In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Russel Hlongwane, an artist whose work pushes boundaries, reshapes narratives, and bridges the often complex interplay between heritage and innovation. Russel is a visionary South African artist, cultural producer, and filmmaker from KwaZulu-Natal. Russel’s work, deeply rooted in Zulu tradition, examines how indigenous knowledge systems intersect with global modernity. Through his multidisciplinar...
Dec 10, 2024•56 min0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Stephen Hobbs, a South African artist whose work spans a wide range of media, exploring themes of urban transformation, architecture, and social dynamics. Known for his thought-provoking installations and public art projects, Stephen has a distinctive approach that often examines the hidden infrastructures of cities, and the intersection of natural and built environments. Stephen has an exhibition...
Nov 04, 2024•58 min0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Ariane Koek, a prominent British independent producer, curator, and writer, recognized globally for her pioneering work at the intersection of art and science. With a career spanning several decades Ariane is particularly noted for founding the Arts at CERN program, which she designed and directed from 2009 to 2015. This initiative was the first official international arts program at CERN and aime...
Sep 18, 2024•59 min0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks Ale de la Puente, an independent artist-researcher from Mexico who is doing a residency in Johannesburg as part of the Goethe Institute’s international Studio Quantum programme. Ale has studied industrial design, goldsmithing, boatbuilding, navigation, astronomy, physics, and philosophy. She is known for her poetic and conceptual explorations of time and space across a wide field of mediums, ranging ...
Jul 18, 2024•48 min0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Dr Ralph Borland, an independent artist-researcher and curator based in Cape Town. Ralph has a degree in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town, a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. His PhD was a critique of first world design interventions in the developing world. His subsequent post-doct...
Apr 22, 2024•56 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Miranda Moss, a South African artist, outsider-engineer, eco-geek, and rogue educator who is currently based in Sweden. Miranda’s transdisciplinary practice, which focuses on the problematics and hopeful possibilities of technology from a socio-ecological and anticolonial feminist perspective, has seen her exhibit, teach, and perform research internationally in a variety of art, science, community,...
Mar 08, 2024•48 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty speaks to Professor Nathaniel Stern, an artist, writer and teacher who holds a 50/50 dual appointment at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a Professor in Art and Design and Mechanical Engineering where “he teaches artists how to engineer, engineers how to art, and everyone how to sustain their work with entrepreneurial thinking.” Nathaniel’s most recent art project, a travelling exhibition, called "The World After US (TWAU): Imaging techno-aesthetic f...
Dec 05, 2023•52 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty speaks to Professor Bruce Barton the Director of the University of Calgary’s School of Creative and Performing Arts, and the Co-Artistic Director (with Pil Hansen) of Vertical City, an interdisciplinary performance hub they co-founded in Toronto in 2007. Bruce is a teacher and theorist of artistic research and is also a top creative practitioner. He has extensive experience as a director, playwright, dramaturg, and designer with numerous intermedial performa...
Sep 03, 2023•57 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Prof Tanja Sakota, an artistic researcher, writer, and filmmaker in the Department of Film & Television in the Wits School of Arts. Tanja is the author of an important new book, just published by Wits University Press, called Uncovering Memory: Filming in South Africa, Germany, Poland, and Bosnia/Herzegovina. Tanja has had more than 20 years of experience in the academic teaching of film and te...
Aug 04, 2023•56 min0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Doris Bloom, a multidisciplinary South African artist who has been based in Denmark since 1976. She currently has a major exhibition called Bird Bone Whistler at the Origins Centre Museum in Johannesburg until 02 July 2023. Doris was born on a farm outside Vereeniging and her deep imaginative engagement with the African landscape has powerfully informed her work over the last 46 years. She began h...
Jun 16, 2023•41 min0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Dr Sela Adjei, a multidisciplinary artist, researcher and curator from Ghana and a leading proponent of a distinctly African approach to artistic research. Sela has degrees in communication design and African art and culture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and received his PhD in African studies from the University of Ghana, Legon. He is currently a lecturer at the Uni...
May 23, 2023•52 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Jayne Batzofin, the digital archivist on the Reimagining Tragedy from African and the Global South (RETAGS) project. This performance-as-research project is being led by Prof. Mark Fleishman with Mandla Mbothwe in the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at University of Cape Town. The project seeks to create space for an extended interrogation of the vast body of tragic works produced in the theatres of Africa, using performanc...
Apr 14, 2023•53 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Prof David Andrew, from the Department of Fine Arts in the Wits School of Arts. We focus on the relationship between arts pedagogies and artistic research looking at his background as an arts teacher, the formative influence of his education in both South Africa and Swaziland during apartheid, the way that he has sought to bring the concept of the artist’s sensibility into both arts education and research, and his own work as a researcher an...
Mar 17, 2023•45 min0
In this concluding podcast of the Mellon funding cycle, the ARA podcast's technical producer (and journalist) Elna Schutz hosts a discussion with the key members of the ARA project about what was achieved, what was learnt, and what opportunities were missed during the 5 + 1 years of the Mellon grant. Prof Brett Pyper, the ARA principle investigator; Zanele Madiba, the project co-ordinator; and Prof Christo Doherty, the project director open up about the project which sought to develop artistic r...
Jan 18, 2023•51 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Leora Farber Associate Professor and Director of the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg . Under Leora’s leadership the Centre has become a vibrant hub where an international community of visiting professors, research associates, and postdoctoral fellows have conducted interdisciplinary research over the last fifteen years around the theme of African ...
Nov 23, 2022•51 min0
In this special episode in the ARA podcast series, Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to three internationally acclaimed and award-winning artists about their creative research into the possibilities of the book as an artwork. Veronica Schapers, Robbin Amy Silverberg, and Julie Chen are showing a range of their artists books in a spell-binding new exhibition at the Jack Ginsberg Centre for the Book Arts housed in the Wits Arts Museum. Entitled "Creative Research: The Artists’ Books of Schapers, ...
