The Centre for the Less Good Idea is an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts based in Maboneng, Johannesburg

THE GAGGING AIR

For February 2021, the billboard on the M1 Freeway, near Braamfontein Shunting Yard hosted the artwork of a collaboration between artist Wezile Mgibe and poet Frank Meintjies. A photograph of a performance installation by Mgibe is accompanied by Meintjies’ poetry:

the gagging air, the jobless young
the shaft that injects my blood
into the earth and sucks out gold

Wezile Mgibe is an artist whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses performance, dance, film, and installation as a tool for social change. Wezile’s work confronts prejudices and advocates against social inequality by creating a platform for critical self-reflexivity within unwelcoming spaces. His work is influenced by how things have come to existence, as well as motivations behind certain movements, reactions, human behaviours, and mostly how these become symbols. Wezile’s site-specific projects are developed in a continuous series format in an aim to interrogate the dynamics of site, place, culture, and belonging.

Frank Meintjies is a poet/writer and an organisational and social change practitioner. Frank has spent more than 30 years working in development, mainly within non-governmental organisations.

He has written on the history of Katlehong Arts Centre and the Culture and Working Life Project; it focused on the roles and impacts of documentary filmmaking, libraries within poor communities, and on the worker, culture and language oppression in the workplace. He is also the co-editor of the book titled ‘Voices of the Transition; the politics, poetics and practices of social change in South Africa’ (2004).