View allAll Photos Tagged witwatersrand
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Der Ort wurde 1890 als Goldgräberdorf gegründet und wurde zur "Ghost Town", nachdem bereits kurz danach Gold am Witwatersrand (heute Johannesburg) gefunden wurde.
Wits Digital Arts postgrad, Nathan Destro, testing the "Un-useless Invention" that he designed in a Masters workshop led by visiting NY interactive artist, Laura Nova. Entitled the "Personal Space Protector" it was tested late morning 18 Sept in the streets of Braamfontein, Johannesburg.
The ultimate price of coal. Families have always worried about husbands, sons, siblings toiling underground to extract coal; always feared that its price would be demanded from the unforgiving seams . No one expected however, the terrible price that was exacted on that morning of 21 October 1966 when the Pantglas School was suddenly and terribly engulfed by a wall of liquid slurry from a collapsed slag heap. Tragically, the children were filing out from morning assembly; had the collapse occurred several minutes later, the loss of life would have been significantly reduced since they would have been dispersed to their classrooms which did not bear the full brunt. One hundred and forty four persons lost their lives, one hundred and sixteen of them primary school children.
This section of Aberfan Cemetery is dedicated to these victims of coal, with marble arches and their graves, many subsequently added to by family members over the years. By 2007, stones had begun to deteriorate, and funding to refurbish the area was provided by the Aberfan Memorial Charity, work being completed in 2009.
A contribution by the Witwatersrand Cambrian Society.
Africa features prominently in China's increasing role as an actor in global development, attaining new salience at the 6th Forum on China Africa Cooperation, Johannesburg, in December 2015. The changing Chinese role in the continent is a vitally important and increasingly consequential engagement today, but follows a longer history of meaningful connections.
This unique panel will bring together different perspectives on China's relations with Africa, and African relations with China, with particular focus on questions about the politics of development over time. It features different generations of leading analysts: a pioneer of the study of China-Africa relations, a foremost authority on current China Africa relations, and a leading emerging analyst and scholar on Africa-China today.
Panelists:
Professor George T. Yu is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A pioneer in studying China's relations with Africa, he has been a leading analyst of China's relations with Africa and the Third World since the 1960s. His books include China and Tanzania: A Study in Cooperative Interaction (1970) and China's African Policy: A Study of Tanzania (1975), as well as more recent chapters and commentary about China's relations with Africa.
Professor Chris Alden teaches international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is a research associate at the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. He previously taught at the University of the Witwatersrand from 1990-2000 and established the East Asia Project in 1992. He has contributed to the South African Institute of International Affairs and published extensively on China-Africa relations including China in Africa (2007), and China and Mozambique: from Comrades to Capitalists (Auckland Park: Fanele, 2014), co-edited with Sergio Chichava.
Zainab Usman is a co-convener of the Oxford University China-Africa Network (OUCAN). She is completing her doctorate in International Development at the University of Oxford. Her research assesses the political economy of reform in resource-rich countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Zainab has worked at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), International Crisis Group and has consulted for the World Economic Forum on Africa, Department for International Development (DfID) and Office of the Nigerian National Security Adviser (ONSA).
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Cape Town (Afrikaans: Kaapstad; Xhosa: iKapa) is the second-most populous city in South Africa,[3] and the largest in land area, forming part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. It is the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape, as well as the legislative capital of South Africa, where the National Parliament and many government offices are located. The city is famous for its harbour as well as its natural setting in the Cape floral kingdom, including such well-known landmarks as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is also Africa's most popular tourist destination.[6]
Located on the shore of Table Bay, Cape Town was originally developed by the Dutch East India Company as a victualling (supply) station for Dutch ships sailing to Eastern Africa, India, and the Far East. Jan van Riebeeck's arrival on 6 April 1652 established the first permanent European settlement in South Africa. Cape Town quickly outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope, becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony. Until the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the development of Johannesburg, Cape Town was the largest city in South Africa.
