why is it that black people are still struggling to be heard, to be recognised in different sectors. BLAC emerged out of some of these questions.

''What is BLAC about, it is simply a space for discussion, for black cultural workers to meet and discuss. It became a therapeutic space. Through the space people met other people of colour, musicians, artists and so on''.

We knew we had to start doing things. The idea of ''Returning the Gaze'' was to return the gaze against power, institutional systems in Cape Town. It was a major exhibition and we used spaces in the city (out door spaces). We got four billboards in carefully thought out strategic places. The pieces involved postcards.

''I also believe in building relationships with artists. Zen is one of the artists I've had a long dialogue with''.

There were a lot of challenges, it was a time when black issues were not spoken about. It was two years before black empowerment became a popular word.

''These things are never an end in themselves, they can still spark debate and discussion''.

''That's what I like about exhibitions, it gives people the opportunity to talk''.

A PLACE CALLED HOME

''My first proper curatorial project. One of the questions was where do I fit into this whole thing. These issues of race, power, identity and a whole other set of issues. I decided that I was not going to be like the Trinity Sessions. I did'nt want to be commercial at all. sade Gallery, National Art gallery and the Johannesburg Art Gallery were the venues for the exhibition. The show looked at South/East, Asian/Indian connections/heritage. looking at hidden histories, participating artists of Asian descent, presented works ranging from photographic images, and performances to web casts.

''My interest in space has always been big''.

Zayd's newest project focuses on border-crossings. Looking at and thinking about curating the city in terms of borders.

''The struggle to get people to cross lines or borders is a very interesting concept to me''.

In the last two years I have been looking at what it means for people to cross borders. it is a project that is still in its planning stages. I have found ways of integrating this into the CAP project for now. I want to look at how one reclaims cultural resources. I am using the KUMAR (an indian cultural tradition) project to look at a whole range of of issues such as etnicity, institutional change, cultural identity, power and diversity.

CLOSING PANEL- CURATOR CHARLATAN OR SHAMAN

ANDREW: ''Curatorship is a growth industry. The term Curator has a certain sexiness, authority, power. if this profession is a growth industry, it is open to charlatans. It is easy to produce very badly curated exhibitions. The art of curatorship is based on research and the identification of what you are trying to discover''.

ZAYD: ''I think there is a very fine line between a charlatan and a shaman. The kind of commitment you have to a project is reflective of what you do. Anybody has the potential to be a shaman and a charlatan depending on which way you go''.

GIOVANNI: ''The idea of responsibility is really important to what we do. We have to be awrae that we have agrave responsibility to the artists, the artwork and artists. We also have the responsibility to ensure that what we curate is responsibly presented. One has to be aware of the sorts of messages that are being sent. It is a fantastic job because it requires the amalgamation of a whole range of different skills.

Day 2 - Curator's Workshop 21/11/2006

2006-11-22T00:48:00.000+02:00

Curators... the rough guide.

The overarching theme for the day was the curatorial challenges and opportunities presented by the numerous heritage institutions in South Africa.

Bisi Silva, critic and curator based in Lagos, Nigeria is on the editorial board of n.paradoxa magazine and Position magazine. Her career began in England studying and focusing on African Caribbean and Asian artists. She worked with the Eastern Art Board on an exhibition called ‘The Body’. In 1993 she undertook a course in curatorship at the Royal College, United Kingdom which culminated in a show at the Studio Gallery in Harlem. Silva has worked with artists and curators such as Fred Wilson, David Hammon, Farah Bajull, Pominda Howe, Amanda Francis, Cara Walker, Leonardo Drew, and on a project on Cuban photography.

She recently relocated to Lagos, Nigeria and now focuses on art in a traditional African context with great emphasis on archival research to explore African historical themes like the trans-Saharan trade route. Silva is involved in pioneering work towards a stronger intra-African network of artists and curators and brought important perspectives on working abroad as an African curator and on the challenges of her work in Lagos.

Brett Pyper based at the Heritage Studies Programme at the Wits School of Arts supervising a master’s course. He is interested in exploring more effective ways of using sound in museum installations and creating curatorial pointers in audio exhibitions. Pyper investigates the curatorial intentions of contemporary jazz musicians in referencing earlier performers through quotes and allusions to as well as those of pop musicians creating songs which reference traditional roots.

He highlighted the fact that people creating categories in the market such as World Music were performing a type of curatorial exercise. Examples of the presentation of traditional African elements in the music of Miriam Makeba and Harry Belafonte in the 1970’s were cited as exercises in a form of curatorship.

