GAZART

Gazat is a loxion term (location/township slang) which refers to a communal spirit of living whereby everyone contributes whatever they can to achieve a common goal. The term is most often used by black youth as a call for everyone to gather all their coins to collectively buy spaai-kos/bunnychow to be shared amongst a group. The term follows after other popular black South African philosophies and practices such as Ubuntu and stokvels. In an art context the term alludes to a DIY ethos which promotes independence and self-sufficiency on the part of artists. Too many a time artists pressured into the demands of their art communities and those communities' museum practices which often suppress true artistic experimentation and expression in favour of work for commercial consumption.

GAZART is a template of exhibitonary practice in which a multi-diciplinary team of Gazaters bring together their various skills and resources to make shit happen.

Be there!
BROUGHT TO YOU BY MADE YOU LOOK

SERMON ON THE TRAIN - Revelations

Please contact Made You Look for more info.
See http://sermononthetrain.blogspot.com

Sermon on the Train: the second testament

The Second Testament took place on the 13th of August 2009. The crowd that had gethered bought their tickets at parkstation and headed down to platform 1 to catch the train. The throng of people on the platform made it difficult to find space to stand. Each train that came before our own was packed, and people pushed and shoved to get on or off the train before it set off again.When our train to Vereeniging eventually arrived we jostled to claim our space on the train and to make sure we weren't left behind. After some mic difficulties, the lecture started.

Kirsten Doermann, lecturer at Wits University School of Architecture and Planning and one half of the collective, Black Lines on White Paper, read from Elia Zenghelis' Seminal lecture "The 'immeuble-cité' a strategy for Architecture ". See http://www.iabr.nl/2007/PowerNotes_06/top/140 for the original lecture.Zenghelis' lecture presented challenging and controversial critiques on pluralism and democracy, urbanisation and the city and architecture's role in constructing futures within current globalised, market driven and individualist anxieties. Kirsten's choice of text is particularly interesting in relation to The Sermon, which largely denies the principles of Form set out in Zenghelis' lecture and provides a challenge (though focused on architecture) to all creative and intellectual post-modern practices.

Zenghelis states,
"Meanwhile the fate of cities today, is in the hands of those who maintain that our current status (Liberal Democracy) is the end-of-(city)-history and who claim that this hybrid process has finally had the conclusiveness of reconciling the individual with the collective, arguing that what works for one person works for everybody: a process where anything goes and where the possibility of judgment is denied."

The Sermon stopped off at Orlando Station, were we set back on the train to Parkstation, Johannesburg. An particularly engaged and critical discussion took place on the journey back, with input from students, lecturers and member's of the public alike. This was particularly exciting for the artists as it made evident the discourse that such a work can encourage. Soon after the discussion ended, a group of Zulu Dance performers took to the 'stage' til the train stopped. "I'm too sexy for my Beshu!"Thank you to Blacklinesonwhitepaper and to everyone for attending. A big thank you and much respect to Andrew Bells who took some incredible photographs!

Samson's House - Sermon on the Train Workshop

"Samson's House" was the first Sermon on the Train Workshop, kindly funded by Wits University. The workshop, open to students and public alike, was held by blacklinesonwhitepaper, an Architects Collective (Solam Mkhabela and Kirsten Doermann).

The workshop taught basic skills in architecture planning. The workshop was constructed on the basis of aiding people who might want to build their own homes sometime in the future.

Scroll through the slideshow to see photographs from the workshop.

SERMON ON THE TRAIN

The Second Testament is due for the 13th of August 2009.
All welcome, email us for details on ticket allocation and sermon procedure.
The briefing will be on the 11th of August 2009 at 13:15 at the Architecture School .

connect to sermon on the train blog through link to the left.

Wits University has apprached us to extend the Sermon, granting us funds in order to support student/lecture collaboration and public access to information. The funding means the series is too expand, including workshops and a publication. The funding will spread for another two Sermons in 2009.

The Second Testament will be in collaboration with blacklinesonwhitepaper, an architects collective (Solam and Kirsten) who also lecture at Wits School of Architecture and Planning. The Workshop series titled 'Samson's House' will teach basic skills in creating ones own blueprint for a simple house. The workshops are open to the public and will be held on Saturday and Sunday (8 and 9 August). Transport funding is available for those who are unable to afford it. Lunch will also be provided.

FOTOCHEQUE - An international Collaboration

FOTOCHEQUE
Fotocheque is a collaborative work by Molemo Moiloa and the Tillburg Cowboys. The first leg took the form of an interactive installation at the Mundial Festival 2009 in Holland. The instillation took the form of a lifesize painting of Molemo, to whom festival goers could donate funds for her art practice. The next phase sees a collaborative photographic instillation coming ashore in South Africa. This phase will include workshops, talks, outreach programmes and exhibitions.

