BECOMING OTHERWISE: Two Thousand and Ten Reasons to Live in a Small Town

BECOMING OTHERWISE: Two Thousand and Ten Reasons to Live in a Small Town Rike Sitas Thesis Presented for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Architecture and Planning UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN February 2015 University of Cape Town The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town ii DECLARATION I hereby declare that this is my own original work in concept and execution, and that I have not, in entirety or in part, submitted the work to this, or any other university, for obtaining any degree or qualification. Rike Sitas February 2014 iii iv DEDICATION …the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement… all depends upon a breaking free, a leap and then a question… (Albert Camus) This thesis is dedicated to Zia and Luca Sitas because you remind me that other worlds are not only necessary, but also possible. v vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I decided to do a PhD I ambitiously wrote a quick email, and to my surprise Edgar Pieterse wrote back. A few months later I packed up my partner and house and moved to Cape Town. I would like to thank you for taking such a keen interest in my research and allowing me the freedom and space to find my feet not only as an urban researcher, but also a new mother. Thank you for asking me difficult but exciting questions, and involving me in inspiring projects at the African Centre for Cities. It has been a privilege to have you as a supervisor. When I fell pregnant with my second child during the course of the PhD, I realised Edgar and I could do with some back up. Thank you Shari Daya for stepping in at such a late stage and being both academic and emotional support through the final few months. Thank you for affirming the validity of my ideas, and for providing such constructive criticism when I wandered off the path. Thank you to my family. Astrid von Kotze and Nadia Sitas, thank you for showing me that combining PhDs and breeding is possible. Astrid, thank you for the time spent reading my work, and walking and talking my narrative out of me. Thank you for being excited by my research when I was unable to. Ari Sitas, thank you for reminding me of the politics and the poetic, and introducing me to Karen Press. And thank you for stepping in and parenting when I was unable to. Nadia, my friend, sister and cheerleader extraordinaire, thank you for reading and listening and always being available. I couldn’t have done it without your remarkable precedence; your tireless editing; and your never-ending support and pep talks at all hours of the day and night. You may be my little sister but I will always look up to your tremendous intellect, strength and level-headedness. And thank you for finding the word ‘pubic’ instead of ‘public’ in my abstract before I submitted. I am forever indebted to Kholeka Ngubombi who left her family every morning to care for mine. Thank you for parenting in my place. Thank you for the endless patience, love and support you have given us. PhDs can be lonely. Thank you PhD support group Sabina Favaro, Katherine Hyman, Ntombini Marregane, Saskia Greyling and Gareth Haysom for making the vii journey less arduous. Knowing there were others muddling their way into academia alongside me made it a less daunting and solitary endeavour. Thanks for all the cups of tea, cake and laughs even when things felt dire. Thank you to my friends and co-conspirators near and far. Doung Jahangeer and Ntontobeko Ntombela for embarking on this public art adventure ten years ago with me. Leigh Meinert for all the functional and emotional support and chocolate. You gave me s space to work when I needed it most. Sabina Favaro, thank you for doggedly believing in me. Thank you Gwyn Platter, Moon Arthur, Rosemary Lombard, Bronwen Murray, Vanessa Persson and Shannon Henning for being there and keeping PhD and parenting in perspective. Thank you to everyone involved in ‘Two Thousand and Ten Reasons to Live in a Small Town’ for being so generous with your time, knowledge and experience. Joseph Gaylard for involving me in the first place. Joseph, Lester Adams, Dorothee Kreutzveld, Bettina Malcomess, Nontobeko Ntombela, Rat Western, Zen Marie, Alex Opper, Gabi Ngcobo for becoming inspiring peers in public art over the duration of the project. Tracey Derrick, Chris Murphy, Neil Coppen, Vaughn Sadie, Buntu Fihla, Kwanele Mboso, and Mak1, thank you for your patience and enthusiasm for my research. And thank you to all the other people who shared their time and perspectives in Hermon, Dundee and Phakamisa. Thank you to all at the African Centre for Cities (ACC) for being such an inspiring base to work from. Thank you to the National Research Foundation (NRF) for providing financial support. Last, but by no means least, thank you Dean Henning, my best friend and partner in everything. Thank you for your unwavering love for and belief in me; your unending patience; your tolerance of the sleepless nights, endlessly un-drunk cups of tea, and absent-mindedness; and for a steady supply of KitKats. Thank you for being the focused and fun parent and for keeping me sane. viii ABSTRACT The past few decades have seen a ‘cultural turn’ in urban planning, and public art has become an important component within urban design strategies. Accordingly, public art is most commonly encountered in the urban literature as commissioned public sculptures. Simultaneously operating are a range of critical, subversive, and experimental practices that interact with the public space of cities in a myriad of ways. Although these other types of public art projects may have been engaged in the fields of Fine Art and Cultural Studies, this has been predominantly in the global North and they have yet to enter Urban Studies in the global South in any comprehensive way. Through an analysis of three examples from the Visual Arts Network South Africa’s ‘Two Thousand and Ten Reasons to Live in a Small Town’, this thesis argues that experimental, inclusionary and less object-oriented forms of public art offers useful lessons for Urban Studies. The research presented in this thesis involved a qualitative study of: The Domino Effect which followed a participatory process to develop a domino tournament in the Western Cape town of Hermon; Living within History, a performative collage project which explored the local museum archive in the town of Dundee in KwaZulu-Natal; and Dlala Indima which was a graffiti-led Hip-hop project in the rural township of Phakamisa in the Eastern Cape. Each involved affective engagements with the vastly unequal contexts typical of South African public spaces. Although there is an increasing recognition that affect plays an important role in understanding and designing the urban, it is still largely assumed that citizenship is enacted according to rational criteria. The public art of ‘Two Thousand and Ten Reasons to Live in a Small Town’ demonstrated that affect impacts on how people can access complex spatial issues and perform citizenship. Furthermore, as part of a larger epistemological project of ‘southerning’ urban theory, this thesis therefore argues that intersecting conceptual threads from three bodies of literature: public space, public art and public pedagogy, is important. More specifically, it demonstrates that public art can harness an affective rationality that may foster alternative ways of knowing and acting in/on the urban, thereby offering public art as a unique pedagogy for exploring and deepening cityness. ix x CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION: Becoming Otherwise .............................................................. 1 1.1. Public Art in South Africa ................................................................................. 5 1.2. Southern becoming: cities in the making ......................................................... 13 1.3. Structure of this thesis ...................................................................................... 18 2. LITERATURE REVIEW: Towards an Affective Urban Studies ......................... 19 2.1. Romancing the Agora ...................................................................................... 20 2.1.1. The relational turn in Urban Studies ....................................................... 22 2.1.2. The everyday ........................................................................................... 26 2.1.3. The commons and the right to the city .................................................... 27 2.2. Art and Public Interaction ................................................................................ 32 2.2.1. Inside-out and outside-in: site and the spatial turn ................................. 33 2.2.2. Working with(in): inclusion and the social turn ..................................... 35 2.2.3. Social cohesion and cultural planning .................................................... 42 2.2.4. Art in Crisis: politics and aesthetics ........................................................ 48 2.3. Public art praxis as urban pedagogy ................................................................ 57 2.3.1. Practice, praxis and public pedagogy ...................................................... 59 2.3.2. Democratic Renovations ........................................................................

Load more