Call for proposals 2014!
The Goethe-Institut is known worldwide for promoting intercultural engagement through fostering dialogue and exchange in the arts. GoetheOnMain was developed by the Goethe-Institut South Africa and launched in May 2009 at Arts on Main in Johannesburg as a non-commercial, artist-run project space – an exceptional free platform in a city where cultural spaces are either commercially or governmentally managed. The multi-disciplinary GoetheOnMain has since hosted a wide range of exhibitions, workshops, events and performances; including visual art, literature, film, music, dance, and theatre projects. The way in which project selection takes place is central in understanding the philosophy of GoetheOnMain. In order to create an unbiased and open platform, the programme is decided by an independent committee of arts professionals, who meet after the yearly public call for proposals. Projects are invariably hotly debated. The focus above all else is on artistic quality, whilst maintaining a sensitivity for the context and local relevance, and favouring an experimental approach. The GoetheOnMain space itself also implies a certain conceptual frame – that of the city, or a sense of ‘urbanity’: a focus on the human relation as much as built environment. Previous projects at GoetheOnMain have dealt extensively with politics of space, noting the stratified city, gentrification, issues of access, and a loss of the ‘center’ so typical of many world metropolises, but also of the personal as political – focusing on private narratives, identities, eccentricities, and broader global issues affecting the city dweller. Project realisation: March to December 2014 Deadline for submissions: 15 August 2013 Send your proposals here:...
Represent DIARY: MY FIVE SENSES OF JOZI CITY
As you all know the city of Johannesburg is alive and kicking, as developers continue to finish off their buildings and plans, more and more working people are moving into the heart of the city to live in slick accommodation. Represent has sent one of it’s writers, Sisiwami, to give living in the inner city a bash, over the next few weeks and months, she will be documenting her stay in th… e inner city of Johannesburg. Scroll down for updates. See our Flickr pics here. October 2006 Do you know that at night you can hear the sea in Joburg city? It rocks and sways you as if your body were adrift on an ocean, quietly gliding you through midnight and gently into dawn. You can only hear it once the phuza-face stragglers have settled down to a restless sleep in a doorway, once the garbage collection trucks have stopped clunking and the glow of the office blocks fades into the backdrop of a pulsating night. It’s the late-night soothing sound of the united rhythms of city air conditioners and generators, colluding to form a constant hum and drone that washes over your thoughts as you concede to the comfort of Johannesburg blackness. And yet all too soon it is gone. Replaced with the daily discord of a teenage city coming to life, coming into itself, finding its feet for another grueling day. It is with sadness that my sojourn in the city has come to an end but it is through my 5 senses that I shall always be able to zoom back to this time of change and excitement. “I can’t believe you’re leaving us already” laments our favourite security guard, “it won’t be the same without you.” And my life will never be the same since the successful city seduction that wrapped me up in a disjointed world for 6 months leaving me lustful and longing for more. It was an all-embracing sensual seduction, her curves, her lines, her shape, her strength constantly captivating my eye – I found myself looking up, up and away, looking here, there and everywhere where she reigns and moves – her visual superiority holding court over the province, the nation, the continent. Fumbling and humbled, I tried to capture her light, her colour and her changing moods, but no picture nor words can do her presence justice. A cold lift door, a warm spring wood, hot summer glass, smooth cool steel, rugged high walls, soft new carpet, slippery wide screed – her textures call out for your hands to stroke, to feel, to hold onto. Layers of life, layers...
We will be back!
