Art Meets a Podcast

Love and reflection in an anti-Black world through Arthur Jafa’s, “Love is the Message, the Message is Death,” and our tribute to Black voices doing all the things.

Hello internets! This week, we are airing the final episode of Art Meets a Podcast Season One. It has been a wonderful journey creating this first season and we want to thank all of our friends who gave their time and thoughts throughout. This episode reflects on the journey thus far and the ways that our thoughts on Existentialism and Ubuntu have shifted...or not. As our final act, we discuss Arthur Jafa’s film, “Love is the Message, the Message is Death,” and how it offers us a complex view of Blackness. Inspired by this film, we conclude with our very own sound piece which is a tribute to Black voices doing all the things!

Okay, so you got the degree, but now what? Transitioning from art school to the business of arting. (Pt 2)

Hello friends and friends of friends! This week we continue on from last week's episode on what it is to go from art school and into the business of arting. We are joined by Lauren von Gogh who is the Network Programmes Manager at VANSA (Visual Arts Network of South Africa). Lauren shares with us the amazing work that VANSA is doing to support artists in their professional practices, which includes providing business toolkits, tax toolkits and their most recent project on mental health awareness called, ‘Take Care.’ Head over to VANSA’s website dto find out more about this project as well as their other initiatives. We are also thankful to some of our friends who contributed to the episode and gave us their own personal experiences, so big thank you to Lauren Theunissen, Thero Makepe, Papi Konop and Michaela Limberis.

Okay, so you got the degree, but now what? Transitioning from art school to the business of arting. (Pt 1)

Hello internets! This week we are starting off with part one of a two parter. The transition from art school to the real world where a different set of skills are needed. We have the chats about what our experiences were like in art school and whether or not those experiences prepared us for the outside world. We are joined by the incomparable Tammy Langtry, with additional thoughts from Nobukho Nqaba, Michaela Limberis, Sven Christian and some anonymous friends of ours.

Ubuntu: let’s work together, you are my person and I am your person. How are we finding each other in this chaotic world?

Hello our fellow humans, hope you all have been well. Today we are joined by Refilwe Nkomo and Michaela Limberis. They are absolutely our favourite people who deeply care for our art community. They both wear many hats including, but not limited to artist, curator, documenter, and educator. Refilwe is currently serving as the Director to the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) and Michaela is currently one to the Directors of Art Meets. In this episode we get into the chats about building community and what it means to have each other's back. Go have a listen and tell us about your community and the people whose backs you have!

Those who whisper to the earth on our mortal behalf with poetry and performance. The art and ecology of Precious Okoyomon & Otobong Nkanga.

Precious and I will be talking about the work of Otobong Nkanga and Precious Okoyomon. Both of these artists have created practices that are about a holistic engagement with their individual self, communal self and how these selves interact with the ecology around them. They pull from histories of extraction in the natural world and touch on colonial legacies, slavery, blackness and what it means to be a human who is actively in tune with their environment today.

…I really do have to insist on inserting myself into the narrative! Reclaiming history and expanding the archive.

Today we are super excited to share with you all our great chat with Sethembile Msezane. Msezane is a phenomenal artist whose work explores colonial archives, history, African knowledge systems, Black Women’s histories and so much more. Her practice engages in performance, film, sculpture, photography and drawing and in this conversation, she tells us about her process and beliefs around her work. Go have a listen and if you have any thoughts, please DM us anything that comes up for you.

Passing the time and doing things while we wait for the end of the world. The art of endurance performance with Senzeni Marasela.

Hellooooo from the void! Today we are discussing waiting and in particular the waiting of ‘Black Womanhood’ as explored and expressed by the incomparable, Senzeni Marasela. What an insightful and rich conversation we had with this extraordinary artist. We get deep about endurance performance, colonial history and its material legacy.

Looking into the void and creating new worlds. Talking to world makers and asking them things about their worlds.

This episode gave us all the feels! We talked with the great world makers, Manyaku Mashilo and Michael Jacobs. They are both incredible artists who engage with notions of identity, archives, spiritualism and other worlds. We unpack what it means to be a world builder through a visual art practice and how the spiritual plain and physical body intersect. We talk about THAT church in Limpopo too and wealthy Black folks just living. It really was a beautiful conversation with these two beautiful humans! Have a listen and be moved.

Tafadzwa Tega talks about hope in his work and we talk about the horror of migration in the films, His House & Atlantics.

This week, we are joined by Zimbabwean artist, Tafadzwa Tega. We will be having a great conversation about his work and the significance of the flower he uses as a motif in his paintings and how migration has been a strong theme for him. We are really excited to be having the chats with Tafadzwa who is also just great as a human person living in the world. Precious and Pyda will then head into a conversation about the two incredible films, ‘Atlantics,’ by Mati Diop and ‘His House,’ by Remi Weekes. The two films are horror films that explore amongst other things, the horror of migration.

Season 1 Trailer: “Existential thought and Concepts of Ubuntu coming from Africa."

Hello Friends 
How have you been feeling? A little existential maybe? A little dread maybe? I know we are currently sandwiched in a tightly pressed “Covid Panini '' which comes with a side order of vaccine for the price of socialising again. It feels like the zombie apocalypse is upon us and the end of the world is near. We’ve understood Existential Dread as a philosophy which involves questioning our existence and purpose, from what  feels like a crisis of the individual. So we thought it would be interesting to put Existential Dread next to the African philosophy of Ubuntu; a philosophy that broadly says that a ‘person is a person through other people.’ If Existential Dread is about an internal individual crisis of being, can Ubuntu offer us another way of being that is about a communal questioning? Let’s get deep into the chats this season as we try to figure out some things.