REVIEW - BRIEF - VISION - PROGRAMME - DELEGATES - MINILABS

Day 2 of SESSIONS eKAPA 2005 featured an experiential engagement with the city itself in the form of several independently convened minilaboratories.

The minilaboratories used site-specific and route-specific discussions, performances, activities and interventions to provoke conversations about urban texture, locality, and the nature and location of contemporary African art practice.

Minilaboratories on the day included:

A Carnival Laboratory:
Cape Town, Crossroads of Creolisation

Curator and writer Claire Tancons co-ordinated a performance-based minilab that used Carnival as a site to explore the heterogeneous cultural elements that have come to shape African and African diasporic identity.

Claire Tancons (provocateur) is a curator and writer working between New York, Paris, Port of Spain and Pointe-à-Pitre. She is currently conducting research into the influence of Carnival on contemporary Caribbean and Latin American artistic practices. Having studied in Europe and the United States, she has held research and curatorial positions in a variety of leading American institutions. She is a frequent contributor to NKA and to Third Text and part of the production team working on a documentary featuring Édouard Glissant.

Cape Town Expression:
Urban Culture and the 2nd Economy

The Coffee Beans Routes combined mini-bus taxis, short performances and house calls in a route-specific, interactive tour that offered delegates the chance to immerse themselves in Cape Town expression, in the places that it's most prevalent, that is, in the 2nd economy of the Cape Flats.

Established by Iain Harris, Jethro Louw and Mzwandile Matiwana, coffeebeans routes (provocateurs) is an urban regeneration agency working in the townships of Cape Town. Part record label, part artist agency representing musicians and poets and part music tourism company, they explore cultural diversity, heritage and legacy, working to unlock economic potential using strategies of sustainable development.

Where in the World Are You?

Artists Gabi Ngcobo and Khwezi Gule hosted a psychogeographic intervention that took pedestrians off their predictable paths and invited them to remap the city's hidden histories and encrypted events.

Gabi Ngcobo (provocateur) is an artist, writer and cultural activist. Her art has been exhibited locally and internationally and her writing appears regularly in local art publications. A co-founder of 3rd Eye Vision in Durban and a co-chair for the Western Cape branch Visual Arts Network South Africa, she is currently flexing her curatorial skills as Assistant Curator at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town.

Khwezi Gule (provocateur) is an artist, administrator and curator, and has served as a Fellow Curator of the Brett Kebble Art Awards (2004) and the curator of Contemporary Collections at JAG. He has held solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions both locally and internationally. Gule is also a teacher and researcher often working with community-based organisations and education projects.

Long Walk from the Centre to the Periphery: Central Cape Town to Langa Township (via Enugu, Nigeria)

Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi facilitated a route-specific interaction that engaged African creative practice along the dividing line of what/who is (in) the centre and who/what is (in) the periphery.

Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi (provocateur) is a writer, cultural activist and an artist based in Nigeria. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions, conferences and workshops within Nigeria and abroad. An active participant in cultural development on the continent he is a member of The Pan-African Circle of Artists, The Visual Orchestra, The Art Republic and the Congress for Cultural Action in West Africa.

Graffiti Sites:
Excavating Cape Town’s Urban Canvas

Mimi Cherono Ng'ok let delegates 'tag' along on an expedition into Cape Town's urban canvas that used graffiti culture to investigate an experiential understanding of the city's complex urban, public and political contexts.

Mimi Cherono Ng’ok (provocateur) is an artist, photography student and arts administrator. She has held a solo photographic exhibition of graffiti in Cape Town and participated in numerous group exhibitions in and around the city. Mimi has also worked as a photography facilitator at Arts and Media Access Centre and an exhibitions co-ordinator at the Zanzibar International Film Festival.

Africa is No Longer in Africa

Taking a cue from Ghanaian rapper Lord Kenya who says, 'a true African boy who knows how to make an Africa out of the computer', Mustafa Maluka de-coded and re-coded African identity via a kerb-side cyber excursion into a networked youth culture informed by hip-hop and open source technologies. Also in the mix was a live streaming broadcast that repositioned the DJ as curator.

     Born and currently based in Cape Town, Mustafa Maluka (provocateur) made an immediate impact on the local art scene when he held his first solo shows in 1997 and 1998. He subsequently moved to Amsterdam for six years and studied at De Ateliers. He exhibited extensively while overseas, and was awarded the annual Tollman prize for a young artist on his return to Cape Town in 2004. In addition to painting, Mustapha works in digital media and co-runs the pioneering website www.africanhiphop.com.