As a collaborative space, LAPA facilitates residencies as a form of artistic research. It invites and develops modes of research and collaboration with artists working in the continent and diaspora. Learn more about the artists in residence research projects below:
Taken from a text by Amilcar Cabral who prefaced ideas of unity and struggle within the African agenda, his phrase ‘Our people are our mountains’ (1972) illustrates the landscape and its metaphors as a condition of life: what is tied and coded between people into land and how it writes many other conditions of living.
Using this as a basis to wonder on theories and practices of collectivity, third spaces, shared inquiry and co-citizenship in which art becomes a social practice; this residency activates borderless states of being in new pan-africanism and African states through three main sessions: Enunciation: Voicing on many forms, Imbibe earthen processes and Contextual Landings.
Session 1: Enunciation: Voicing in many forms
A residency investigating the voice as a mode of multiplying, reconstituting and reconfiguring through practices that highlight the multivocal or polyvocal.
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It considers the voice as material, invoking the many languages, tonalities and multiplicities of meanings, and the vocal, through forms of enunciation, as the unfurling of these multiple meanings. It invites perspectives on the voice and the vocal as a means through which we express our own reality and as the mechanism of carrying others realities.
Session 2: Imbibe earthen processes
This residency is hyper-focused on food and food systems as a mode of timekeeping, education and sharing, by discussing the ethics and practices of radical movements in relation to these food histories.
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It negotiates food production, distribution and consumption in multiple cultural and political contexts by linking the earth processes with the gut processes and considers the preparation and practices of food as a mechanism of locating oneself within them.
Session 3: Contextual landings
Asking the questions: How does our context define our reading, how does geography divide and focus our attention?
How is it still possible to speak of a ‘here’ and a ‘there’ at the same time?
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This session explores and works against concepts of migration as apolitical but demands this homing to provide context and its sets of terms; unconcerned with geographies but concerned with the principles of homing oneself.
Notes from the selection committee
“[The selected residents all have themes which connect to illustrate a landscape through elemental metaphors: the sonic through earth, the sun through food and water through space]” blk.banaana
“Just to speak on the elemental, these resources that Africa has a huge supply of but also in their use are quite limited. [...] how will these residencies speak to a larger context and how will we bring them together to address these issues and of course their aesthetic, artistic agency. A lot of scientific orientated people don’t think that artists have a say in these things [but from an African context a lot of noise is made through the arts]. Let’s see how we can really make a point of these things.” Bernard Akoi Jackson
Jury
LAPA residency is reviewed and selected by a group of professionals working in Africa, dedicated to artistic practices, research and institution making.
Each year, three jury is selected to advise and make final selections for the residency periods from the LAPA open call. The applications are vetted for quality of practice and intent of research, as well as the applicability of the work to a collaborative format and its sensitivity to practices of new pan-africanism.
LAPA exists as a project space through conviviality, interjection, development and collaboration.
We host and share space with organisations, individuals and other professionals with like-minded missions and projects. LAPA functions as a co-working space, reading room and residency. This is adaptable to host forms of conversational programming, workshops and presentations. Ko Lapeng Image Gallery
Food is a system of thinking, of sensing and a process at work in the world.
LAPA makes space for projects on plate experiments. Here we think about ingredients, food systems and the senses of home.
This is led by food researcher Langelihle Mthembu.
Lapa Food Image Gallery
Working in tandem with the artist's collaborations and research, we host a reading room for a deeper study of the wider practices of artistic and cultural practices.
The Reading Room is developed through artist's research focus, fictional and non-fictional books as well as critical and historical publications on practices of culture, art, design, architecture and more.
Lapa Reading Room Image Gallery
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