[-empyre-] Greetings

[Premesh Lalu]

My apologies for being so late to send through my thanks for the invitation
to share with this wonderful group.

This past month we postponed a ceremony to award William Kentridge a joint
honorary doctorate conferred by the University of the Western Cape and the
Vrije Universiteit Brussels. The postponement comes in the wake of a
symposium, which preceded the lockdown, to discuss Kentridge's exhibition
at the Zeitz Mocca Museum of Contemporary African Art and Norval
Foundation. William himself shared his plans for the Centre for the Less
Good Idea. The work produced for Season 7 is now available on the Centre's
website. I would encourage you to follow the centre's recorded offerings.

We are frantically preparing for the onset of the spread of the Coronavirus
in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a nation-wide lockdown in South Africa,
Namibia and Zimbabwe, and a massive effort and citizenship drive to
safeguard large sections of the population who live in dire conditions.
That said, there is a major initiative called Iam4theArts to mobilise
support for artists whose livelihoods would be adversely affected by the
lockdown which has garnered the support of 9000 artists across the length
and breadth of South Africa.

Closer to home, I continue to work with architects on a building project
that will house a Laboratory of Kinetic Objects in partnership with the
Handspring Puppet Company, a documentary film school, an artists in
residence programme, a schooi of African guitar, and a project on
Communicating the Humanities. The refurbishment of an old derelict school
on the edge of the city will be the first opportunity for the historically
Black university to engage with the arts communities in and around Cape
Town. In the coming weeks, I hope to share some of the thinking around the
art interventions planned for the new facility and to learn from you about
how we might set to work on crafting an aesthetic education for our times.

Premesh

Premesh Lalu (Prof.)
DST/NRF Flagship on Critical Thought in African Humanities
Centre for Humanities Research
Faculty of Arts
University of the Western Cape

Private Bag X 17
Bellville
7535
Cape Town
(021) 959 3162
0716767806

http://www.chrflagship.uwc.ac.za/

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