PSi #28 Uhambo

Or actually the 28th Performance Studies international conference Uhambo Luyazilawula: Embodied Wandering Practices 2-5 2023 August in Johannesburg. The image above is of a pine tree, possibly a Mexican Weeping Pine (Pinus patula), outside Wits Theatre on the campus of University of The Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, the host institution. My main contribution was supposed to be Day with a Firethorn Rhus (with text), a video. The abstract at the conference ‘supersite’ is here. The video never materialised as an installation on site, and it was then supposed to be included on the website as one of the short articles, but for some reason never made it there during the conference. “The journey directs itself”, as the title in zulu language suggests. The conference program was so lively and filled with dance and song and difficult topics related to the injustices faced by the global majority, that the video poster might have been out of place anyway. See conference site  or https://www.wits.ac.za/wsoa/psi-conference-2023/ The video is nevertheless available on vimeo here.

I had more luck with a small video compilation made extempore for a presentation in the Artistic Research Working Group workshop at Wits Theatre 3.8.2023, organised by Christo Doherty, head of research for ARA (Arts Research Africa) and Wits School of Arts https://www.wits.ac.za/wsoa/ara/ . Three of the ordinary members of the working group and four local artists shared something of their work. My video presentation is archived on the RC here.

It was great to return to a place where I had spent quite some time in 2020 in an ARA (Arts Research Africa) residency right before the global pandemic. I’m happy that a podcast conversation and the publication Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees in Johannesburg with Environs still remain. Although Wits Theatre and Rosebank, where I now stayed and which I only briefly visited in 2020, looked the same, the experience of the city was totally different. Instead of trying to learn to live and work and even walk there, encountering the dangers and the poverty a bit more face to face, I was now moving around in a delicious conference bubble. The sessions were placed in various venues like The Centre for the Less Good Idea, the Market Theatre, the Soweto Theatre, Johannesburg University Theatre and Constitutional Hill, so we got a glimpse of the city. We moved around in buses, however, and used Uber from Rosebank to Wits and back – safe, comfortable, protected. What seemed inclusive of the global majority at first glance, with all the students participating as volunteers, and the emphasis on performance, was in reality highly exclusive. It was a real privilege to be able to participate.