Bodhi Khaya Artist Residency 2021

Land | Maps | Dreams | Visions 

Sculptors, dancers, poets, performance artists, land artists come together in a week long artist residency at Bodhi Khaya from 5 - 12 November to create on and with the land that surrounds them. Georgina Hamilton outlines the conceptual background:

“When I first read in Bruce Chatwin's "The Songlines", that a song could be a map it was a mind-blowing, though primarily intellectual, explosion for me. Since then through song and dream and living on wild land, a fertile abundance of new maps and dreams has been revealed: animal tracks, ant paths, insects' flight paths, wind dances, star constellations, bee constellations, water courses, bird song. Maps moved from a literal to a liminal place in my mind, to somewhere between dreams and imagination. 

And then there was Hugh Brody's book, "Maps and Dreams" revealing how “intimate and reciprocal knowledge of land is not separate from human, plant or animal existence. Dreaming holds a spatial and sacred understanding of the land where visions are drawn into the understanding of land use, spirituality, and survival."

 Between humans and other creatures, Bodhi Khaya is held in a mycelium web of maps and dreams. I will be sharing my understanding of these and particularly how both have been shifted and shorn by colonialism and apartheid.” 

Participating Artists and Concepts

Alisa

“The project that I have in mind will flow out of my interest in machines and artificial intelligence. I would like to write a message in machine language (probably straight up binary code) in the landscape. A message that a machine would recognise as being meant for a machine. The message is still unclear I am playing with "please have mercy". AI is being increasingly used in ecological studies, from what I have found so far it is mostly used in recording species spread and amount. It is also being developed or has been developed to study and explain animal behaviour. Given that subjective bias plays a part in the development and learning culture of AI, I want this piece to ask questions on how AI could work between humans and what we define as nature. I am thinking semi-permanent. The image of the work needs to be fed to the internet so that it is part of the machine library.” 

Andree

Path: Poetry, probably haiku, engraved on either metal or perspex discs, mounted on metal posts and planted along a walking trail, to be discovered. I would probably do about 3+

 Pond: One tough, large, ball or buoy, probably painted white (like a blank canvas/planet earth), floating freely on the pond, with a thought or poem written on the surface.

 I would like my pieces to be interactive and discovered, and hope to give time for reflection. With the ball on the pond, I would like viewers to have the space (and the tools which I will leave available) to add their story, if desired.

I am using circles to represent the Earth, but also life, totality, the infinite, the self, timelessness…

I look back (sentimentally) to Before Man and his tampering, hence my ball floats freely, seasonally, like the San. And every now and again, a human (meteor or whatever) will change the dynamic and set the ball on another course, both physically and story-wise.

I will prepare the components for whichever installation is chosen before coming, but will write the poetry onsite, inspired by the location and experience.”

Charles Palm

Charles Palm will continue with his research on violent disruptions of indigenous cultures in the late 1700s, coinciding with free-burger settlement at the frontiers of the Cape colony. The residency offers an opportunity to observe the socio-economic landscape in the Overstrand intimately 300 years later. Visualisations of his research will emerge spontaneously.

Joy

“We would like to focus our attention on a live movement and sound performance at the retreat an would like it to reflect the trajectory informed by our engagement with the visible and invisible stimuli within the environment as we meet it and move through it for the first time. 

I would like to write a poem while I am there as well. 

We feel quite strongly about the development happening within the space and the performance being live. “

Kali

“From my planet in the universe, my residency exploration would involve as one of the elements, the beautiful waters at Bodhi Khaya. I would continue with my clay, water and universe series. I would also use my underwater photography technique to take images underwater which hopefully will include willing co-creators who are at home in the water.

 I would like to propose a night starscape sound journey with sound recordings that I made in the Tankwa and adding local sounds I have recorded in the vicinity of Bodhi Khaya where I am based. This will also include some live sound elements.

 I propose to continue with the series of works I created in the Karoo, blending my naked self with the land to create a fusion of self and environment. I would particularly like to work in the milkwood forest which I am familiar with and where I have created before. I would also create at the waterfall.

