Bubblegum Club

Tag: writers

  • Infinity Studio at Kampnagel – reflections on privatization, militarization & escapism

    Infinity Studio at Kampnagel – reflections on privatization, militarization & escapism

    Following on from the 5 day residency in Johannesburg at the end of April, Bubblegum Club along with the artists selected to be part of the Infinity Studio programme are in Hamburg for the final stage, their participation in the Live Art Festival #8: SUPERSPACES. Within this frame the work produced will see an expansion on their exploration of privatization, militarism and escapism in Johannesburg – the foundational concepts for the programme.

    Creative Director of Bubblegum Club, Jamal Nxedlana had an interview with Caroline Spellenberg from Kampnagel to chat about our platform, CUSS and the Infinity Studio programme taking place in the space.

    On your website you describe yourself as a “cultural intelligence agency” – what do you mean by that?

    It means that research is at the heart of our practice. Cultural insight or intelligence informs everything we do, from the type of content we publish to our curatorial projects and the visuals we produce.

    Bubblegum Club is commercial image campaigns & promotion, publishing & journalistic writing, artistic and curatorial work. What is the core interest connecting all these practices?

    Although we do connect these practices it was never our main intention. It was more about  creating a space, building a network and developing an operating model for ourselves and other cultural practitioners. And in order to do so we felt that centering our practice around digital publishing made the most sense, especially in Johannesburg where there aren’t many opportunities, particularly for explorative practices.

    You are also almost the same group of people who works under the name CUSS as a curators collective. I saw a programme you did at the KW in Berlin in the frame of the 9th Berlin Biennial. After this we started to talk and we invited you to curate a programme at Kampnagel for the Live Art Festival #8. How did you develop the concept for “Infinity Studio”?

    The idea has developed quite a lot from when we first started speaking. Initially we were interested in creating a space or studio for independent cultural producers. We imagined the space as a time capsule, organised and conceived in a way that would recreate the creative energy or mood that we felt and that was so stimulating for our practice between 2010 & 2012. In that moment we felt a sense of infinite possibilities, and that where the name Infinity Studio comes from.

    Over time we identified a focus for the studio, which was to look at privatisation, militarisation and escapism in Johannesburg’s urban landscape. We organised a residency comprised of a 5 day immersive cultural tour. This allowed us to expose and immerse the invited artists to the spaces that we were looking at as the curatorial team. The programme we will present at Kampnagel in June will be based on the experiences from this residency.

    Coming from the curatorial perspective of a theatre some things strike me about the way you work: For one, you invite a lot of quite different artists to participate with individual contributions, maybe extending the idea of a “group exhibition” into live art? How did you choose the line-up of 13 artists for the “Infinity Studio”?

    Yes, but from group exhibition to group work to live art. We looked for people with particular skill sets. For example, writers, vocalists, music producers, digital artists and fashion designers. People with skills that could be combined to produce components for a one group work. The other thing that was very important to us was the way people practice, for example, are they able to work in a group and practice across their area of interest or discipline?

    Also, what strikes me is that you think a lot about the space, the framing and communication around the project. The ways of presenting the artists – which is part of the work as curators – becomes artistically itself. Can you describe your working methods for this?

    Curation has always been an artistic practice for us and it’s no different with this project. Our role has been to create the platform and quite literally the stage on which the work is set and will play out.

    The title of the Live Art Festival this year is SUPERSPACES and is presenting artistic and curatorial ways of creating specific set ups of space, art experiences and ‘users’. Can you connect the “Infinity Studio” to this?

    I think it connects to this in the way we are approaching the relationship between the audience and the performers, as well as the relationship between the audiences space and the performers space (the stage). We will use curation to reorientate these relationships.

    As content you choose to present insights into the urban cosmos of Johannesburg: your key words for this are “privatization, militarization & escapism”. Can you give us a little background on this?

    It was really when we started thinking about the residency and what our plans were for it. We were thinking about the artists and the aspects of their work that we were interested in and how we could use the residency to focus in on those specific areas of their practices. As we identified spaces and mapped out activities for the residency or cultural tour, we started noticing themes and tropes which we distilled to “privatization, militarization & escapism”.

    Your background is in visual arts and, I think, this is the first time you work in the context of a theatre institution, right? What differences between the two systems do you notice?

    Yes it is. I haven’t noticed too much difference, especially because we are approaching this as we normally would. The only difference is the framework within which we had to work, that being the theater and the theater production. We had to slightly alter our thinking when it came to how we think about audience and how we programme the shows.

