Day 1 - SESSION ONE:
African Migrant and Diaspora Communities food paths and networks
Date: Thursday, 22 September
Time: 10:00 - 16:00
Venue: Various locations curated.
How do African migrant and diaspora communities speak through food? What do food systems that emerge from these communities tell us about the power of networks and the patterns and locations of these networks? What role does food play in disrupting power and entrenching belonging?
Activities:
- A Tour and Sourcing of Ingredients.
Venue: Participants will travel by kombi through a sourcing route
Fifteen individuals will be taken on a tour of Salt River and Voortrekker Road (Salt River to Belville) by Chef and Food Activist Jane Nshuti of Tamu by Jane. Participants will source ingredients from areas and suppliers making up the ecosystem and food supply chain, which services the migrant communities residing in these areas.
This route narrates the story of how certain areas of Cape Town have demarcations specific to particular African countries. The ingredients and types of cuisine sold reveal the migratory patterns that give rise to social, cultural and religious networks. These networks inform where, what and who finds home, support, community, etc. as a layer to the city’s spatial dynamics. We want to make visible the presence of this ecosystem and the lives that engender its dynamism and complexity.
- A collaborative cooking-session
Venue: Jane’s Home in Woodstock. Address to be shared with participants.
In a collaborative cooking-session, Jane will facilitate a process of working with sourced ingredients to create a meal to be shared among the group.
Day 1 - SESSION TWO:
Sonic Toolkit Session
Date: Thursday, 22 September
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Venue: Surplus Books
*A Closed Session for invited practitioners, and scholars
Sound has taken its place in artmaking around the global south as a productive space from which to build newness, agency and critical public thinking. In this session we explore the craft of sound making, and its legacies in the practices of two leading sound makers and thinkers. Michael Bhatch is a Sound Studies Scholar and Independent Artist. Dinga Sikwebu is a retired trade unionist and jazz enthusiast.
Michael Bhatch will set out his work at the coalface of a sonic countercultural practice, sharing a sense of its ethics, its modes of working. He will focus especially on the practice of sampling, drawing on the iconic underground figure J Dilla among others, demonstrating what it is and how it makes sonic magic that integrates critical thinking.
Dinga Sikwebu will recount his introduction to jazz listening through an account of his activism in trade union movements, worker struggles for access to cultural resources, and through his ongoing passion for jazz as a serious art form linked with a practice of freedom.
Valmont Layne and Aidan Erasmus will facilitate discussions during the session.
Day 2 - SESSION One:
Talking, Listening, Performing — The Politics of Sound and Gentrification
Date: Friday, 23 September
Time: 18:00 – 20:30
Venue: Igshaan Adams Studio on 1 Perth Road, Maitland
- Sacrificial Lamb is a mixed media live installation by Christie van Zyl references the Witchcraft Act of 1957. She maps out places of worship for various religions while highlighting the absence of spaces for indigenous wellness practices. She marks the continued criminalisation and undesirability of such practices in urban settings. She speaks of the absence of space both physical and mental.
*this will play on loop for the duration of the event with sound being muted when other activities are taking place.
- A documentary titled Takbir by Ayesha Mukadam captures the diverse community of Salt River coming out to recite the Takbir on their stoeps on Eid morning whilst under strict lockdown. The chanting of the Takbir was used as a means to connect and celebrate Labarang. This was an emotional and historic moment for all Muslims living in Salt River and around the country, where mosques were shut down for the first-time during Ramadan and for the Eid Salaah.
- This series will also include a commissioned collection of sonic sound recordings of the Woodstock landscape presented in a form a score composition dialogue band performance with a 5 piece band. The presentation will capture from the sound of train tracks, hair salons, the skateboard, the church, the taxi gaatjie shouting “Mowbray, Claremont, Wynberg”, the gallery opening chatter; etc. It will also include snippets from Dr Lwando Scott’s essay “Memorials for the Marginalised”. This will be curated by sound curator, music producer and audio engineer Adon Geel who currently lives in Woodstock. Adon will be joined by the Kujenga band.
Day 3 - Session One:
A Politics of Legacies and Inheritances in Independent Spaces
Date: Saturday, 24 September
Time: 12:00 - 14:30
Venue: Theatre Arts
Using an excerpt performance from a play directed by Nwabisa Plaatjie titled Ziyana as a provocation to have a conversation on A Politics of Legacies and Inheritances in Independent Spaces. This seeks to speak beyond the romance and nostalgia in narratives about art and such spaces during the freedom struggle, to speak about power in this context? To examine these histories critically to aid understanding and, more specifically, the contemporary project? How might so-called independent spaces of today engage notions of inheritance and legacy? Can new patterns emerge that consider the mutative nature of power and how it plays out through race, gender, the state, academia, and the funding conditions for independent spaces?
Other discussion Provocateurs will include:
- Ukhona Ntsali Mlandu, Director, Greatmore Studios
- Nqaba Shakes Mbolekwana, Location Studio Practice
- Phokeng Setai, Interdisciplinary Scholar
- Itumeleng wa Lehulere, Revolutionary Papers
- Kim Gurney, Interdisciplinary Scholar
Day 3 - SESSION TWO:
Singayisusa nanini na joy experience
Date: Saturday, 24 September
Time: 15:30-22:00
Venue: Igshaan Adams Studio on 1 Perth Road, Maitland
A slow radical act of subaltern joy in a gentrifying neighborhood marked by formal nuisance complaints more than neighbourly requests to reduce the volume. Singayisusa nanini na comes from a protest song composed by activist and musician Ncebakazi Manzi during the countrywide Fees Must Fall which loosely translated means we can make things ungovernable at any point (if you continue to agitate and be unreasonable” this song invokes Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as the one who gives power to the revolutionaries amongst us. Except this time no bodies will be on the line to be harmed in defence of and against. There will be sip and paint sessions, live music, comfort, napping spaces and other things that feel safe, free and indulgent to act even momentarily as an antidote, a balm for lifetimes of triggers. It is a whimsical dream space, a respite. NomaKrestu Xakatugaga, Tankiso Mamabolo, Sky Dladla will be in performance with Shakes Nqaba Shakes Mbolekwana on the decks.