Please join us  at the Goethe-Institut, 119 Jan Smuts Ave, Parkwood, Johannesburg

on Wednesday, 29 November 2023, 6:00 for 6:30pm, for

Intra-actions #4: The poetry and politics of rot

A special film screening and discussion

For the 4th in its series of Intra-actions, the University of Johannesburg’s Bioart + Design Africa teams up with the Goethe-Institut’s Science Film Festival to present an evening of short film screenings, followed by a discussion between artists and curators on the poetry and politics of rot.

Two short films will be shown. Wrought (2022), produced and directed by Joel Penner and Anna Sigrithur, uses scanners, microscopes and cameras to create a time lapse film that examines how rot has the ability to transgress the false binaries between species, and also between the living and the non-living. vRot (2023) is a video documentary of the live art work by Nelisiwe Xaba who uses movement, sound, staging, costume and the physical body to explore how rot permeates the very bodies and minds of the South African nation state. Both these works acknowledge that rot is both creator and destroyer, both physical and metaphoric, and thus question our relationships with ourselves, our psyches and the world around us.

Following the screenings, Dineo Diphofa will lead a discussion between Nelisiwe Xaba and Kamogelo Walaza, curator of the exhibition SENSES currently on at the Goethe-Institut. Both Xaba’s live art work – commissioned by the Bioart + Design Africa for their recent exhibition SYM | BIO | ART: INTRA-ACTING AT THE CRITICAL NODE BETWEEN BIOTECHNOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY ART, and the SENSES exhibition – presented in collaboration with UCT's Michaelis School of Fine Art as part of the Young Curators Incubator programme – are concerned with the definitions of materialities, our sensory engagement with these, and how process-based practice tries to synthesise greater understanding of this ephemerality.

Programme for the evening:

6:00 for 6:30        Guests arrive and view the exhibition; wine is served

6:30 – 6:45           Exhibition walkabout by the curator

6:45 – 7:00           Guests settle into the auditorium

7:00 – 7:30           Screenings of the two short films

7:30 – 8:00           Panel discussion

8:00 – 8:15           Q&A session

8:15                      Refreshments are served

For further information, please contact Dineo Diphofa on dineod@uj.ac.za.