Hosted by Wits Digital Arts, University of the Witwatersrand
Please circulate widely! This is an amazing opportunity for South Africans to learn about online contemporary art from two of its ongoing pioneers and most noteworthy supporters of commissioned work. Live and in person!
The Upgrade! Johannesburg and Wits Digital Arts proudly present: Turbulence.org + Gavin Jantjes
Friday 7 April, 3-5PM at the Digital Convent, WSOA
supported by The Trinity Session
Visiting from the US, Turbulence.org is an internationally renowned net.art commissioning organization – a continuing pioneer in funding contemporary conceptual artists working with networked media. For years, Turbulence.org has been commissioning international online art, including Johannesburg artists Nathaniel Stern and Marcus Neustetter in 2005.
Turbulence is co-directed by Helen Thorington (founder of New Radio and Performing Arts, Turbulence’s mother organization) and Jo-Anne Green (a Wits alumnus!). The two will be presenting a very biased history of web-based artwork, showing projects they have commissioned as well as some of their own, and will then be taking questions.
No knowledge of web technology necessary!
Open to all!
more information:
http://atjoburg.net/upgrade/
http://turbulence.org/
http://new-radio.org/helen
http://new-radio.org/jo
Convent Seminar Room, WSOA, University of the Witwatersrand Free parking available in front of the Convent at WSOA. For directions go to http://www.wits.ac.za/artworks/contact/map.htm
BONUS:
Gavin Jantjes will also be briefly presenting TRANS CAPE at The Upgrade! in order to court interested artists!
TRANS CAPE: South Africa’s first ever large-scale contemporary African Art Exhibition.
The city of Cape Town is set to host TRANS CAPE, the first ever large-scale exhibition of African contemporary art to be staged in South Africa. TRANS CAPE opens on September 23 and runs for four weeks, filling the city with the work of approximately 70 contemporary artists from across Africa and the Diaspora. It is the first in a series of bi annual contemporary African art exhibitions presented by the CAPE Africa Platform.
This year’s exhibition breaks boundaries in several new ways. As counterpoint to the tribal image of Africa that exists in the imagination of the west, TRANS CAPE will show the work of a new generation of African artists.
“A new generation of artists across the continent are creating remarkable contemporary responses to the unique realities of present-day Africa, contemporary African art is on the move,” says CAPE Africa Platform CEO Susan Glanville-Zini.
TRANS CAPE’s artistic director, South African born and internationally acclaimed curator and artist Gavin Jantjes and curators, Gabi Ngcobo from Iziko National Gallery and Khwezi Gule from the Johannesburg Art Gallery aim to capture this energy and movement.
Jantjes explains the title of the exhibition as a metaphor for this sense of movement. “Movement is signalled by the prefix TRANS – transform, translate, transgress, transmit, transfigure, trans-national, transport, transsexual, trans-national, transient are all words that connect processes of exchange and interaction to the exhibition.”
Movement will also be registered through the presentation of artworks and the manner that visitors experience the exhibition. TRANS CAPE will be choreographed across Cape Town, inviting visitors to actively engage and re-read the cities geography; as represented through artistic intervention in the urban fabric, histories and everyday life of the city.
TRANSCAPE will include specially commissioned artworks that deal directly with the urban realities of Cape Town, as well as existing works that address the shifts, alterations, disruptions and re-locations of people across Africa.
The exhibition is conceived as a journey that uses public spaces and locates new site-specific spaces along a route that links the Cape Town city centre, to Khayelithsa, Muizenberg and Stellenbosch.
Moving TRANS CAPE’s audience along this route is an essential part of the curatorial concept. Alongside the traditional public transport system (buses, trains, and taxis.), TRANS CAPE will use vehicles transformed into art projects to transport viewers between locations.
Through these journeys TRANS CAPE will create meeting points for cross cultural exchange and multidisciplinary art experiences that include music events, performances, interventions and film screenings.
For artists who are interested in receiving more information about the exhibition; Gavin Jantjes will be presenting TRANS CAPE at UPGRADE in Johannesburg on Friday 07 April at the Wits Digital Arts School from 15:00 – 17:00.
The curatorial team will select artists and artworks for the exhibition based on an intensive research process and not by open submissions. They are however open to receiving information about artists they do not know and artists are invited to visit the CAPE website at www.capeafrica.org or to phone +27 21 488 3064 for further information.