Pyper is currently researching jazz 'stokvels' in South Africa and the sartorial displays and dance performance spectacles of contemporary American jazz culture. He is especially interested in the soundscapes created by Steven Feld called ‘Voices of the Rain Forest’ exploring the local sound world and sonic density in the Bosavi region of Papua New Guinea. Pyper’s advice to emerging curators was that their intentions should be subtle and imperceptible to an audience.

N’Gone Fall, a Senegalese curator based in Paris and Dakar was inspired by her contact as a young person with the Laboratoir Agit Art scene in 1970’s Dakar. She started her career working as a general assistant to the editors of Revue Noire which exposed her to aspects of art, creativity and culture from all over Africa. Her feeling is that the West needs to acknowledge Africa’s contribution to modernism.

Fall has pioneered web-based curating with a group of artists in her native Senegal and has successfully engaged corporate sponsorship for this project. She challenges and encourages emerging curators to write and document their ideas and keep the work of artist in Africa alive and accessible through archiving it for future generations.

A hard hitting and stimulating panel discussion covering contemporary art versus heritage curating led to some sobering comments about several recent new museum projects involving rushed installations of socially and politically complex exhibitions.

Five emerging curators made presentations of exciting future projects to be developed in the coming days in this workshop.

As the team assigned to document today’s proceedings, we would like to thank all the speakers.

Day 1 - Monday

2006-11-20T22:23:00.000+02:00

Arrived!! In better spirits after supper!! Way better spirit (without the spirit)! Here are our comments for the day:

We all arrived from different parts of the country and world, ended up at the Nelson Mandela Robben Island Gateway Museum for the first part of our workshop. This was headed by a panel of experts and title: Institutions, Publics and Beyond: - Curatorial Practices Moving On, chaired by Zayd Minty.

Panel members:

Clive Kellner:
Art, Culture and Politics: Can a distinction be drawn between them in an African context? Taking his audience through independent and institutional curatorial practices from starting out on his own to the kinds of exhibitions now being held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery under his direction.

Emma Bedford:
The trials and tribulations of trying to set up funding for a much needed curatorial mentorship programme from the Department of Arts and Culture has created much debate. Some group members felt that this particular presentation cuts deeper than the surface and should perhaps have been prefaced and introduced. Even so, a very interesting topic.

Eddie Chambers:
Equitable archives. The importance of archiving and a network of them as opposed to one centralised one. Total social inclusion. The critical importance of curating, the process of inserting oneself into history.

N'gone Fall:
Archives, archives, archives!! The importance of documentation in African countries. The importance of building networks and using those networks to share solutions to particulars problems. Questioning and challenging contemporary issues. The flexibility of African curators compared to their European counterparts.

Khwezi Gule:
Ventriliquism - relating the stories of others. The scramble for Africa. The South African trend of fore-grounding everything in politics. South Africa on the bandwagon looking at European and American experts in the art field of curating and not looking at Africa.

Monna Mokoena:
Branding, brand loyalty, the custodians of brands in quite a hostile environment. He prefered to use the practical example of corporate, institutional and art in public spaces.

Thank you Storm for getting us here, even if soaking wet and cold!

Team 1: Sarie Potter, Angela de Jesus, Fatima Maal

Howdy

2006-11-19T11:59:00.000+02:00

I am excited to be spending this time on the Island, an interesting choice of venue for the intended activities.

My personal view is that I hope to be able to swim every single day as well as learn some great curatorial style tips and other tricks at this VANSA workshop.

One can never take too much care in presenting oneself to a group in this way or in presenting artefacts or art to an audience eventually. The big thing for me is that there will be enough salt water around to swill my mind in. Or is it to swill around in my mind? Nevermind.

Looking forward

Rita

Heads first

2006-11-19T00:33:00.000+02:00

to blog may be a new experience, which sounds to the unititiated among us (myslef included - like a bad case of constipation), however we may have to wait for the real thing of initimidating physical meetings to establish content, but i do think this a most fabulous oportunity these next 10 days to throw ourselves into an uninhbited space of learning. So i look forward to it, put your best foets forwARD.
from
sarie

2006-11-17T14:07:00.000+02:00

i've edited my profile a bit, if anyone would like to view it.
Beathur, enjoyed reading your profile thank you for that.
Sarie, don't forget those chocolates!

by way of introduction...

2006-11-16T17:49:00.000+02:00

I am intrigued and would like to know a little bit about the rest of the group but many of you do not seem to have written or posted a profile. Come on... let's. It will satisfy the psuedo-psychic-latent detective in me - if nothing else.
See you all on Monday if we do not meet online before then.
Regards,
Beathur

All set for the workshop?

