Goethe-Institut Project Space (GPS)
2018 projects
The Goethe-Institut’s roving, multi-disciplinary Goethe-Institut Project Space (GPS) has announced six projects to be supported throughout 2018. Selected by a jury made up of Gerard Bester, Rangoato Hlasane, Doung Jahangeer and Nkule Mabaso, the projects include:
KUTALACHOPETO (Performance, by Maren Du Plessis in collaboration with the Department of Theatre and Performance at Wits University, Johannesburg)
THEATRE IN THE BACKYARD IN O’OKIEP (Performance, by Mhlanguli George in collaboration with Theatre in the Backyard, Gugulethu, Cape Town and Garage Dance Ensemble O`okiep, Namaqualand)
ANY BODY DANCE LAB (Performance and zine production by Kristina Johnstone and Thalia Laric -New Dance Lab; Julia de Rosenwerth, Kopano Maroga and Nicola van Straaten-Any Body Zine; Theatre Arts Admin Collective, Cape Town)
EARTHEN (Ceramics, by Sylvester Mqeku in collaboration with the Department of Design and Studio Art at the Central University of Technology, Bloemfontein)
SES'FIKILE (Photography, Film and Performance, by Jabulile Newman in collaboration with Zer021, Cape Town)
PROCLAIMATION 73 (Audio-visual archival project, by Zara Julius & Chandra Frank in collaboration with Durban History Museum)
Designed as a non-commercial, artist-centered platform, GPS is designed to support not only the artists and their projects, but also the many structures, platforms and festivals that exist and need partnerships of this nature in order to flourish.
GPS has a travelling concept which enables actors, artists, performers, curators, choreographers, writers, dancers, composers, directors, musicians and film-makers to select the space and infrastructure they wish to work with. At the project’s core is a decentralised approach, where practitioners are able to produce their work locally with a partner of their choice and a GPS grant.
The next call for proposals will be made available in June 2018.
About the Goethe-Institut Project Space (GPS) projects in 2018:
Maren Du Plessis in collaboration with the Department of Theatre and Performance at Wits University, JohannesburgWorld Refugee Day - KutalaChopeto Performance
North West Province and Gauteng
KutalaChopeto will collect stories from five different Angolan communities that live across South Africa – Pomfret, Pretoria, Lethalbile, Rustenburg, Mafikeng and Zeerust - and rework them into story-telling performances.
At its heart, the project is closely connected with the collective’s shared upbringing and with their exploration into storytelling as a mechanism for healing. Helena was born to Angolan parents who fled from Angolan civil war. Her father was a member of the 32 Battalion, a topic she often addresses in her work. Teresa, who is from the same community, takes on different characters in her practice and performs what she calls various forms of ‘Self-writing’, defining it as, ‘an awareness of the past and present, and its effects on the future Self’.
For each community-story, the performance will draw on the real accounts of its members as well as on the collective’s fictional reworkings of them. The full performance is made up of five unique stories, with each one acting as a separate record for each community and performed by a different actor in front of a live audience.
Forming the basis of their stories on the aforementioned Angolan-South African communities, the collective intend on spending one week in each town, during which they will gather stories through interviews and workshops with community members.
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Mhlanguli George in collaboration with Theatre in the Backyard, Gugulethu, Cape Town and Garage Dance Ensemble O`okiep, Namaqualand
Theatre in the Backyard in O’okiep
Western Cape & Northern Cape
The project will see Theatre in the Backyard’s Artistic Director, Mhlanguli George, travel to O’okiep to work under the mentorship of Alfred Hinkel and John Linden, of Garage Dance Ensemble, and to collaborate with young choreographer Byron Klassen. Including performers drawn from Garage Dance Ensemble, the final production will be performed for a local audience.
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Kristina Johnston & Julia de Rosenworth in collaboration with New Dance Lab, Any Body Zine and the Theatre Arts Admin Collective, Cape Town
New Dance Place
Western Cape
As a 6-week residency for local artists, this project aims to create a platform for choreographers that engage immediacy, experimentalism and new research in order to foster a community of practice and research among artists working outside the boundaries of mainstream dance. The project has three strands:
Making: Workshops in somatics, improvisation, composition and writing dance; with studio space provided for artists to collaborate or work individually.
Presenting: In house performances for participants with opportunities to share and receive feedback and three public performances. Each performances offers the opportunity to redefine a new relationship to the public, and dance performance itself.
Archiving: The publication of a special issue of Any Body Zine. Artists will be encouraged to write about their practice and develop their own archival material for publication---
Sylvester Mqeku in collaboration with the Department of Design and Studio Art at the Central University of Technology, Bloemfontein
Earthen
Free State
A workshop to demonstrate, produce and exhibit ceramic artworks introducing an innovative method of fabricating described herein as Sand Casting.
The programme will accommodate 20 participants over 40 day working sessions to make a total of 40 artworks which they will take with them at the end of the project.
Each 20 day workshop session will divided into two halves: the first ten days will be spent on casting and excavation, the other ten days will be set aside for glazing and firing the 20 artworks.
This project strives to be a pioneering experimental work to be developed within South African contemporary art practice. Participants will be selected based on their relative experience in mould making, whether in sculpture or ceramics. Likewise, the artist heading this program will be collecting qualitative data to aid in a practice based research study towards a master’s degree in fine art.
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Jabulile Newman and Luvuyo Nyawose in collaboration with Zer021, Cape Town
Ses'fikile
Western Cape
“Ses’fikile - siwu mndeni” includes a film premiere, an exhibition, live performances and celebration of safe/ inclusive queer spaces that currently exist in club culture. It will take place at Zero21, which is a club based in Canterbury Street, Cape Town. Zero21 has a long history of creating parties that cater to a marginalized group of queer individuals within the city of Cape Town. The event will host performances by Angel-Ho, FAKA, Queezy and more. The film premiere will screen a short film directed by Jabu Nadia Newman & Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose, highlighting the importance of representation in mass media of queer and trans bodies of colour.
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Zara Julius & Chandra Frank in collaboration with Durban History Museum
Proclaimation 73
KwaZulu-Natal
Proclamation 73 explores the Durban archive as it relates to two neighbourhoods – in Durban North and South – that, under South Africa’s apartheid regime, were designated for Coloured and Indian peoples under the Group Areas Act (GAA). Conceived as an interdisciplinary, mixed-media project between Chandra Frank, Zara Julius, and the eThekwini History Museum working in (audio)visual storytelling, mapping and archiving, Proclamation 73 works with and creates different living archives informed by contrasting racial and cultural backgrounds. This project challenges how one may take these two histories, which are often read differently and independently of each other, and create and present them together in an interactive exhibition at eThekwini History Museum and on online platforms – questioning what has been silenced, which narratives have been forgotten, and how we may turn the gaze around in a way that allows these Durban archives to speak to each other in the present day.