THE OPEN MOMENT | BETWEEN THE WALL AND THE SIDES
On Saturday 26 October, The Centre hosted an Open Moment featuring writer, visual artist and anthropologist Dana Mashoian Walrath from the US, and filmmaker and educator Dylan Valley, producer Antoinette Engel, and musician Bongiwe Lusizi, from South Africa.
This Open Moment showcased their work-in-progress film project between the wall and the sides.
the open moment
Following an incubation period at The Centre, this Open Moment takes the shape of an open studio-style engagement. The project's title, between the wall and the sides, is drawn from one of Walrath’s black-out poems. For Walrath, whose work is dedicated to engaging scientific racism and its motivations and functions, meeting Valley, Engel and Lusizi was essential to her way of thinking through and processing grief and genocide through art, she explains.
After a short presentation by the artists, the audience is divided into two groups and invited to interact and engage with the disparate parts of the project – Virtual Reality, collage, writing and music. While Valley and Engel showed some of their Virtual Reality films, Walrath facilitated a material exercise in free-spirited exploration through collage and writing.
Photographer | Zivanai Matangi
Finally, the full audience gathers at Lusizi’s station where they are taken through the artist’s way of working with ‘Agrimusicology’ – using natural plants as harvested materials and as instruments – and shown both how the calabash is prepared and made into a musical instrument. Following a musical performance by Lusizi, the four artists sit for a short reflection and Q&A session.
CREDITS:
CONCEPTUALISERS & ARTISTS | Dana Mashoian Walrath, Dylan Valley, Antoinette Engel & Bongiwe Lusizi
MOMENTEUR FOR THE SO ACADEMY | Athena Mazarakis
