Phansi Komthunzi WeLanga

Student-led week at The Points of Disorder

25-29 September 2023

What happens when we turn our eyes away from exhibition walls, towards the senses of collaborative creativities?
How can Wits postgraduate engage with audiences that are (mainly) relegated to spaces outside of the so-called “Fine Arts”?
How can the postgraduate curriculum expand into spaces that draw from collaborative creativities instead merely focussing on individual practice and an exhibition of works?

For a week Wits "Fine Art" Department postgrad students will inhabit the space of TPO, an open invitation to colleagues and students from the university to join in conversations, screening of documentaries, presentation of workshops and performances, among others, that will enable us to teach and learn from one another. This is an opportunity for people to lead and participate in self-fashioned session rather than to be attendees.

The program aims to challenge the conventions of TPO as a “gallery” and the ways of experiencing and engaging with “artworks” in the design of exhibition spaces, which mainly place works on display. The group of postgraduate students wants to question the centeredness on the visual field that demands for works not to be touched, based on a conviction that the basis of all art forms, be it visual, performance, time-based, multi-media, text, music, or else is material, textured and multi-sensorial. This week-long experiment aims to challenge the borders set up by the white cube to sensory experiences, and advocating for art as a continuous and changing process. Each day, hour, minute, the space will be changed according to the interaction of collective creative processes, between discussing, listening, showing work or performing. Thus, the gallery will be turned into a conceptual space, a writing space, a thinking space, a space of silence, a space of music, a space of movement, a space of sitting, of sharing, of creating. We also aim to show that this institution is dependent on our contributions as its members who constitute it, and therefore invite everyone who is open to engage and to join interacting in and with this space. 

Photography by Reshma Chhiba