Gevers te kijk - Goede-Doelen-Gevers willen èn mogen graag gezien worden.
Kent u die foeilelijke foto's, waarop een man in stropdas met een te grote glimlach, namens zijn bedrijf een grote cheque overhandigd, waarop met grote letters het bedrag staat geprint waar hij de maat van zijn glimlach aan ontleend?U kunt nu uw eigen Foto-Cheque-Foto laten maken met een heuse grote cheque. Bij deze kunstinstallatie is het mooie is dat u zelf het bedrag mag bepalen waarmee U gezien wil worden!
Het goede doel is de Zuid-Afrikaanse kunstenaar Molemo Moiloa (zie foto), die van de giften een kunstwerk zal vervaardigen. Dit zal tentoongesteld worden, tesamen met de Foto-Cheque-Foto’s van de donateurs die dit mogelijk gemaakt hebben.
Tilburg CowBoys willen met dit project de aandacht vestigen op de drijfveren van goede-doelen-schenkers en hun motieven zich met hun gift te laten fotograferen.

Teach me. Teach You

Teach Me Teach You is a collaborative project between the students at Bedfordveiw Methodist Church Adult Literacy Programme and Molemo Moiloa. The collaboration is born out of an interest in the way knowledge and information is passed between people and how this affects the way people interact with one another.

Every Tuesday evening at the classes, Molemo teaches the students English writing and reading and some communication skills. For the last 5 mins of each class, the students teach Molemo isiZulu and Sesotho phrases.

This reversal of roles brings into contrast the ways in which information giver and information receiver roles indicate a sense of empowerment and relational observation. It opens up questions about the ways in which we learn and the extent to which we feel we have something to teach.

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. ~Thomas Carruthers

In these classes, as is evident when juxtaposed in the video, comfort zones are pushed and questions are asked. The bravery of an adult learner can never be underestimated. When we consider the daily interactions and communications we have through written word, from emails to newspaper headlines on roadside posters, daily functioning seems predetermined by reading and writing. And yet as is evident through these men and women, many of whom lead families and jobs, communication is a far more complex human interaction. As they teach, the subtleties of communication are brought to the fore.

PLAY AND DISPLAY

PLAY AND DISPLAY is to manifest itself in an interactive performance manifestation on the 2nd of June 2009 at the substation, Wits University.

The manifestation is the culmination of months of collaborative work and will entail a site specific instillation, video and interactive performance. The brave are welcome to come play 'chicago' with the grade 4 class from supreme college. The rules will be explained but its really about guts.

Come, get involved, be a part of the experience.

So...

Play and Display is set to go with filming taking place on Tuesday the 12th of May. Any one interested is more than welcome to be at Supreme College on Jorrissen Street, just across from Senate House, Wits University at 12pm. Though we are not making the play experience a public act, as it takes place on the school's 'playground', anyone interested in taking part is welcome.

The first phase is playing with some of the kids of the grade 4 class at Supreme College. We will be playing a range of games including Eggy, Chicago and possibly even four square. The filming will take place from right within the games. The Supreme College playground is in fact the school premises' basement, which will then be translated from the site specific to the Substation, Wits University in early June. This second phase is an entirely public art work, based in a gallery setting featuring video work by Smokey and an instillation by Smilo.

The work seeks to explore the nature of play as it indicates the movements and changes of the society that serves as the platform for play. The ways that game and play have changed in less than a generation from our age (20-25) to the grade fours of Supreme College interest us. Children will always play but what and how they play, displays something about society.

Though not typical dialogue, play acts as a kind of dialogue with society, reflecting and communicating it's values, interests, the ways in which it accomodates it's children and it's attitude to education. Whithin play itself, rules, roles and child to child dialogue serve as a microcosm of the larger world, it's rules, roles, play and dis-play. The work itself, emerges out of over three months of extensive dialogue between the collaborators, a whole nother level of roles, rules, games, play and display.

SERMON ON THE TRAIN

The Sermon on the Train was the collaborative work of Prof Anitra Nettleton, Nare Mokghoto and Molemo Moiloa. The work was a public lecture, The WSOA DIVA talk, and took place on the train to Dube. Prof Nettleton gave a presentation on the nature and complexities of an African Avant Guarde.

The work sought to explore issues around access to information and the actualities of 'public' lectures. The train was chosen as the ideal vessel as a crosser of boundries, historically associated with the arrival of new people and industries; and the distances-between of apartheid era town planning and symbolically representative of the crossing of boundries and negotiation of liminalities.

The lecture being about the African Avant Guarde was a self critical look at the nature of intellectual and particularly public debate, whether of an art historical, fine art or socio-political nature. This was parralleled with the practice of preaching in trains and the kinds of discourses available to the public on a daily basis.

Though the work started off with a few complications, once on the Train, Prof Nettleton's lecture was thoroughly thought provoking, detailing artists from Mohl to the Amadlozi group to Nicholas Hlobo and their negotiations of tradition, Africa and what may or may not be regarded Avant Guarde. Debate and discussion afterward were equally engaging with some tough questions and interesting comments on both the lecture and the artwork as a whole.

RIALO

RIALO

SAY SO

expression in action.speach.written word

community based art that explores conversation, communication,consultation, exchange and encounter.

Nicolas Bourriaud, co-founder and former co-director of Paris art gallery Palais de Tokyo: "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space."