Today it is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, reflecting its role as a major destination for immigrants and expatriates to South Africa. As of 2007[update] the city had an estimated population of 3.5 million.[3] Cape Town's land area of 2,455 square kilometres (948 sq mi) is larger than other South African cities, resulting in a comparatively lower population density of 1,425 inhabitants per square kilometre (3,690 /sq mi).
(from Wikipedia)
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
That xylophone is work of art.
City Deep Mine, Johannesburg, Witwatersrand field, Gauteng Province, South Africa.
Three channel HD film installation
Choreography and dancer: Dada Masilo; music composition and arrangement: Philip Miller; additional music composition: Johannes Serekeho, music performed by First St John Brass Band; video editing and construction: Žana Marovič, Janus Fouché; sound mix: Gavan Eckhart; costume design: Greta Goiris
William Kentridge Studio
by William Kentridge
Taken in the Exhibition
In China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao Zedong took place between 1966 and 1976. Its aim was to accelerate development and to abandon bourgeois values while imposing Maoist thought.
The brutal government-led campaign, involving the enforced relocation of people and the violent suppression of free thought, echoed strategies pursued in South Africa during apartheid. Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’, which contained directives and inspirational thoughts, disregarded the harsh reality confronting those living ordinary lives.
‘Yangbanxi’ (Model Operas), eight of which were created by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and performed as ballets as well as being adapted as films, were the only officially sanctioned state music permitted during the Cultural Revolution.
With strong nationalist themes and highly charged musical scores, ballets like ‘The Red Detachment of Women’ transformed peasants and soldiers into heroes of the revolution.
Kentridge’s work refers tangentially to the current expansion of Chinese state interests, a form of economic colonialism, across Africa. In the film, the graceful ballerina dressed as a soldier and dancing with a rifle, transposed by Kentridge to South Africa, is an incongruous image.
Similarly, the Chinese campaign to eradicate the four ‘pests’ (mosquito, rat, fly and sparrow) during the Great Leap Forward (1958–62), is rendered tragically absurd in the film – millions of birds were killed in an orchestrated campaign, leaving the grain fields at the mercy of locusts and resulting in the Great Chinese Famine (1959–61), and the eventual reimportation of sparrows from the Soviet Union.
[Royal Academy]
William Kentridge
(September — December 2022)
The largest exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK to date, ‘William Kentridge’ leads the visitor on an experiential voyage through the last 40 years of his extraordinary career.
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955. After graduating in Political Science and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1976, he spent two years studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation before going to Paris in 1981 to study mime and theatre at the L’Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
Returning to Johannesburg, he continued to work in theatre but also began to concentrate on his art, which included suites of etchings and linocuts, large-scale charcoal drawings and short films.
By the late 1980s his work was gaining recognition outside South Africa, a process accelerated by the end of apartheid and the reopening of the country, which had long been internationally regarded as a pariah state. Since the 1990s, his art and work for stage has been seen in museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses across the world.
While always regarding drawing as his primary practice, Kentridge continues to make prints, sculptures, tapestries and films, and to work on theatrical projects and lectures. His work in theatre has expanded to include both directing operas and creating new operatic pieces in collaboration with composers and performers.
[Royal Academy]
Digital Arts interactive media lecturer, Tegan Bristow, and Electrical Engineering MSc student, Dino Fizzotti, are collaborating on project to produce a local version of the Arduino circuit board using the processes available in the Fine Arts print studio at WSOA.
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Three channel HD film installation
Choreography and dancer: Dada Masilo; music composition and arrangement: Philip Miller; additional music composition: Johannes Serekeho, music performed by First St John Brass Band; video editing and construction: Žana Marovič, Janus Fouché; sound mix: Gavan Eckhart; costume design: Greta Goiris
William Kentridge Studio
by William Kentridge
Taken in the Exhibition
In China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao Zedong took place between 1966 and 1976. Its aim was to accelerate development and to abandon bourgeois values while imposing Maoist thought.
