Event

Provoke: a lecture by Matt S Witkovsky

April 18, 2019

Matt Witkovsky presents a series of slides and a lecture on the Tokyo-based movement Provoke.

︎ Go to Project Page

︎ More info...

Provoke manifested during years of tremendous and widespread protests in Japan. Titled in English, the movement in Japanese Photography produced only three issues of a small magazine between August 1968 and December 1969. But Provoke, as its name suggests, instigated profound thinking about art and protest and affected the course of photography in Japan.

In 2016, Witkovsky together with colleagues in Paris, Winterthur and Vienna organised a survey exhibition on film and photography which brought together the work of career photographers with that of filmmakers, vanguard performance artists, and self-publishing protesters from this period.

Witovsky refers to the exhibition Provoke: Photography in Japan between Protest and Performance, 1960-1975 in his presentation at A4 Arts, with special emphasis on the photographs and photo-books of Shomei Tomatsu, Daido Moriyama, and Takuma Nakahira.

Matthew S. Witovsky is visiting Cape Town from the Art Institute of Chicago, where he is head of the Department of Photography.

Exhibition
Dan Perjovschi: Black & White Cape Town Report
February 13 – May 9, 2019

An exhibition by Dan Perjovschi

︎ Go to Project Page

︎ More info...

In preparation for his show 'The Black and White Cape Town Report' (2018) at A4 Arts, Perjovschi spends two weeks in Cape Town engaging the local context through spontaneous encounters, conversations, commutes, and by reading the daily papers. Perjovschi then deciphers the information he has collected through a constellation of drawings, combining familiar, reworked and transplanted images with new data and motifs. These are worked directly onto the gallery walls using Perjosvchi's 'trademark' black marker pen.

Perjovschi's (b. 1961) artistic practise combines illustration, political satire, comedy, humanism and performance. He raises questions about art politics, social politics, religion, the role of the individual in the collective, and the relationships between and pressures upon local and global systems.

Screening

Rudiments, 2015 by Broomberg & Chanarin

February 13 – May 7, 2019

The third and final part of the film project ‘If I Can't Dance It’s Not My Revolution’.

︎ Go to Project Page

︎ More info...

Presented sequentially in A4's video room over a 3 month period, the films are an associative response to the provocation by the political activist and writer Emma Goldman (1869-1940): ‘If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution’.

The films witness forms, dance, movement and dialogue. The selection is a query into the multifarious ways in which art and activism intersect.

13-02 / 13-03
Rashaad Newsome
Shade Compositions SFMOMA, 2012 (27m)

Rashaad Newsome's practice blends several practices together including collage, sculpture, video, music, computer programming and performance, to form an altogether new field at Newsome’s 2012 performance of Shade Compositions at SFMOMA. Shade Compositions is a live performance featuring a chorus of more than 25 people. During the performance, Newsome acts as the Conductor simultaneously recording, looping, editing and remixing in real-time the audio and video documentation of the performers using a hacked Nintendo® Wii™ game controller. The resulting layers of real and projected imagery investigate assumptions and constructions of identity in mainstream media and popular culture.

14-03 / 10-04
Clement Cogitore
Les Indes Galantes, 2018 (5m47s)

Les Indes Galantes (The Amorous Indians), is an opera-ballet created by Jean Philippe Rameau in 1735. The inspiration was a dance by First Nations' of Louisiana performed by Metchigaema chiefs in Paris in 1723. Clelment Cogitore's piece combines music written by Rameau Opéra-ballet with Krump dancers - a movement style developed in Los Angeles in the 1980's. Performed for camera, the work was shown as a projection in a video booth.

11-04 / 08-05
Broomberg & Chanarin
Rudiments, 2015 (11m58s)

Rudiments weaves footage of army cadets at a military camp on the outskirts of Liverpool with that of a Bouffon (Hannah Ringham) – a dark clown. The result is a dynamic tension between strict military codes and an absurd vulgarity. The film ruminates on the presence of authority in the formative moments of childhood and early youth, and is propelled by an improvised score devised for the drums by the American musician Kid Millions.
︎ View the Mobile Index

Exhibition

Nowhere - No we're - Now here

February 13 – May 14, 2019

‘Nowhere - No we're - Now here' is a selection of works from the A4 archive chosen by artist-in-residence Gian Maria Tosatti and shown in the A4 Library.