 Continuing in the same vein of the work I pioneered in the Tankwa – leaving messages in the landscape that are site specific, thought provoking and consciousness raising – I would do the same at Bodhi Khaya – taking into cognisance the history of the land. This idea will develop further as I am on the land and feeling what wants to emerge.

 Weather permitting I would also do light painting work at night with starscape backgrounds

 As with my residency in the Tankwa – much of my work will be processed after the residency so that the totality of my creativity would emerge later.”

Lindeka

Lindeka Qampi was born in 1969 in Bolotwa, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Khayelitsha, a township near Cape Town.
A street photographer, Lindeka first learned the elements of photography through a consortium of photographers known as Iliso Labantu in 2006. Her work captures the most significant aspects of daily township life—of which she is a part—from the private sphere to the euphoria of play. She has documented everyday life from different townships around Cape Town, focusing on a variety of issues: the limited availability of land, cultural differences, creativity, awareness of cultural norms, the value of a shared history, and, most recently, township fashion.
Lindeka’s photographs are unselfconsciously optimistic, delighting in the vitality of pleasures known and shared by all.
Lindeka has shown her work in exhibitions in South Africa and abroad, including at the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts, University of Cape Town (2013), Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town (2013), the Cape Town Art Fair (2013), the Pingyao International Photography Festival, China (2013), Barnard Gallery, Cape Town (2013), AVA Gallery, Cape Town (2012), and the International Africa Festival, Wurzburg, Germany (2010), among others.

Nomusa

My quest is to bring to life Titanium (my pseudo persona/ Alter Ego) who actively expresses gender fluidity in ways that remind the society at large of the tide of humanity that bind all gender expressions and sexuality. My quest for belonging and success has brought me against the full force of conservative ideology in South African society and the world. As a queer person of colour, I have found it difficult to feel represented by any single demographic. With my art, I quietly and persuasively challenge narrowly defined concepts like gender and race – with the understanding that no-one fits these boxes perfectly.

For Bodhi Khaya residency, Lindeka and I will take images of Titanium my Alter ego. Titanium will be performing in a full Zulu attire assigned to males.

Sonya

“My approach to this residency is one of receptiveness. This means, going into the residency taking place on Baviaansfonteyn, I open myself to what might be given to me by the People of the land, the Khoi and the San, their ancestors and those that have come become before them. I hereby pay my respects to the Memory Keepers of the land I have the honour of working on.

 The memories and stories of Bodhi Khaya are invisible to me. However, taking my cue from Helen Keller who connects the invisible as a tangible reality to the ‘under developed’ (the sighted), I will seek to connect to the reality of the invisible … of what can be sensed, not seen:

Being blind and deaf to the material world has helped me develop an awareness to the invisible, spiritual world. […] Those with sight so often put their entire trust in what they see. They believe that only material things are real. When a loved one dies and is no longer seen, they lose their contact. Their sense of the unseen is underdeveloped, whereas the inner or “mystic” sense, if you will, gives me vision of the unseen. […] Here, in the midst of everyday air, I sense the rush of ethereal rains. I am conscious of the splendor that binds all things of earth to all things in heaven.[1]

Working with the plant material available to me which I will forage for, I will transfer the marks of the organic material onto an extensive piece of fabric of approximately 10 meters in length. The organic mark-making of this material will read as (and will be my interpretation of) what has been given to me as the source material of a greater cosmological and collective narrative across Time and Space. This mark-making will therefore read as a gift from Those offering their stories. It is for me to listen, and to interpret the mark-making respectfully.

 It is highly likely that the work will unfold to a possible installation or/and performance. And, as my approach will be receptive and not prescriptive, precise description of the development of the work cannot be given ahead of time. However, there is the clear understanding that deep-listening might reveal possible hidden narratives and connect us in new and unexplored ways."

 In the current COVID-19 global pandemic, it seems imperative to explore ways to connect collaboratively and, as artists, to find new pathways to collective healing.”

[1] From “How to live with Life” (1965)

The residency is organized yearly by AiRSA, Artist in Residence South Africa, NPO 243 824

Open calls advertised on social media, VANSA, RESARTIST, AININ

Acceptance of applications on artistic merit only through a curatorial team