The brutal government-led campaign, involving the enforced relocation of people and the violent suppression of free thought, echoed strategies pursued in South Africa during apartheid. Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’, which contained directives and inspirational thoughts, disregarded the harsh reality confronting those living ordinary lives.
‘Yangbanxi’ (Model Operas), eight of which were created by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and performed as ballets as well as being adapted as films, were the only officially sanctioned state music permitted during the Cultural Revolution.
With strong nationalist themes and highly charged musical scores, ballets like ‘The Red Detachment of Women’ transformed peasants and soldiers into heroes of the revolution.
Kentridge’s work refers tangentially to the current expansion of Chinese state interests, a form of economic colonialism, across Africa. In the film, the graceful ballerina dressed as a soldier and dancing with a rifle, transposed by Kentridge to South Africa, is an incongruous image.
Similarly, the Chinese campaign to eradicate the four ‘pests’ (mosquito, rat, fly and sparrow) during the Great Leap Forward (1958–62), is rendered tragically absurd in the film – millions of birds were killed in an orchestrated campaign, leaving the grain fields at the mercy of locusts and resulting in the Great Chinese Famine (1959–61), and the eventual reimportation of sparrows from the Soviet Union.
[Royal Academy]
William Kentridge
(September — December 2022)
The largest exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK to date, ‘William Kentridge’ leads the visitor on an experiential voyage through the last 40 years of his extraordinary career.
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955. After graduating in Political Science and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1976, he spent two years studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation before going to Paris in 1981 to study mime and theatre at the L’Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
Returning to Johannesburg, he continued to work in theatre but also began to concentrate on his art, which included suites of etchings and linocuts, large-scale charcoal drawings and short films.
By the late 1980s his work was gaining recognition outside South Africa, a process accelerated by the end of apartheid and the reopening of the country, which had long been internationally regarded as a pariah state. Since the 1990s, his art and work for stage has been seen in museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses across the world.
While always regarding drawing as his primary practice, Kentridge continues to make prints, sculptures, tapestries and films, and to work on theatrical projects and lectures. His work in theatre has expanded to include both directing operas and creating new operatic pieces in collaboration with composers and performers.
[Royal Academy]
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Sibongile Dladla, MSM Project Director, Perinatal HIV Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand
Ismail Farouk and Babak Fakhamzadeh are having a talk about Soweto uprisings . com at the University of Wits' digital soiree on March 9 at 3pm.
Digital Arts interactive media lecturer, Tegan Bristow, and Electrical Engineering MSc student, Dino Fizzotti, are collaborating on project to produce a local version of the Arduino circuit board using the processes available in the Fine Arts print studio at WSOA.
I attended a wedding at Shepstone Gardens three years ago and it's such a magical place that I always wanted to visit it again. It was build in the early 1900's by Boer War prisoners and has since expanded to a beautiful wedding and events venue nestled against the Witwatersrand Ridge
Three channel HD film installation
Choreography and dancer: Dada Masilo; music composition and arrangement: Philip Miller; additional music composition: Johannes Serekeho, music performed by First St John Brass Band; video editing and construction: Žana Marovič, Janus Fouché; sound mix: Gavan Eckhart; costume design: Greta Goiris
William Kentridge Studio
by William Kentridge
Taken in the Exhibition
In China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao Zedong took place between 1966 and 1976. Its aim was to accelerate development and to abandon bourgeois values while imposing Maoist thought.
The brutal government-led campaign, involving the enforced relocation of people and the violent suppression of free thought, echoed strategies pursued in South Africa during apartheid. Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’, which contained directives and inspirational thoughts, disregarded the harsh reality confronting those living ordinary lives.
‘Yangbanxi’ (Model Operas), eight of which were created by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and performed as ballets as well as being adapted as films, were the only officially sanctioned state music permitted during the Cultural Revolution.
With strong nationalist themes and highly charged musical scores, ballets like ‘The Red Detachment of Women’ transformed peasants and soldiers into heroes of the revolution.
