Staff Research Development Grant

Brett Pyper - Listening made visible: Performing aurality in South African diga jazz dance

This project was pursued in tandem with the planning of the ¡°JOBACCT / Cosmology¡± residency and public humanities activities, and was considerably advanced by the high levels of participation on the part of dancers affiliated with various jazz appreciation networks from townships to the North, East and West of Pretoria / Tshwane.

Jeremy Wafer - Pallet

A work proposed for the Gardiner Haskins building Bristol UK as part of the Centre of Gravity project September 2020. An extension of the Bristol exhibition, a further new work will be presented on an exhibition at the Goodman Gallery Cape Town.

Lieza Louw - St Cuthbert¡¯s This is What I like ÍøÒ×ÌåÓý my Place.

This project enables elders from a rural area to voice their experiences which speaks to the third pillar of the values underwriting the values of the university: social justice and outreach. Rural histories and very valuable fragments of living heritage are lost when artistic research focuses on urban narrative expressions only.

Manola Gayatri-Kumarswamy- Kanchi and the Oceans Bellow: ethics and eros on artistic research

The artistic project is a performance and writing based creative work that uses the Oceans, Fluidity Queer Desire as it¡¯s material, conceptual and sensory impulses. Primarily a writing and performance project it is also visually informed and musically reinforced. It is developed from various inspirations I had with encounters on the shores and  in the waters of the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean while also waiting for visas, communicating digitally with co-artists and thinker, swimming in the sea and pools with queer feminists, grieving ancestral, national, transnational political and personal losses and ?nally by having a transformative spiritual encounter with sperm whales while in Johannesburg in July 2020.

Same Mdluli ¨C Traversing the rural: Revisiting the works of South African artist Johannes Mashego Segogela.

The project is a publication of the artist Johannes Segogela as part of an extension of my PhD thesis. The book will be the first publication which focuses on Segogela¡¯s oeuvre and biography and raises critical questions around the visual art production of Black African artists once labelled as ¡®transitional¡¯ by virtue of being situated in the peri-urban and so called ¡®rural¡¯ locales. The publication series is an attempt at developing scholarly interest and writing in the artistic practices that challenge western epistemological frameworks of understanding art and expression.

Mwenya Kabwe - The Great Disappearance

This project deploys Shailja Patel¡¯s articulation of migritude as a ¡°philosophical meditation on what it means to live within the concept of Migrant¡± and develops what can be understood as a migrant attitude towards making contemporary African theatre and performance work.  The project works with the notion that aesthetic logics of African futurity extend migritude¡¯s investment in a spatiotemporal past and present, forward into an unknown, yet desired future, in other words, beyond a here and now and towards a ¡°then and there¡±. 

Tanja Sakota - Shattered Reflection

This project aims to provide support for colleagues and students working in the domains of film education at the tertiary level as well as subjects in the broader Humanities and Social Sciences who are committed to curriculum transformation.  The method of creating a film outcome through the book challenges traditional hierarchies of knowledge where theory precedes practice and the teacher¡¯s knowledge overrides student experiences (consonant with the transmission model); a place where knowledge is generated in the academy over knowledge that is made outside its walls. 

Sithembiso Khalishwayo - When We Hit Pause

A multidisciplinary performance incorporating Physical Theatre, music and spoken text as a creative response to the ÍøÒ×ÌåÓý pandemic. When We Hit Pause seeks to use the arts to tackle the issues that face society, individuals during ÍøÒ×ÌåÓý and the various emotions and reactions that came out from those issues. The show forms as a critical reflective space to engage and challenge various experiences and responses happening within the student community, provincial, national, and international community.

Warren Nebe - A Theatre Writing Project: writing for children, about children, through the lens of children

Writing for children, about children, and through the lens of children is profoundly neglected space in South Africa. It speaks back to how our society consistently silences children and renders them invisible. The power of writing for adults about significant psychological and sociological issues through the lens of children is new terrain. This Theatre Writing Project aims to bring new light to writing for children, about children, through the lens of children. Our intention is to break the legacy of non-published work for young people in South Africa, to publish our work, and to make our work available for educational and theatre production.

Sharlene Khan ¨C When the moon waxes red (2009-2021)

When the moon waxes red (2009-2017) employs filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, feminist bell hooks and black feminist Audre Lorde¡¯s ideas of ¡®bio-mythography¡¯, textured narrativisation and ¡®insiderout¡¯/¡®outsider-in¡¯ researching methodologies to document personal family stories as they intersect with the larger social histories, in this case, the colonial British Indentured Labour System and apartheid.