Represent Recommends: Kin – Be – Jozi
This sounds really interesting for all of us into Urban Culture and Arts – it’s a global intercultural art project – 5 artists from Jozi, Bern (Switzerland) and Kinshasa have collaborated over the last year in exploring different facets of our urban environments. It’s Jozi’s turn to find out all about their discoveries – hear all about it by attending the event on Friday evening. It’s at the wonderful August house in End St – the Fashion District in town (see our article here) – August House sounds like a fascinating place to visit – please RSVP below if you’d like to go on Friday. More info here.
Kin:Be:Jozi
the final presentation
FRIDAY 15 JUNE, 17:30 onwards
3rd Floor, August House, 76-82 End Street New Doornfontein safe parking in basement please rsvp to info@jpp.org.za
Athi Patra Ruga & Anthea Moys (SA), Raphael Urweider & Steffi Weismann (Switzerland) and Kura Shomali & Vitshois Mwilambwe (DRC) in collaboration with Joca (João Paulo), Tashika, (Mandla) Xtra Mdlulu and Luvuyo Gope from the Drill Hall, Jules Batale, Emeka Owe, George Khumalo, Nadine Hutton, Christopher Patra and James Dylan Happe.
Kin-Be-Jozi is an exchange project between artists and cultural networks from Bern, Kinshasa and Johannesburg. It started in the capital of Switzerland in October last year with a group of five artists from each place. The same group worked together in Kinshasa over December and congregated, with new participants, for the final residency in Johannesburg in early May. Each city presents a particular urban reality and ideology; each one features differently on a global scale. Kin-Be-Jozi seeks to navigate points of connection and disconnection that arise out of the engagement between the artists, geographic distances and specific moments in the life of each city.
With a focus on process and dialogue, the artists have been researching and working in the east end of inner city Johannesburg for 6 weeks, responding to what they ‘found’ and were looking for. Many of the resulting collaborations and performances have been impulsive and site-specific, as much as they have followed the arguments each artist brought to the group. A range of interventions grew out of interactions with the people and places that make up the metropolitan neighbourhoods of Joubert Park, Doornfontein, Yeoville and Hillbrow (gyms, boxing rings, clubs, vacant cinemas, fresh produce markets and historical sites).
On Friday June 15th, the artists and their collaborators will present selected work/arguments at August House, where they have been living and working. Starting from 5.30pm onwards, it will include in-situ installations, projections and performances on End Street. Expect to see a dialogue in progress – documentation of interventions and experiences, live performances that play on random commonalities between Xhosa and Swiss German, video material of the home-made Safari Dream Team docu-drama in the north of the city, interviews and music tracks by Drill Hall residents and a ‘meditation’ on fashion/urban engineering at this very edge of the Fashion District, where the legal and illicit intersect at day and night.
Leading up the the 15th, Athi Patra Ruga is presenting ‘welcome to berea – it’s a complex situation’ on Monday 11th June, 15th floor, the Plumridge, corner Alexander and Tudhope Street in Berea. Facing daily passport controls in the streets and restricted to host 3 visitors at a time only, Patra Ruga turns towards his living space to reflect on the ongoing ‘population control’ and gentrification in the inner city that profoundly effect the cosmopolitan make-up of the area. The event will include performances by social engineer Christopher Patra, Steffi Weismann and Virtual Vicky. Please bring your ID. Safe Parking on street.
We would like to thank our generous sponsors: the French Institute of South Africa, Pro Helvetia Switzerland and Cape Town, the National Arts Council, the French Embassy in Kinshasa and the City of Bern. And: Bié Venter, Mzebenzi Phakathi and Mr Khumalo, Romeo and Yves. Vitshois would like to thank his spirits. «KIN:BE:JOZI» was developed in partnership with Eza Possible (Kin), PORGR_Zentrum für Kultur Produktion (Bern), ScUr&ºK (Paris) and the Joubert Park Project (JHB).
For information please mail Dorothee Kreutzfeldt at dk1970@mweb.co.za
