29 & 30 March 2016
Route starting point – 17:00 the Company’s Garden, below Iziko SA Museum.
- Indoni Dance, Arts and Leadership Academy – Inkululeko | 20min
- Kenan Petersen – Pas In | ongoing during Session 1
- Anthea Moys – The Portrait Exchange | ongoing during Session 1
- Koleka Putuma – Africa, My Africa | 10min
- Michael Fitzmaurice – Days Go By… (Pulling You Endlessly Into the Future) | ongoing during Session 1
- Jeannot Kumbonyeki – Le Kombi | 20min
- Hasan & Husain Essop – Ratibul al-hadat: A rendition of a traditional Cape Gathering of Remembrance | 45min (only on 30 March)
Curator’s Note
Since its first year, Infecting The City has always been my favourite annual art event. When it first took place, its appearance seemed magical – the explosive power of art in public space captivated me and many other people. It made me look differently at the City, seeing opportunities for imaginative intervention in every open space, on every roof top and in each forgotten corner. Art came out of the lives and spaces of the city and altered them, opened them up for new thought and action.
I was fortunate to be involved in the festival in various ways over the years, as a performance maker, performer and as part of the curatorial team. To me, the importance of free, diverse and engaged public art is that it not only takes a major step to meeting its public in shared spaces, but it also initiates a conversation with its audiences about what public and social space can mean.
This year, although faced with full cancellation, a new incarnation of Infecting The City has been made possible, the ITC Sessions. For many people the cancellation of the Festival suddenly revealed how deeply embedded such an ephemeral event had become in the lives and memories of the people of the City. We are very pleased that the ITC Sessions can keep the spirit of Infecting The City alive.
And after a volatile year in South African public life, a year in which the use of public space has been reignited as a place in which to directly express the frustrations, dreams, angers and needs of the people, curating the ITC Sessions is for me a moment in which to ask: How does art contribute to the direct and passionate conversation that has recently been started? What languages and strategies can we use to ‘speak’ of urgent demands and desires? How can the conversation penetrate our surfaces, our pre-conceived ideas, our skins?
In ITC Session 1 & 2 I have chosen to concentrate the artworks within two locations, the Company’s Garden and St Georges Mall. For each Session, an artist has been invited to lead the way, not just physically and practically, but lead the way in opening up questions, associations, fresh framings and personal responses to the artworks and what they speak of. Koleka Putuma (ITC Session 1) and Lesoko Seabe (ITC Session 2) will act as poetic guides, imaginative interlocutors, instigating a dialogue between the audience and the artwork that will continue long after the work is finished, long after the Session has vanished.
I look forward to sharing two Sessions, that present a range of thought-provoking, engaged and powerful work from some of our most committed and exploratory artists, with you.
Leila Anderson
Curator – ITC Session 1 & 2