The Art of Public Space

WiSER and the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town invite you to a launch and discussion of  

The Art of Public Space: Curating and Re-imagining the Ephemeral City
by Kim Gurney

The Art of Public Space (Palgrave, 2015) takes as case study a trilogy of art interventions, New Imaginaries, which explored notions of public space in Johannesburg, and reflects upon its broader implications in a research partnership between African Centre for Cities and Goethe-Institut South Africa.

"Kim Gurney's The Art of Public Space powerfully reiterates the ways in which urban actors do not inhabit worlds of preconceived social or subjective forms, but rather ever-shifting milieus where different ways of conceiving and enacting life intersect, and that artistic practice is a critical technology in re-imagining and reshaping these intersections.  All technical practices conduct events, but artistic work is proving most salient in opening up urban contexts to events that anticipate and posit new ways of living together. Leveraging the multiplicity of performances that make up every day Johannesburg, the artistic projects offered here attempt to reconfigure what its residents already see and experience but in ways that push it somewhere else, which collate and intensify these perceptions and experiences into new common grounds."

- AbdouMaliq Simone

Respondents: Achille Mbembe (WiSER) with Molemo Moiloa (VANSA), Tanya Zack (urban researcher, writer & explorer) and Kim Gurney (UCT), chaired by Edgar Pieterse (UCT).

Drinks will be served.

All welcome.