Nov 02, 2022•34 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Prof Brett Pyper, the Principal Investigator on the ARA project and the leader of a major interdisciplinary research project based on popular manifestations of jazz culture in South Africa. Currently called the Cosmopolitan Collective, the project has evolved over the last 17 years from an initial study of township jazz appreciation societies in urban Gauteng, through a creative engagement with jazz cosmopolitanism in Accra in Ghana, to beco...
Oct 24, 2022•56 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to donna Kukama, a South African born interdisciplinary artist who works with performance, works on canvas, sculptural objects, video, and site-specific installation. The underlying topic of this conversation is how donna uses performance art and other practices as tools for artistic research, elaborating a challenging critique of the existing narratives of history and traditional modes of storytelling. Donna currently has a solo exhibition at ...
Sep 28, 2022•50 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Tracey Rose, currently Senior Lecturer in the Fine Arts department in the Wits School of Arts, and internationally renowned as an artist who works across a range of practices, but most notably as a performance artist using her body. Tracey’s work has recently been featured in a major retrospective exhibition at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town. Curated by the new Director of the Zeitz, Koyo Kouoh, the exhibition was c...
Aug 31, 2022•47 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Hannelie Coetzee, a Johannesburg-based ecological artist who has been working across the boundaries of art, science and activist engagement. Hannelie describes herself as a visual artist, researcher and innovator. Through her ecological art practice, she aims to grow audiences that appreciate art, contextualise the science behind the natural world, and improve environmental infrastructure development through functional artworks. She uses was...
Jul 28, 2022•51 min0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Dr Portia Malatjie and Nontobeko Ntombela, the curators of When Rain Clouds Gather, an important new exhibition at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town. The exhibition is a reflection on the influential and often unacknowledged contribution of Black Women to South African art history in the 20th Century. Covering the the period from 1940 to the year 2000, the exhibition stages a cross generational communion of 40 Black women artists from earl...
Jun 22, 2022•59 min0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Avril Joffe, currently the postgraduate programme coordinator and previously the Head of the Department of Cultural Policy and Management in the Wits School of Arts. Under Avril’s headship the department was renamed to focus on cultural policy and management, and has developed a range of productive relationships with institutions in both the Global north and south, including Kings College, London; the Centre for Cultural and Creative Indust...
May 28, 2022•1 hr0
In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Dr George Mahashe, a lecturer in Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town, who was recently based at the Geneva Observatory as part of the Swiss Artists-in-Labs programme. George talks about his work at the Observatory and his perspective on the experience as a black African who has a acute awareness of his “distributed sensibilities” as a member of a specific African sociality, the Balobedu, and as an academic and an artist. George was bor...
Apr 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min0
In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Marcus Neustetter, the South African artist, cultural activist, and producer who has been working at the intersection of art, science, technology and public engagement for the last two decades since his graduation with an MAFA from Wits in 2001. They discuss some of the collaborative projects that Marcus has undertaken across these intersections and will unpack key aspects of his critical and playful multi-disciplinary practice that has rang...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 2 min0
In this dialogue, I speak to Irène Hediger, the director of the Artists-in -Labs programme based at the Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland. The programme, which has now been running continuously for the last nineteen years, is one of the most successful Arts-Science initiatives in the world and has initiated and managed over 50 creative engagements between artists and research labs, ranging from CERN to Aquatic Research. The programme is part of the Department of Cultural Analysis (DKV...
Feb 22, 2022•56 min0
In this dialogue, I explore the challenging and increasingly important concept of Art~Science creative collaboration with one of the leading International practitioners in this field, the South African artist, Karel Nel. Until 2017, Karel was an Associate Professor in the department of Fine Arts at Wits, and is an internationally regarded artist as well as a curator and scholar of African, Asian, and Oceanic art from the late 19th and 20th centuries. This dialogue focuses on his work that crosse...
Jan 20, 2022•59 min0
In this dialogue, I speak to Prof Samuel Ravengai, a leading exponent of artistic research into African modes of performance and theatre making, a multi faceted mode of enquiry that he theorises as Afroscenology. Samuel is a Zimbabwean born, South African based, scholar and theatre director with a doctorate in Theatre and Performance from the University of Cape Town. He was most recently the head of the Department of Theatre and Performance in the Wits School of Arts, and has just been appointed...
Nov 23, 2021•57 min0
Dr Kathryn Smith is an interdisciplinary visual artist and curator who has moved from an initial education in Fine Arts (with a BAFA and MAFA from Wits) to actively explore applied sciences at the University of Dundee where she earned an MSc in Forensic Art, and a PhD from the Liverpool John Moores University. It is a journey that has taken her from advanced contemporary art practice, she was winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2004, to a deep engagement with the practicalities and...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr 7 min0
In this dialogue I speak to Professor Margarete Jahrmann, the internationally renowned media artist, artistic researcher and games theorist who has just been appointed head of the new department of Experimental Game Cultures at the Vienna University of Applied Arts. Margarete was previously a Professor in Artistic Research at the Vienna University of Applied Arts and was a Professor of Games Design at the Zurich University of the Arts. We discuss how her background in Game Design led her into th...
Aug 12, 2021•44 min0
In this dialogue I speak to Bronwyn Lace, perhaps best known as the animateur, and now co-director, of the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, but who is also a visual artist with specificity, responsiveness and performativity as central concerns in her practice. We explore all these aspects of her rich engagement with performance and visual arts in this podcast. In the dialogue we discuss the how the Centre for the Less Good Idea began and the ways that the project has evolved over t...
Jun 01, 2021•56 min0