Kentridge’s work refers tangentially to the current expansion of Chinese state interests, a form of economic colonialism, across Africa. In the film, the graceful ballerina dressed as a soldier and dancing with a rifle, transposed by Kentridge to South Africa, is an incongruous image.
Similarly, the Chinese campaign to eradicate the four ‘pests’ (mosquito, rat, fly and sparrow) during the Great Leap Forward (1958–62), is rendered tragically absurd in the film – millions of birds were killed in an orchestrated campaign, leaving the grain fields at the mercy of locusts and resulting in the Great Chinese Famine (1959–61), and the eventual reimportation of sparrows from the Soviet Union.
[Royal Academy]
William Kentridge
(September — December 2022)
The largest exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK to date, ‘William Kentridge’ leads the visitor on an experiential voyage through the last 40 years of his extraordinary career.
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955. After graduating in Political Science and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1976, he spent two years studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation before going to Paris in 1981 to study mime and theatre at the L’Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
Returning to Johannesburg, he continued to work in theatre but also began to concentrate on his art, which included suites of etchings and linocuts, large-scale charcoal drawings and short films.
By the late 1980s his work was gaining recognition outside South Africa, a process accelerated by the end of apartheid and the reopening of the country, which had long been internationally regarded as a pariah state. Since the 1990s, his art and work for stage has been seen in museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses across the world.
While always regarding drawing as his primary practice, Kentridge continues to make prints, sculptures, tapestries and films, and to work on theatrical projects and lectures. His work in theatre has expanded to include both directing operas and creating new operatic pieces in collaboration with composers and performers.
[Royal Academy]
Volker Schoeer, Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand Wits
Presentation: Can an intervention aimed at improving economic inclusion make recipients less happy? Findings from a randomized control trial
From Drawings for ‘Ubu Tells the Truth’ (In situ wall drawing), 2022
Charcoal and chalk
by William Kentridge
Taken in the Exhibition
In 1994 Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress (ANC) was elected President of South Africa. The following year, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was established to help address the deep wounds left by apartheid.
Jane Taylor, a long-term collaborator with Kentridge, wrote ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’, a play developed in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company (led by Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones), directed by Kentridge, and first performed in 1997 in the Laboratory of the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. The play was based on Alfred Jarry’s absurdist drama ‘Ubu Roi’, first staged in Paris in 1896, entwined with testimony recorded by the TRC.
Kentridge’s animated film, ‘Ubu Tells the Truth’, is constructed from archival footage and animation created for the stage production. Jarry’s protagonist, Père Ubu, becomes Pa Ubu, a member of a police unit charged with controlling anti-state activities such as political protest or membership of an illegal organisation. His wife fears he is having an affair but is relieved to discover he is actually out detaining, torturing and murdering suspected activists instead.
The work is an exposition of the brutal and illegal tactics used by the South African Defence Force and South African Police during apartheid. The film is presented alongside a site-specific wall drawing by the artist. A suite of eight etchings of the same name is shown in the adjacent gallery, with drawing fragments used in making the film.
[Royal Academy]
William Kentridge
(September — December 2022)
The largest exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK to date, ‘William Kentridge’ leads the visitor on an experiential voyage through the last 40 years of his extraordinary career.
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955. After graduating in Political Science and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1976, he spent two years studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation before going to Paris in 1981 to study mime and theatre at the L’Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
Returning to Johannesburg, he continued to work in theatre but also began to concentrate on his art, which included suites of etchings and linocuts, large-scale charcoal drawings and short films.
By the late 1980s his work was gaining recognition outside South Africa, a process accelerated by the end of apartheid and the reopening of the country, which had long been internationally regarded as a pariah state. Since the 1990s, his art and work for stage has been seen in museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses across the world.
While always regarding drawing as his primary practice, Kentridge continues to make prints, sculptures, tapestries and films, and to work on theatrical projects and lectures. His work in theatre has expanded to include both directing operas and creating new operatic pieces in collaboration with composers and performers.
