As part of VIAD’s annual programme of activities and in conjunction with an exhibition titled: Hypersampling Identities, Jozi Style, VIAD held a series of ‘Encounters’ over a period of three days.

In the Encounters, which take the form of film screenings, presentations, round-table and panel discussions, and conversations, participants explore the various forms of self-imaging/self-representation and hypersampling strategies used by sartorial groups such as the Swenkas, Pantsulas, Izikothane, and Sartists, as well as young Jozi-based design collectives such as Khumbula, the Smarteez, and the Ribane siblings whose work features on the exhibition.

Fashion is considered as a means by which identities and subjectivities – particularly forms of transnational, transhistorical, transcultural, Afropolitan, Afro-urban, Afro-futurist black masculinities – are imagined, Fashion is considered as a means by which identities and

subjectivities – particularly forms of transnational, transhistorical, transcultural, Afropolitan, Afro-urban, Afro-futurist black masculinities – are imagined, produced, marketed and disseminated. The Encounters offer invited participants, who include academics working across a range of disciplines; young Jozi based fashion designers; photographers; stylists; filmmakers; cultural (art, design, performance) practitioners and trend followers (fashion bloggers), an opportunity to engage with, and explore themes that arise out of, or are tangential to, the work featured on the exhibition.

The Encounters provide opportunities to identify pertinent issues that can be furthered in a larger platform and exhibition based on related thematics next year (VIADUCT 2016), and in VIAD’s guest-edited special edition of the academic journal Critical Arts for 2016.

PROGRAMME:

Click here to download the programme

SPECIAL ISSUE:

Critical Arts