2006-11-16T12:45:00.000+02:00

All set for the workshop? Only 4 more sleepies...
How am i spending them? Working on my presentation. Spoke with Suzanne Human and Janine Allen-Spies, both from the University of the Free State, to discuss further possibilities in my proposed curatorial project. Also been considering the list from the curators survival kit 1. Insect repellent, 2. Sunblock, 3. Small torch, etc - flashbacks of the many camping trips i attended. Mmmm...

Looking forward to meeting everybody and sharing ideas.

Edits, chocolate and mozzies

2006-11-15T21:47:00.000+02:00

It seems that I thought that I had much more time on my hands to get nicely prepared for this workshop, and now that Monday the 20th is around the corner, I remain puzzled as to why I have not edited the photography that I would like to show, or done at the very least a rough selection of work for one of the projects that I am working on. Perhaps this will be one of the outcomes of the workshop. I am looking forward to teasing out some ideas, filling the questions with more questions, and thinking in a less isolated and less perochial manner. I will make a concerted effort to not make you all trawl through thousands of images and get a decent selection prepared before Monday. I was pleased that the one of projects that I am working on , of Eli Weinberg's lesser known, if not entirely unknown photographs is something that has been thought about by his surviving grandson, and I really hope that I will have a collaboration to speak about at the workshop. Well perhaps the rough edits are not ready but I do have other things thought through, like some bars of really nice chocolate packed to go. Wondering if there is too much wind on Robben Island for mozzies, and if this is a good time to give up smoking ( again !) Will there be loads of time to read, should I pack that tome that sits untouched at my bedside ?

I'm going to try again

2006-11-14T18:01:00.000+02:00

I am creating blogs (like I know whats going on with these) instead of posting (learning as I get along). I will see if this posting gets me to be part the Curators Workshop forum. If successful this time around, I will communicate again. Fatima

Hello Everyone

2006-11-14T17:41:00.000+02:00

I'm new to blogging. So will do this first posting and see if I succeed.
Why blogging and not some other forum? Can one only enter a particular blog by invitation? Does the creator of the blog have the power to block your communications after being invited to a blog? I'll end here, try and find the answers to my questions, and if this posting is successful, I will log in/blog in again!!

The Confirmed Participants

2006-11-10T15:18:00.000+02:00

EMERGING CURATORS: Cindy Poole (Cape Town), Sarie Potter (Cape Town), Loyiso Qanya (Cape Town), Kudzanai Chiurai (Zimbabwe/ JHB), Ijeoma Uche-Okeke (Nigeria / Jhb), Rita Potenza (JHB), Amos Letsoalo (JHB), Fatima Maal (JHB), Ernett Nkwana (Limpopo), Beathur Baker (JHB), Yvette Dunn (Durban), Motseokae Klas Thibeletsa (Taba Nchu), Angela de Jesus (Bloemfontein)

ESTABLISHED CURATORS: Gabi Ngcobo (Cape Town), Sylvie Groschatau-Phillips (Cape Town), Andrew Lamprecht (Cape Town), Sipho Mdanda (Tshwane), Bret Pyper (JHB), Monna Mokoena (JHB), Christopher du Preez (PE), Nonto Ntombela (Durban), Carol Brown (Durban), Thivynaidoo Perumal Naiken (Mauritius)

INTERNATIONAL CURATORS: Eddie Chambers (UK), Bisi Silva (Nigeria), Giovanni Carmine (Switzerland), N'Gone Fall (Senegal)

KEYNOTE GUESTS: Clive Kellner (JHB), Zayd Minty (Cape Town), Khwezi Gule (JHB), Emma Bedford (Cape Town)

FACILITATION: Joseph Gaylard (JHB), Storm Janse van Rensburg (Cape Town)

Countdown to Curators Workshop

2006-11-07T00:41:00.000+02:00

The Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) and Robben Island Museum proudly presents a Curators Workshop from November 20 until December 1, 2006 on Robben Island, Cape Town.

The workshop, a first for South Africa, will bring experienced local and international contemporary art curators together with emerging South African curatorial talent. It will provide a dynamic and interactive forum in which these groups can share experience, ideas and initiate collaborative curatorial projects, with a particular focus on the opportunities and challenges facing curatorial practice in contemporary African contexts. Emphasis will also be placed on the role of the visual arts and curatorial practice in social change and activism.

VANSA is an organisation established by and for South African artists and arts practitioners to represent and lobby for the interests of all active practitioners in the South African visual arts sector. Focused largely on issues of art and social development, VANSA foregrounds existing historical imbalances and deals with concerns around access, opportunities and coherence within the visual arts sector. Formed in 2003, it is an emerging national voluntary body that is establishing a broad membership base, which includes leading figures from the visual arts community nationally.