[Royal Academy]
Three channel HD film installation
Choreography and dancer: Dada Masilo; music composition and arrangement: Philip Miller; additional music composition: Johannes Serekeho, music performed by First St John Brass Band; video editing and construction: Žana Marovič, Janus Fouché; sound mix: Gavan Eckhart; costume design: Greta Goiris
William Kentridge Studio
by William Kentridge
Taken in the Exhibition
In China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao Zedong took place between 1966 and 1976. Its aim was to accelerate development and to abandon bourgeois values while imposing Maoist thought.
The brutal government-led campaign, involving the enforced relocation of people and the violent suppression of free thought, echoed strategies pursued in South Africa during apartheid. Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’, which contained directives and inspirational thoughts, disregarded the harsh reality confronting those living ordinary lives.
‘Yangbanxi’ (Model Operas), eight of which were created by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and performed as ballets as well as being adapted as films, were the only officially sanctioned state music permitted during the Cultural Revolution.
With strong nationalist themes and highly charged musical scores, ballets like ‘The Red Detachment of Women’ transformed peasants and soldiers into heroes of the revolution.
Kentridge’s work refers tangentially to the current expansion of Chinese state interests, a form of economic colonialism, across Africa. In the film, the graceful ballerina dressed as a soldier and dancing with a rifle, transposed by Kentridge to South Africa, is an incongruous image.
Similarly, the Chinese campaign to eradicate the four ‘pests’ (mosquito, rat, fly and sparrow) during the Great Leap Forward (1958–62), is rendered tragically absurd in the film – millions of birds were killed in an orchestrated campaign, leaving the grain fields at the mercy of locusts and resulting in the Great Chinese Famine (1959–61), and the eventual reimportation of sparrows from the Soviet Union.
[Royal Academy]
William Kentridge
(September — December 2022)
The largest exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK to date, ‘William Kentridge’ leads the visitor on an experiential voyage through the last 40 years of his extraordinary career.
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955. After graduating in Political Science and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1976, he spent two years studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation before going to Paris in 1981 to study mime and theatre at the L’Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
Returning to Johannesburg, he continued to work in theatre but also began to concentrate on his art, which included suites of etchings and linocuts, large-scale charcoal drawings and short films.
By the late 1980s his work was gaining recognition outside South Africa, a process accelerated by the end of apartheid and the reopening of the country, which had long been internationally regarded as a pariah state. Since the 1990s, his art and work for stage has been seen in museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses across the world.
While always regarding drawing as his primary practice, Kentridge continues to make prints, sculptures, tapestries and films, and to work on theatrical projects and lectures. His work in theatre has expanded to include both directing operas and creating new operatic pieces in collaboration with composers and performers.
[Royal Academy]
Charcoal and pastel on paper
by William Kentridge
Taken in the Exhibition
In the 1980s Kentridge was engaged in theatre and television production in Johannesburg. He directed and acted in plays as well as designing theatre posters and backdrops for the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, Market Theatre Company and Nunnery Theatre. It was at this time he began to produce large-scale charcoal and pastel drawings.
From single-sheet drawings, these works evolved into diptychs and triptychs. The subjects focus on daily life, the urban environment and the distinctive landscape in and around Johannesburg. In these drawings, Kentridge uses symbolism to present the realities of South Africa under apartheid.
Wild animals, including hyenas, warthogs and cheetahs, represent government officials; a burning tyre refers to “necklacing”, a brutal form of summary extrajudicial execution exacted on black South Africans suspected of colluding with the authorities. Generating distrust within communities was a powerful weapon of control used by the South African authorities.
The drawing ‘Casspirs Full of Love’ refers to the armoured people-carriers favoured by the South African Defence Force to patrol townships such as Soweto, where Black South Africans were forcibly relocated, and the vehicles became synonymous with state violence.
Brutality and threat are embedded in many of these drawings, juxtaposed with bourgeois White South Africans indulging their extravagant lifestyles, as if unaware of the poverty and violence that surrounds them.
