PROGRAMME A: WAYS OF BELONGING
Curated by: NADJA DAEHNKE WITH RYNO KEET
MONDAY AND TUESDAY EVENING 18:00 – 22:00
Download Programme A Map (PDF)
Cities are, by definition, full of strangers. Many representations of the City have celebrated this: the chance to escape the observed life, away from where our every move is noted and every attempt at re-invention is disregarded as uncharacteristic. Meeting numerous strangers in our day allows for constant revision and varied performances of the self. Alternatively, anonymity opens opportunities for larger-than-life characters to emerge – the vendor with a cackling joke, the flower seller plying her age-old trade.
But a City can also be destructive in its anonymity. Interactions tend not to be marked by meaning, but by commercial necessity. The mechanism of the City is designed as a flight from the spiritual to the material. At best, indifference marks this state. At worst, perceived codes of dress, appearance and accent are used as an unquestioned basis for judgement, and consequently, dismissal or deference. Where social codes are based on commerce and prejudice, the bonds of social cohesion and community tend to dissipate… and anomie fills the gap.
Ways of Belonging uses the catharsis of art to speak for and about the need to belong, to be recognised and to gain a communal bond, which functions to support the voice and value of the individual within a larger structure.