    The Infinity Studio performances will be taking place from the 7th – 9th June. Check out the Facebook event for more details.

    INFINITY STUDIO is produced by Kampnagel and Bubblegum Club, with the support of TURN – Fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany as well as the Goethe Institute.

  • BORN::FREE poetry nights // the live alchemy of South African and UK-based literature practitioners

    The project BORN::FREE Next Steps was conceptualized as a poetry exchange involving artists based in South Africa and the UK. This three-part series of events and workshops explores themes including gender, race and spirituality, among others. The most powerful impact of the project has been the forging of relationships between South African and British live literature practitioners – specifically womxn of colour working in and outside of the diaspora.

    BORN::FREE, a poetry night co-founded by writer and educator Belinda Zhawi, began as a community project in the UK with the aim of creating a space where emerging writers and well-established writers could inspire one another and share their work with one another. With the first part of the project taking place in the UK, Johannesburg and Cape Town will see Belinda travel to deliver her poetry and share her literary passion together with South African poets.

    Photography by Gabriel Shamu

    The first of the two South African poetry sessions took place at Johannesburg’s African Flavours Books store on the 5th of January. As I walked into the venue, the chatter of the attendees hummed the tune of excitement that comes with a new year, and a new experience. Although the audience was mainly made up of Joburgers, there were a few British visitors woven between those seated. Belinda began the evening by reciting poems that share experiences from her childhood in Zimbabwe as well as poems that express a mix of lessons she has learnt about life and herself. South African poets, writers, social commentators and academics Katleho Kano Shoro and Lebohang Masango shared their poems, and information about their latest published works. Katleho has recently published her debut collection of poetry,’Serebulele‘. Lebohang has recently published a children’s book titled ‘Mpumi’s Magic Beads’. Both of these are available at African Flavours Books.

    BORN::FREE will then travel to Cape Town on the 11th of January and will be hosted by Ahem Art Collective. In addition to Belinda’s performance, South African poet, performer & spoken word educator Toni Stuart as well as London-based poet and drummer Remi Graves.

    Check out the Facebook event for more info about the Cape Town event

    ‘This article forms part of content created for the British Council Connect ZA 2017 Programme. To find out more about the programme click here.

  • ColabNowNow // An exploration of collaboration and art making

    British Council Connect ZA has put together an experimental programme titled ColabNowNow as a way to bring together artists and storytellers from various disciplines to explore collaborative processes and art making. Participants were selected from South, East and West Africa as well as the UK to be part of the programme as a way to emphasize learning, networking and making. The participants will be guided by the curator of the programme, Kenyan digital artist and writer Jepchumba.

    The culmination of their work of the 10 day programme will be showcased as part of the Fak’ugesi Bloc Party on the 16th of September.

    The 15 participants have been broken down into 5 storytellers and 10 artists. Along with being encouraged to work with the artists, the storytellers will document and engage in the collaborative activities of the artists, telling the story to audiences in their respective countries. These include writers, photographers, videographers, and vloggers.

    The 10 artists all work in some way within the digital realm as visual artists, architects, programmers, sound artists, performers and animators.

    Jepchumba explains that the project “unleashes the best skilled, dangerous minds from Africa to re-imagine future forms of African storytelling by creating an interactive and immersive experience. 10 artists and 5 storytellers from West, East, Southern Africa and UK with multi-disciplinary talents will explore the creation of narratives in a post-screen, post digital world where non-linear is replaced by multi-linear, multi-modal, multi-layered and multi-access; content is scalable both fixed and mobile, across surfaces, across environments, across technologies for Africa!”

    The artists selection for ColabNowNow include from East Africa: Intersectional feminist and photographer Darlyne Komukama, Visual Artist John Magati and DJ, art organizer and writer Kampire Bahana. The UK artists include: Illustrator Olivia Twist, Cult Storyteller Christopher Lutterodt-Quarcoo and Storyteller Nikky Norton Shafau. The West African artists are: Visual Artist Papi, Visual Artist, designer and cultural activist Mukhtara Yusuf and Art Director Prince Kojo-Hilton. The Southern African selection includes: Illustrator Hugo Mendes, writer Lindokuhle Nkosi, Digital Artist Janus Fouche, Director and playwright Eliot Moleba, multidisciplinary artist Candida Merwe and lifelong art student Nyasha Madamombe.