︎ Go to Project Page

︎ More info...

Working between what is both a metaphysical and a tangible/real conception of 'Void' which he experiences at the Cape Town Central Station, Gian Marie Tossatti selects works which resonate with his sense of 'Void', before knowing of their titles, or creators.

Tossati's selection includes Gerhard Marx, Sabelo Mlangeni, Santu Mofokeng, Jo Ractliffe, the artist himself and James Webb.

Tosatti (Roma, 1980) is an Italian artist whose research probes striations of identity, from the political to the spiritual.

His artworks often involve detailed interventions in derelict urban sites - be it a museum, apartment block, church or other. Informed by sustained engagements with communities proximate to the sites, Tosatti’s iterative process seeks to transform the found spaces into ambient installations.

Gian Maria Tosatti is artist-in-residence at A4 due to the generous award made by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Italian Cultural Institute in South Africa.

Event

Curatorial workshop

April 18, 2019

A curatorial workshop lead by Matthew S. Witkovsky (Curator and Chair, Dept of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago) and Janine Mileaf (Executive Director at The Arts Club of Chicago).

︎ Go to Project Page

︎ More info...

Structured as a roundtable of conversation between the workshop coordinators and the participants, Witkovsky and Mileaf catalyse this exchange by sharing insights on research strategies, exhibition making, working with artists, navigating institutional apparatus and audience building.

Exchange

African Centre for Cities: City Research Studio

April 10 - May 15, 2019

A contemplation of artistic practises and narrative approaches on urban planning in practise.

︎ Go to 2018’s Project Page

︎ More info...

The City Research Studio at A4 Arts Foundation supports the interdisciplinary and non-traditional intention of the ACC Masters (MPhil) in Southern Urbanism programme.

The City Research Studio facilitates a series of seminars and experiments which encourage the use of arts-focused methodologies in urban planning theory. These studio sessions, which include seminars, research, studio practice, production and the use of mixed media, ask students to create and develop conceptual articulations that offer surprising insights and find unexpected applications into urban planning theory and practise.

Event

Selective Hearing

May 2, 2019

Soundsmiths 'Selective Hearing' use works from the A4 archive as inspiration for the creation of a musical landscape.

︎ Go to Project Page

︎ More info...

Selective Hearing is a record label and production entity who performs a series of listening sessions at A4.

For the first session, Selective Hearing chose Mongezi Ncaphayi's 'Blue Utopia' (2016) as creative material from which to realise a musical set.

Mongezi Ncaphayi
Blue Utopia, 2016
Mixed media Indian ink and watercolour on cotton rag
112 x 76 cm

Exhibition
Sounding the Void, Imaging the Orchestra (Vol. 1)

May 23, 2019

A multimedia exhibition that traces societal transformations, imperial structures, and cultural attitudes.

Residency
Bonolo Kavula

March 30 – May 4, 2019

Artist in residence: Bonolo Kavula

︎ Go to Project Page

︎ More info...

Over six weekly sessions, Kavula responds to Dan Perjovschi's exhibition (currently in the A4 gallery) by probing a series of relations:

Print vs drawing
Permanent vs temporary
Unique vs multiple

Residency
Gian Maria Tosatti

Feb 1 – April 30, 2019

Artist in Residence Gian Maria Tosatti .

︎ Go to Project Page

︎ More info...

During his three month residency at A4, Gian Marie Tosatti continues to research and preparare for a triptych of exhibitions in three museums in Europe: La Galleria Nazionale (Rome - Italy), the FRAC Grand Large – Haute France (Dunkerque - France) and the De la Warr Pavilion (Bexhillon-Sea – UK).

The project 'New Men’s Land' focuses on the ‘Jungle of Calais’ a city founded and built by refugees and migrants and some European citizens in the north of France. Having worked in the city for a year, Tosatti recognised it as an exemplar of integration - people of widely different origins living together – a vision of a new Europe seemed palpable. But the French government destroyed the city in its entirety, erasing every trace of its existence (even artificially changing the landscape of the area).

In Cape Town, and in close proximity to District 6, Tosatti seeks to prepare a prologue for his project, negotiating the shadow of recent history and the possibilities that emerge from engagement with it.

Tossati's residency is made possible by the generous award from the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Italian Cultural Institute in South Africa.