by Zelmarie Goosen | Mar 15, 2014 | News
By Zelmarie Goosen and Robyn Kirk
Barbed wire stretched across a portion of wall and a ceiling-high “bouquet of security cameras” are just some of the installations produced by Amber-Jade Geldenhuys.
A piece in Amber-Jade’s collection, CCTV cameras showing how security plays a big role in our every day lives. Photo by: Zelmarie Goosen
At her Masters exhibition, opened at the Substation on the Wits Campus on Thursday, Geldenhuys, a fine art student at Wits focused on the issue of “securitization” of the homes that South Africans have come to think of as normal.
In the exhibition running until 18 March, she hopes to make visitors aware of the South African obsession with safety.
“We create these elaborate constructions, and they always go without any questioning [or] second thought, so it’s interesting to start to think of ways to push those boundaries and maybe… find a way over the walls,” Geldenhuys said of her work.
Crime in South Africa
According to official South African Police Service statistics released by the Institute for Security Studies, incidences of robbery increased 4.6% (or by 4 685 cases) from 2012 to 2013 and instances of residential burglary increased 6.8% to a total of 262 113 incidents, meaning there was an average of 720 house burglaries each day.
Jeremy Wafer, Geldenhuys’ supervisor described the exhibition as interesting because it attempted to display something so often considered threatening into something beautiful.
“I think she’s working with really interesting themes, themes that depict all of us living in a big city like Johannesburg, with issues of what it means to be in secure homes, of security and at the same time overturning that to some degree,” Wafer said.
“[Her work] is a bit like our homes: spaces of comfort, and in these spaces you also always feel anxious whenever you hear a noise and you rush out to see what’s going on, and it isn’t just a class thing, everyone experiences what’s going on and has anxiety, ” he added.
by Zelmarie Goosen | Mar 13, 2014 | Featured 1
Newly elected chairperson of the school of arts student council, Obett Motaung, explains what the council hopes to achieve in 2014. Photo: Zelmarie Goosen
WITS School of Art students have expressed their discontent over the choices of degrees offered by the school.
At a meeting held at the Wits Art Museum on Tuesday, a number of the students said there was gap between the practical and theoretical components of their coursework. This was especially true for second-year students who must choose between theoretical or practical courses.
One student at the meeting said this was a problem because many students entering their second year did not know whether they wanted to pursue theoretical or practical coursework. The problem continued into third year, which the student complained had little connection to the previous year’s coursework.
Students must get more involved
The meeting for arts students was held to elect a new student council and discuss issues and concerns with their programme.
“As the student council going forward, we must really work on influencing policy-making in terms of everything – in terms of spacing, in terms of practicalities, before the university makes decisions to shut down theatres … they must find out first what is happening with the students,” said newly elected council chairperson Obett Motaung.
The students criticised what they said was a lack of visibility for events related to the arts and engagement with the Faculty of Humanities.
The arts students also loudly criticised a lack of social interaction within their school. “FUCT Fridays”, an arts initiative to raise funds for projects, used to be held on the rooftop of the school’s building. “But that’s just disappeared,” one student complained. “There are no fundraisers, nothing that’s happening and I think there we see that there is a gap that we might as well try and fill.”
2014/15 Wits School of Arts Student Council
Obett Motaung, chairperson
Lucky Mqobeli, vice- chairperson
Masechaba Phakela, secretary general
Bonnie Maphutse, deputy secretary general
Jessica Janse van Rensburg, treasurer general
Jòvan Muthray, projects and campaigns officer
Sarah Nansubuga, academic and transformation officer
by Ilanit Chernick | Mar 7, 2014 | Featured 1
IN CONVERSATION: City Press editor Ferial Haffajee and Mark Gevisser, both born and riased in different and diverse parts of Johannesburg, discussion the uniqueness of the city. Photo: Zelmarie Goosen.
Johannesburg is a place where people aspire to be something different and dream of what they could be or could have been, said author Mark Gevisser.
“[It] is a city of diversity, dreams and difference,” said Gevisser at his book launch on Tuesday evening at the Wits Art Museum (WAM).
The author and former journalist, best known for his biography on Thabo Mbeki, was hosted by WAM and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) on the first leg of his tour for his new book Lost and Found in Johannesburg.
Gevisser said WAM was an example of “psychic geography” because of its location “on the threshold of Johannesburg” between the suburbs and the city centre.
“[WAM] is a place where you can rub up and contemplate each other across glass, class and race,” he said.
Gevisser said that during the previous book launch in 2008 for his Mbeki biography, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred, South Africa was on the verge of change after the former president was ousted from his position by the ANC.
“We are once again on the edge, on a threshold because of the impending elections.”
As part of the book launch, Gevisser was interviewed by City Press editor Ferial Haffajee. In answer to a question from her, he said that he wrote the first part of Lost and Found in Johannesburg as a way of inventing new modes of being in touch across class and race barriers that still exist in the city today.
“We must not wait for times and elements to connect with other people or with other places,” Gevisser said.
The second part of Gevisser’s book was written to convey his experience as one of many victims of crime in Johannesburg, a city created by a gold rush—and the greed and vice that came with that—in the late 19th century.
Gevisser said that he and his friends had been the victim of a home invasion that left them physically beaten and one of them raped leaving them “emotionally scarred”. He described writing about this attack as “making order out of chaos”.
But instead of fleeing South Africa out of fear, he decided to go to Alexandra township – one of the “main frontiers” of Johannesburg where crime and poverty are rife.
“It was my way of forcing myself to re-engage instead of retreating,” Gevisser said.
As the discussion ended Gevisser reminded his audience that Johannesburg is an “Afropolitan City”.
“Johannesburg is a city of threshold, a city of doors and there are always gates to climb.”