The triptychs portray a single scene from multiple viewpoints, positioning the viewer as a witness to an unfolding drama rather like being in the audience of a theatre where no-one shares the same view of the play enacted on stage.
[Royal Academy]
William Kentridge
(September — December 2022)
The largest exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK to date, ‘William Kentridge’ leads the visitor on an experiential voyage through the last 40 years of his extraordinary career.
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955. After graduating in Political Science and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1976, he spent two years studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation before going to Paris in 1981 to study mime and theatre at the L’Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
Returning to Johannesburg, he continued to work in theatre but also began to concentrate on his art, which included suites of etchings and linocuts, large-scale charcoal drawings and short films.
By the late 1980s his work was gaining recognition outside South Africa, a process accelerated by the end of apartheid and the reopening of the country, which had long been internationally regarded as a pariah state. Since the 1990s, his art and work for stage has been seen in museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses across the world.
While always regarding drawing as his primary practice, Kentridge continues to make prints, sculptures, tapestries and films, and to work on theatrical projects and lectures. His work in theatre has expanded to include both directing operas and creating new operatic pieces in collaboration with composers and performers.
[Royal Academy]
Anti-Xenophobia demonstrations by Wits University staff and students, 21 May 2008. About 500 stood along the pavements on Jan Smut Avenue and held placards condemning the recent violence against foreign nationals in which 40 people have been murdered and tens of thousands displaced.
Johnny Clegg (South Africa) at WOMADelaide 2012Long before Paul Simon went to Graceland, Johnny Clegg flouted apartheid lawsin South Africa by forming the seminal mixed-race band Juluka in the 1970s.Teaming with Sipho Mchunu. Johnny’s sensational cross-cultural conceptestablished the template for fusing Western pop with Zulu rhythms – English vocalsfixed to an African heartbeat. The idea formed when Johnny was lecturingAnthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and tookflight when South African producer Hilton Rosenthal became a champion of theproject. Having broken through all racial and political barriers in his own countrythrough persistent touring, Johnny reached out to the world from 1986 with hissecond band, Savuka, then as a solo artist. He can now boast more than fivemillion album sales, though his influence has been most telling in France, where heenjoys a massive following and is fondly called Le Zulu Blanc – the White Zulu.English-born but raised in Zimbabwe and South Africa, Johnny has now enjoyedthree decades of prominence as a singer, songwriter, dancer, anthropologist andmusical archivist, performing across the world and remaining outspoken on issuesof apartheid, racism and perspectives on migrant workers in South Africa.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (/mænˈdɛlə/;[5] Xhosa pronunciation: [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla]; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was South Africa's first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.
A Xhosa born to the Thembu royal family, Mandela attended the Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the ANC and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the Afrikaner minority government of the National Party established apartheid in 1948, he rose to prominence in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign, was appointed superintendent of the organisation's Transvaal chapter and presided over the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the South African Communist Party (SACP) and sat on its Central Committee. Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961, leading a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.
Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990 amid escalating civil strife. Mandela joined negotiations with Nationalist President F. W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid and establish multiracial elections in 1994, in which he led the ANC to victory and became South Africa's first black president. He published his autobiography in 1995. During his tenure in the Government of National Unity he invited other political parties to join the cabinet, and promulgated a new constitution. He also created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. While continuing the former government's liberal economic policy, his administration also introduced measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator between Libya and the United Kingdom in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, and oversaw military intervention in Lesotho. He declined to run for a second term, and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman, focusing on charitable work in combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Denounced as a communist terrorist by critics,[6][7] he nevertheless gained international acclaim for his activism, having received more than 250 honours, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Soviet Order of Lenin. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, or as Tata ("Father"); he is often described as the "Father of the Nation".
