Check out the full UJ Arts & Culture creative calendar for 2021
Unfathomable
Theatrical film experiment
Presented by Alex Halligey and UJ Arts & Culture
Dates: 2021 / 2022
Winner of a Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award on the 2019 National Arts Festival Fringe, this image-based work wades, drifts, floats through the waters of unprocessed grief. The work combines Athena Mazarakis’s theatre-making, choreographic and embodied devising approach, Alex Halligey’s writing and performance and Jenni-Lee Crewe’s design.
UJ Playwriting Laboratory
Online playwriting development programme
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture
Dates: February – November
The second year of this programme sees it expanding its scope to include recorded readings of selected plays from those written in 2020, which will be released via podcast. A more familiar aspect of the programme is the guided process with twelve playwrights working on new plays over a few months and a playwriting masterclass series that will also be repeated.
Futures & Beyond: Where creativity & 4IRmeet
Online forum
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture and Andani.Africa
Dates: 16 – 17 March
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is still a developing field of understanding, with shifting definitions and growing knowledge. This forum seeks to stimulate robust discussion and curious exploration of 4IR within the context of the creative sector.
Engineering and the new Jerusalem III: The Digital City
Virtual & physical exhibition
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture and Lwandiso Njara
Dates: 3 – 24 March
Lwandiso Njara works around various themes like human existence within technocratic social orders, and his own spiritual journey through Christianity and ancestral rituals. This new exhibition will include new oil paintings, sculpture, and drawings.
Folly, Frailty and Fear
Virtual & physical exhibition
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture and Diane Victor
Dates: 7 April – 19 May
Well-known South African artist and print maker, Diane Victor, is known for her satirical and social commentary of contemporary South African politics. Folly, Frailty and Fear will feature drawings and installations.
Mothers’ Grimm
Behind the scenes creation of Theatre for Young Audiences Web Series
Presented by Jade Bowers Design and Management and UJ Arts & Culture
Date: 7 – 12 June
Familiar tales with an unfamiliar spin. It’s 2021 and even the Grimm Brothers have to get with the times. Goldilocks, Cinderella, and Snow White all come together in this coming-of-age story.
Regeneration
Virtual & physical exhibition
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture and Pauline Gutter
Dates: 9 June – 21 July
Gutter, known for her monumental works addressing issues of power and land through the analogy of the unstable situation in the agricultural sector, now focuses on universal themes of negligence, decay, and conflict between the use of machines and the land. Through these convoluted cycles, nature still prevails.
ONDA
Physical and/or virtual dance
Presented by Hannah Ma and UJ Arts & Culture
Date: 21 – 26 June
ONDA is a new work by Hannah Ma, a German-Chinese choreographer and founder/director of Hannah Ma Dance and HAN SúN based in Luxembourg that is based on research by German philosopher Walter Benjamin who explored the connection between the digital world and real world.
Skeletons
Experimental web-series
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture
Date: 19 – 24 July
Written by Pieter Jacobs, directed by Jade Bowers with movement and choreography by Lakin Morgan-Baatjies and designed by Karabo Mtshali, this experimental fantasy brings issues of land and ownership into focus.
Right of Admission Retrospective
Interdisciplinary performance art
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture, Alberta Whittle and Farieda Nazier
Dates: 4 – 25 August
Farieda Nazier and Alberta Whittle have worked collaboratively on the research project, Right of Admission (RoA) since 2014. This retrospective resonates with the ongoing nature of this body of research that takes shape in the form of performance, intervention, and archive.
ghosted matter/phantom hurt
Video & Animation
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture and Leora Faber
Dates: 1 July
This exhibition by artist, academic writer, researcher, curator and post-graduate supervisor, Leora Farber, consists of video and animation works.
Substance of Shadows
Virtual & physical exhibition
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture and Paul Emmanuel
Dates: 4 September – 2 October
Paul Emmanuel, best known for employing various media to reveal layered visions concerned with his identity living in post-apartheid South Africa, will create a new body of work including videos, drawings and installations.
Broken Borders Dance Project
Dance
Presented by Broken Borders and UJ Arts & Culture
Dates: 13 – 18 September
Committed to creating South African dance theatre that interrogates personal and social issues, Broken Borders Dance Project has developed thought-provoking work that have had successful local and international runs since 2017.
DEFSA Conference
Virtual and physical conference
Hosted by UJ Arts & Culture
Dates: 4 – 7 October
DEFSA is the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa. The non-profit organisation provides a platform for academics in the design education sector to engage in research, best practice and networking through various mechanisms including a biennial conference, workshops and an interactive website that hosts peer reviewed and published research papers.
Hlakanyana
Theatre
Presented by UJ Arts & Culture and Madevu Entertainment
Date: 20 – 24 October
Hlakanyana is an Afrofuturistic retelling of the stories and adventures of Hlakanyana, a prominent anti-hero in Zulu folklore. In waiting for 2022 when the production will be staged with Janice Honeyman as director, some of the music and a sneak peak of what storytelling awaits will be revealed during a virtual concert.
R&J Unplugged
Educational dramapodcast series
UJ Arts & Culture present
Date: October
During 2020, UJ Arts & Culture translated an adaptation of the Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet for performance by UJ Arts Academy students in isiZulu. The adaptation, originally intended for the stage, will be rearticulated as a radio drama to be released as a series of podcasts accompanied with optional lessons for secondary learners who study the play as a prescribed work.
BLIND ALPHABET, LETTER B: BABERY TO BIGEMINATE
Physical & virtual exhibition
UJ Arts & Culture and MTN Foundation SApresent
Dates: 13 October – 24 November
An exhibition of 40 artworks from Willem Boshoff’s Blind Alphabet, Letter B: Babery to Bigeminate. The works by the ten finalists of the Emerging Artist Development Programme, created in reaction to Boshoff’s work, will also be on display. An exciting new curatorial programme for 2022, derived from the successful partnership between the UJ Art Gallery and the MTN SA Foundation will be announced.
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