The Curators Workshop follows a successful conference hosted and organized by VANSA earlier this year in Cape Town, which brought together artists, administrators, museums, galleries, government representatives and arts media to deliberate on the state of visual arts since South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. Delegates from all nine provinces attended.

The Curators Workshop is intended as a residency and laboratory on Robben Island. Whilst resonant with the legacies of the past, the site provides a fitting environment for contemplating the ways in which contemporary visual arts practice can play a role in shaping a robust and healthy public democratic culture.

The workshop takes place over two weeks, with the first week dedicated to presentations by 10 professional local and 4 international curators with 10 emerging curators in attendance. The second week, once professional and international curators have returned home, will be taken up by intensive workshops in curatorial practice and the shaping of future projects, with the group of emerging curators.

Local attendance to the workshop has been on application, and the deadline for proposals expired on October 1. A selection process is currently underway to establish participation. The travel, subsistence and participation costs of participants are fully subsidised through generous support from the project’s funders.

The international participants are Giovanni Carmine (Switzerland), Eddie Chambers (UK), Bisi Silva (Nigeria/UK) and N’Goné Fall (Senegal/France).

The Curators Workshop is generously funded by the National Arts Council of South Africa, The Arts & Culture Trust, ProHelvetia, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the British Council, the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) and the French Embassy.

Also see www.vansa.co.za for more information.

ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CURATORS:

GIOVANNI CARMINE (SWITZERLAND) is a curator, writer and critic based in Switzerland. In 2004 he initiated Zimmerfrei, a non-profit project dedicated to contemporary art and visual culture located in the South of Switzerland, a “very nice place, but an unfertile land for contemporary art”. He has written for numerous contemporary art magazines such as Flash Art International, Parkett, Kuns-Bulletin, Juliet, Frieze and others. He contributed to a number of books and exhibition catalogues, including “Bunker: Unloaded – Coming Up For Air” and “Ryan Gander: In a Language you don’t understand”. His curatorial work is wide and varied, and includes exhibitions for Art Athina (Greece), the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, Photocairo 3 (Egypt), the 6th Cairo Biennale (Egypt) and Kunstraum Walcheturm (Switzerland) amongst others. He was recently appointed as director of the Neue Kuns Halle St.Gallen, a museum of contemporary art in Switzerland.

EDDIE CHAMBERS (UK) is a curator and a writer of art criticism. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths College for his thesis researching press and public responses to Black visual arts practice in England in the 1980s. He has curated a large number of exhibitions in Britain and abroad. In 1989 he established the African and Asian Visual Artists’ Archive, a Black artists' research and reference facility, co-ordinating the project for several years until the autumn of 1992. Living in Bristol, England, he continues to research visual arts activity, curate exhibitions and write on various aspects of visual arts practice. For the spring and fall semesters of 2003, he was Visiting Professor in the Art History Department of Emory University, Atlanta, teaching classes and seminars on the work of artists of the African Diaspora. He has returned to Emory University to teach for three semesters during the course of 2005 and 2006.

N’GONÉ FALL is a Senegalese contemporary art critic, curator, publisher and consultant in cultural policies. Fall has written extensively on contemporary African art and as editor with the Paris based published Revue Noire, co-edited the seminal book “An Anthology of African Art: The Twentieth Century” (2002) with Jean Loup Pivin. She also contributed to “An Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, published by Revue Noire Editions. Fall has curated numerous shows in Europe and the continent, and was an invited curator for the 2002 Dakar Biennial. As a consultant she is the author of strategic plans, identification programs and reports on cultural events and structures for institutions such as the Ministry of Culture of Senegal, the City of Paris, Arts International in the US, Code Africa in Switzerland and the Prince Claus Fund in The Netherlands. Fall is a founding member of the Dakar based collective Gaw, an organisation focussing on visual arts and technology. She is also an advisory board member of “Res Artis”, a worldwide network of residency programmes, based in Amsterdam. Fall lives between Paris and Dakar.

BISI SILVA is an independent curator and critic based in Lagos, Nigeria. She is currently working on the forthcoming inaugural exhibition on contemporary African Art for the National Museum of Mali in Bamako in 2007. She was a co-curator for the Dakar Biennale (May/June 2006). Among her exhibitions are HairDaze: The Cultural Politics of Black (1999), Heads of State: Faisal Abdu’Allah (1997/98), 4 degrees in the Open (1996). She writes for ThisDay Newspaper in Lagos and has written extensively for international art magazines and journals such as Art Monthly, Creative Camera, Third Text, Nka, Journal of Contemporary African Art. She is on the editorial board of N Paradoxa, an international feminist art journal. She has an MA in Curating and Commissioning of Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art London.

ENDS.

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