Category: Uncategorized
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water, rights and sanitation
a small rant… Tell me you grew up in Apartheid South Africa without telling me you grew up in Apartheid South Africa. For me, at least, it is people who restrict toilet access. Let’s just say, when I watched ‘The Help’ a few years back, it resonated. It’s a whole thing. Mid rant, about the…
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Weaving worlds II – what women make
Weaving worlds II I once calculated that the distance in wool my grandmother had knitted throughout her lifetime, 94 years, 3 months and 21 days, was roughly equivalent to the earth’s circumference, 40 075km. I have estimated that the weight of the stone I have shifted throughout my PhD is approximately 9,8 tons[1]. I have…
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Weaving Worlds: women who make I
I would describe myself as many things: artist, researcher, architect, teacher, dancer, swimmer, woman, and maker. These last two are things of complexity. To quote Patti Smith ‘As an artist, I never wanted to be fettered by gender nor recognized or defined as a female poet, musician or singer. They don’t do that with men…
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Autumn: some reflections , and some books
It’s once again autumn here in Johannesburg. It’s also mid-semester break, which can sometimes be the only time I get in the year to make work more or less uninterrupted. These seven odd days have proved to be golden in the past years; I’ve gotten most of my productive work done in them for the…
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c o u n t
Some reflections on numbers 5240 words a visual representation – Despite changes to criteria publication to included creative practice outputs in the south African academic context. Both criteria for promotion and credibility of research to stem primarily from written form. The number of words in essays, or the number of times an paper has been…
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Maintaining the right to think unconventionally and other knowledge hills that I will die on.
an ode to the frustration of academic bureaucracy and the tyranny of ‘merican’ eng-l-esh in a computer based world. Arguing for the right to think To create knowledge in unconventional ways. In conventional form, it is absurd. Arguing for the periphery through the modalities of the centre is futile. The centre always wins. There is…
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I read banned books
First they will come for your books, then they will come for your art. An interesting Guardian article came into my inbox recently, ‘US public school ban 10 000 books in most recent academic year.’ [1], Apparently, US children and young adults are not allowed to learn to assess for themselves the difference between wrong and…
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I’m thinking of becoming a Dadaist
do not be alarmed the bellow should be considered to be satire…see ‘The mutterings project’ for prior reference. One reaches a moment in ones life, where the future seems to stretch out into infinite dullness. filled with administration and management, of things and others- lackluster. No amount of incentive seems to, be enough to band-aid…
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…Before Breakfast
As in; as in ‘I can think of six impossible things…’ Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’ I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many…
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Terraforming Johannesburg
For a while now, those of you who know Johannesburg well may know that most of the mine tailings along the Witwatersrand mining belt have been quietly disappearing. We are observing a significant change in the terrain of Johannesburg as it has existed for the past 100 years. The mining stip has long represented a…