The WISER Podcast | Season 04 | The Art of Meleko Mokgosi | Part 1

Thursday, 28 October, 2021 - 14:00

Today we release the first of a two-part podcast series which focuses on the work of Botswanan artist Meleko Mokgosi. In today’s episode, Hlonipha Mokoena, Associate Professor at WISER, discusses his work. “There seems to be no better time than the present for us to have a conversation about what it means to be a black artist who paints black subjects”, says Mokoena, as she draws on her recent writing about the artist. How can we think about the politics of the intimate in Mokgosi’s work? What Southern diasporas within diasporas are revealed? What is Mokgosi’s version of black internationalism? And what are the meanings of his incorporation of images of Frederick Douglas in his paintings? All this and more is opened up in what follows. In next week’s episode, Mokoena talks to the artist himself in a fascinating interview that takes up many of the themes she introduces to us today. Meleko Mokgosi was born in 1981 in Botswana. He is currently Associate Professor in Painting/Printmaking at the Yale School of Art. He is represented in South Africa by Stevenson Gallery and in the USA by Jack Shainman Gallery. His artwork may be viewed at these websites: https://www.stevenson.info/artist/meleko-mokgosi/biography https://jackshainman.com/artists/meleko_mokgosi https://www.melekomokgosi.com The members of The WISER Podcast Team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Isabel Hofmeyr and Achille Mbembe.
WISER Research Theme: 
Knowledge Futures

Podcasts

Thursday, 11 June, 2020 - 23:30

 In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi speaks about Childbirth, Natality and 'Young’ Families.

The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi an Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at WISER. She leads the Institute’s programme in Medical Humanities. She is the co-editor and co-author, amongst many other publications, of Young Families: Gender, Sexuality and Care and of Connected Lives: Families, Households, Health and Care in Contemporary South Africa.

WISER Research Theme: 
Knowledge Futures

Thursday, 4 June, 2020 - 23:30

In the latest episode of The WISER Podcast, Tinashe Mushakavanhu speaks about a forgotten archive of letters written after Dambudzo Marechera's death, and his attempt to run a writing surgery for young war returnees from Zimbabwe's liberation struggle. 

 

The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Dr. Tinashe Mushakavanhu is currently a postdoctoral fellow at WiSER. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Kent. His forthcoming book is Reincarnating Marechera: Notes on a Speculative Archive (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020).
WISER Research Theme: 
Knowledge Futures

Thursday, 28 May, 2020 - 23:30

In the latest two-part episode of The WISER Podcast, Professors Achille Mbembe and Dilip Menon explore the newly published book Capitalisms - A Global History, co-edited by Dilip Menon and Kaveh Yasdani and published by Oxford University Press.

 

The WISER Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

 

Professor Achille Mbembe is a world-renowned theorist, public intellectual and Professor of History and Politics at WISER. Professor Dilip Menon is Mellon Chair in Indian Studies and Director of CISA at Wits.

WISER Research Theme: 
Knowledge Futures

Thursday, 21 May, 2020 - 23:30

In Episode 4 of The WISER Podcast, Professor Richard Rottenburg discusses the cohabitation of people and pathogens in an increasingly digitised world. 
 
Richard Rottenburg is an Anthropologist of Science and Technology and Professor at WISER. He is the author of Far Fetched Facts and The World of Indicators.
WISER Research Theme: 
Knowledge Futures

Thursday, 7 May, 2020 - 23:30

Dear friends of WISER,

In Episode 2 of The WISER Podcast, Dr Mpho Matsipa and Bronwyn Kotzen explore similarities in their work relating to space, race, and the politics of cement.

Listen on our website or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Mpho Matsipa joined WiSER as a Research Fellow in April 2019. She completed her PhD in Environmental Design in Developing Countries at the University of California, Berkeley. Mpho is currently the curator of the African Mobilities Project. She divides her time between the Wits School of Architecture and Planning, where she holds a position as lecturer in design and urban research, and WISER.

Bronwyn Kotzen joined WISER as a Visiting Research Fellow in January 2020. Bronwyn is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Cape Town. Her doctoral research focuses on the political economy of materiality in urban Africa by tracing Pan-African cement flows and is supported by Emory University’s African Critical Enquiry Programme and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. Bronwyn’s broader research explores the interstices between materiality, politics and place in rapidly developing urban centres.

WISER Research Theme: 
Knowledge Futures

Friday, 1 May, 2020 - 13:30

Welcome to The WISER Podcast! Published weekly, the podcast features conversations, talks and audio-essays from WISER. 

You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. A complete list of all past episodes is at https://witswiser.podbean.com. For podcast transcripts, click here. For more WISER research, click here.

WISER Research Theme: 
Knowledge Futures
Locations of African Critical Theory
Submitted 9 years 3 weeks ago by Sarah Emily Duff.

Public lectures from the 2015 Session of the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, held at WiSER and the Adler Museum, Wits University, Johannesburg.

WISER Research Theme: 
Submitted 9 years 3 months ago by Sarah Emily Duff.

A podcast of our recent seminar on consent, rights, and the regulation of childhood and adolescent sexuality in South Africa.

 

WISER Research Theme: 
Submitted 9 years 4 months ago by Sarah Emily Duff.

(videos are listed in the order in which the panels took place)

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Introduction: Sarah Nuttall

Panel One: Africa in Diasporic and Continental Imagination

Xolela Mangcu, "The Idea of Africa in Black South African Political Thought"

Achille Mbembe, "Futures of Pan-Africanism"

 

Panel 2: Exile, Pan-African and Diasporic Solidarity

Nomboniso Gasa, Mandla Langa, Raimi Gbadamosi

 

Panel 3: Xenophobia and African Migrants' Experiences (Bureaucracy, Documents and the Police)

Ingrid Palmary, Shose Kessi

 

Panel Four: The Making of the 'Foreign National'

Niq Mhlongo, Tawana Kupe

 

Round Table: Redrawing Colonial Boundaries: Pan-Africanism, Nationalism, and Cosmopolitanism

Adam Habib, Gilbert Khadiagala (respondent), Eusebius McKaiser (moderator)

 

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Panel One: South Africa in the Geopolitics of the Continent

Adekeye Adebajo, Gilbert Khadiagala, Anthony Bizos

 

Panel Two: The Gateway to Africa? South African Capital in the Continent

Lucy Corkin

AND

Remarks by Moeletsi Mbeki

 

Panel Three: Africa in the South African Curriculum: Expanding the Boundaries of Knowledge

Michael Neocosmos

Suren Pillay

 

Concluding Session: The Africa We Want

Address by David Makhura, Premier of Gauteng

WISER Research Theme: 
Submitted 9 years 5 months ago by Sarah Emily Duff.

Achille Mbembe's public lecture 'Decolonizing the University: Five New Directions,' presented at WiSER on 22 April 2015.

 

WISER Research Theme: