What does it mean to think in cardboard? How can ideas undergo a process of folding, creasing and tearing, and what is the process of rendering tangible these ideas, these ways of conceptualising and seeing, through the tactile nature of cardboard?

In September 2021, The SO | Academy hosted the Thinking in Cardboard Mentorship programme. As part of The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s 8th Season, the 6-day programme saw 12 participants (based in Johannesburg and abroad) being mentored by Brussels-based artist and theatre, opera, dance and exhibition designer Sabine Theunissen.

For Theunissen, to think in cardboard is to embrace the intuitive and the repetitive through materiality. As such, her methodology prizes the intelligence of the hands, and pursues the tangible and the incidental through ways of working that, while imperceptible at first, find a rootedness in the material.

What emerges are tactile structures, visages and whole worlds in miniature. Through a literal and conceptual process of bending, cutting, folding, twisting and layering, there emerges something of a palimpsest – an archive of process and a physical model that holds its narrative in its material history.

Ways of seeing are crucial, too. To observe a room, a world, a universe in miniature is to identify and expand on its flaws and follies, its possibilities and its hidden potentials, in ways that are not possible through conventional methods of performance, architecture, or design.

The Thinking in Cardboard mentorship programme was produced in collaboration with the UNITA program and Scenography Today.

Guiding and mentoring 12 artists – six based in South Africa, and six from abroad – across various creative disciplines and time zones is no easy task. Considering the use of cardboard as a material provocation, and a generative and collaborative tool for thinking, new ways of working needed to emerge.

For Thinking in Cardboard mentor Sabine Theunissen, the logic and material tactics of collage became a way forward, both in terms of the structure of the mentorship programme and its practical and conceptual methodologies. Throughout the course of the programme it was the use of the found, the incidental, the intelligence and intuition of the hands, and the layered and fragmental possibilities of cardboard as a medium.

Theunissen embraced this distance between the mentees as a richness rather than a weakness. In this way, the mentorship programme harnessed the temporal and the situational to posit a process that was equal parts experiential and abstract. But it was also a process that pursued the material.

The 12 mentees were split into six teams of two – one Johannesburg-based and one internationally-based – and all of them paired carefully and deliberately. Theunissen paired mentees in ways that she felt could yield a particular chemistry or artistic dialogue, based on their backgrounds and interests. Each team was then tasked with using a poem from Woven with Brown Thread as a conceptual point of departure. Through the textual and thematic material of these poems, a common ground was found, and a set of emotions, interests, or ideas were pursued. 14:00 (SAST) became the ‘golden hour’, a vital time to meet as a group, virtually, and discuss processes, ideas, and challenges. Theunissen was also deliberate in fostering a collaborative and integrated environment for all of the mentees. Live streams and virtual tours outside of these formal meeting times became vital in this regard.

Provocations and limitations

From the onset, necessary limitations to creative practice were put in place. In addition to the provocations of working with a poem and with cardboard (or paper as a derivative of cardboard) as the primary material, there was also the production of a cardboard model. This model, which could not exceed 50 cubic centimetres, was bound to being created in a timeframe of six days and would both inform and feature in a one-minute film that saw the material of cardboard and the conceptual points of inquiry come to life through a collage-style process of traditional film, animation, projection, layering and more. Finally, works were created with the challenge of conceptualising a third participant – be it an artist, a performance, or the public – who would be interacting with the model.

Under the mentorship of Theunissen, participants were encouraged to work intuitively, repetitively, to prize the intelligence of the hands, and to pursue the tangible and the incidental. Rather than demonstrate or direct, Theunissen opted to inform from the margins, working sensitively and with great care to make sense of, and help expand the worlds each team of mentees were producing.

Prizing the incidental and the unexpected

Above all else, it was Theunissen’s passion for the incidental and the unexpected – that which emerges in the act of making and of thinking through the hands – that resonated through, and informed much of the process. There was a dedicated effort to refuse measurement, precision and neat material resolution. Also, there emerged an inherent trust in the process and the material, a belief that all that one needs in order to work is already within one’s immediate environment.

Finally, while the space was an open, collaborative, and explorative one, Theunissen also worked to draw each mentee out of their preferred practice or way of working, striving always to open up the possibilities of the mind, the hands and the material. The resultant works are all distinct and accomplished models, each spanning the themes of scale, time, breath, presence, embodiment, physicality, revealing and concealing.

CREDITS:

Based in Brussels, Sabine Theunissen is a long-time collaborator of William Kentridge, and collaborates with directors, choreographers, and curators. She is frequently invited to lecture and teach in art and architecture schools across Europe. In 2017, Theunissen created her own studio, Le Squatelier, where she develops all her projects with her team, but also researches and creates experimental works. Theunissen is an ambassador and advisor of the UNITA Program at Scenography Today.

Marine Fleury is an architect, scenographer and set designer who worked as assistant to Theunissen during the Thinking in Cardboard mentorship programme. A long-time collaborator of Theunissen’s, Fleury assisted with many of the technical and conceptual aspects of the process, helping mentees with the finer details of cutting, sticking, and piecing together the material, and was vital in contributing to the techniques and conceptual approaches of assembling and making sense of the models.

The SO Academy mentees were Buhle Xhegwana (Johannesburg, SA), Joshua Stanley (Cape Town, SA), Neo Phage (Johannesburg, SA), Amy-Sue Lithgow (Johannesburg, SA), Lilly Oosthuizen (Johannesburg, SA), Natalie Hlogi Paneng (Johannesburg, SA), Beatrice O'Connell (Dublin, Ireland), Dian Suci Rahmawati (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), Inés Marcó (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Beatrice Scaccia (New York, USA), Xiyu Tomorrow (Hamburg, Germany), and Nicci Haynes (Ngunnawal Country, Australia).

Athena Mazarakis is the Momenteur for the SO Academy.

SO Academy | Thinking in Poetry and Cardboard exhibition

In addition to the performance programmes of Season 8 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, a multi-media exhibition was on show for the duration of the Season, and subsequently extended to 25 November.

The exhibition, titled Thinking in Poetry and Cardboard, features cardboard models and short videos created through the Thinking in Cardboard Mentorship Programme, short videos from the Poetry Minute series curated by Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu, and videos showcasing the poetry of Woven with Brown Thread, an anthology as part of the Khala Series | 100 Poem project.

EXHIBITION WALKTHROUGH

Curator of the Thinking in Poetry and Cardboard exhibition, Athena Mazarakis, leads a brief walkthrough of the exhibition, contextualising its various parts and its location in the broader context of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

CREDITS:

CURATOR | Athena Mazarakis
CURATORIAL ASSISTANT & DESIGNER | Neo Phage
CONSTRUCTOR & TECHNICAL DIRECTOR | Cue Lighting & Sound: Barry Strydom
INSTALLATION ASSISTANTS | Buhle Xhegwana, Amy-Sue Lithgow & Lilly Oosthuizen