CHE GUEVARA
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa];[7] June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.[8]
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.[9] His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.[9] Later, in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.[10] Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.[11]
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals,[12] instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba's armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion[13] and bringing the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.[14] Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of Marxism–Leninism led him to posit that the Third World's underdevelopment and dependence was an intrinsic result of imperialism, neocolonialism, and monopoly capitalism, with the only remedy being proletarian internationalism and world revolution.[15][16] Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and summarily executed.[17]
Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist-inspired movements. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century,[18] while an Alberto Korda photograph of him, titled Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world"
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
Jonathan Crossley in performance on cyber guitar (with Jono Sweetman on drums) a the opening of the UNYAZI IV festival.
Photographs of some of the musicians performing at the UNYAZI IV Electronic Music Festival, held at Wits University, Johannesburg from 9 - 13 September. The festival was curated by Cameron Harris and Carl Stone. The UNYAZI IV festival was a project of NewMusicSA and was hosted by the Fak'ugesi Digial Africa Festival at Wits.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa];[7] June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.[8]
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.[9] His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.[9] Later, in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.[10] Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.[11]
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals,[12] instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba's armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion[13] and bringing the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.[14] Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of Marxism–Leninism led him to posit that the Third World's underdevelopment and dependence was an intrinsic result of imperialism, neocolonialism, and monopoly capitalism, with the only remedy being proletarian internationalism and world revolution.[15][16] Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and summarily executed.[17]
Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist-inspired movements. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century,[18] while an Alberto Korda photograph of him, titled Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world".[19]
NELSON MANDELA
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (/mænˈdɛlə/;[5] Xhosa pronunciation: [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla]; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was South Africa's first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.
A Xhosa born to the Thembu royal family, Mandela attended the Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the ANC and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the Afrikaner minority government of the National Party established apartheid in 1948, he rose to prominence in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign, was appointed superintendent of the organisation's Transvaal chapter and presided over the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the South African Communist Party (SACP) and sat on its Central Committee. Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961, leading a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.
Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990 amid escalating civil strife. Mandela joined negotiations with Nationalist President F. W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid and establish multiracial elections in 1994, in which he led the ANC to victory and became South Africa's first black president. He published his autobiography in 1995. During his tenure in the Government of National Unity he invited other political parties to join the cabinet, and promulgated a new constitution. He also created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. While continuing the former government's liberal economic policy, his administration also introduced measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator between Libya and the United Kingdom in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, and oversaw military intervention in Lesotho. He declined to run for a second term, and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman, focusing on charitable work in combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Denounced as a communist terrorist by critics,[6][7] he nevertheless gained international acclaim for his activism, having received more than 250 honours, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Soviet Order of Lenin. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, or as Tata ("Father"); he is often described as the "Father of the Nation".
Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother's funeral cortège, all the regiments for which she was Colonel-in-chief from across the Commonwealth attended, they included the Transvaal Scottish, Witwatersrand Rifles, The (Queen's Own) Cape Town Highlanders, The Toronto Scottish Regiment, The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada, Canadian Forces Medical Service, New Zealand Army Medical Corps, Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, the Royal Yeomanry, the Light infantry, the Queen's Own Hussars, RAF Central Flying School.
Shepstone Gardens is a wedding and events venue off Louis Botha Avenue in Hope Street. One block away from the blaring taxi's and third world living is this haven against the Witwatersrand Koppie. Build by Boer War Prisoners of War it has been expanded over the years to it's present format
South African conceptual sound artist, James Webb, presenting examples of his work, at the AVLAB Meeting, Johannesburg, 11 August 2011. Under the umbrella of the sound art seminar organized by the Departments of Music and Digital Arts of Wits University, in this meeting the participants were Francisco López (ES), James Webb (RSA), João Orecchia (RSA) and Lukas Ligeti (AUT).
AVLAB is a gathering platform for creation and spreading of visual and sound arts under the concept of an open and collaborative process. Its objective is to offer a point of information, training and diffusion about current sound and audiovisual creation. Apart from workshops and talks, AVLAB meetings are gatherings for the presentation and discussion of projects of experimental, electronic and electro-acoustic music, online creation platforms, sound art, and real time AV processing.