Conference Presentations by Christo Doherty
Watershed was an art/science program held in Johannesburg September 10-21, 2018, and involved aca... more Watershed was an art/science program held in Johannesburg September 10-21, 2018, and involved academics from across the sciences and humanities, policy makers, NGO actors and art practitioners. The program focused on questions of the regulated supply, governance and access to water, water as a human right, and the unpredictability of rainfall and the precarity of water. Participating artists straddled the boundaries of art and science, contributing to debates on public policy, political economy and science projects. As the authors in this issue illustrate, art work was conceptualized and executed in ways that interrogated theory, methods and data, as well as knowledge practice and translation. In this introduction, the editors introduce the articles and describe some of the other works in Watershed.
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Proceedings of the ARA2020 Conference, 2020
My editor's introduction and overview of the Arts Research Africa 2020 Conference held in Johanne... more My editor's introduction and overview of the Arts Research Africa 2020 Conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa. Explanation for the strategic emphasis on pan-African outreach, and the conference theme of “How does artistic research decolonise knowledge and practice in Africa?” Justification provided for the experimental format-architecture of the conference, and the use of “performance-lectures” as a new genre of conference presentation.
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This article addresses Technology Arts Education in South Africa, in particular the case of the d... more This article addresses Technology Arts Education in South Africa, in particular the case of the development and mutant growth of the Digital Arts department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg from 2003 to present. The paper addresses the difficulties of working in a strongly discipline orientated university system, and the small but fascinating successes that have led to major developments in the department.
The focus is on the mechanisms of collaboration that have both evolved and been purposefully put in place, for a trans-disciplinary education structure to be successfully run. These exist between subject divisions in the School of Arts; and further between the Faculty of Humanities (in which the Digital Arts Division is housed) and the Faculty of Engineering, at the University of the Witwatersrand. We address historical collaborations and how these allowed for further developments across disciplines. Through a process of unpacking and presenting, we explore the errors and identify those aspects that we feel are still missing. These include a focus on concepts that have been passed over due to issues around course structure and discipline ownership. We conclude with a look to the future, to opportunities to develop uniquely African digital arts practice.
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Drafts by Christo Doherty
The shifting relationship between physical monuments and the public memory that they seek to cons... more The shifting relationship between physical monuments and the public memory that they seek to construct is explored through a photographic and textual examination of the social and political forces behind the construction and subsequent relocation of the Irish Brigade Monument in South Africa. Unveiled in 1975 in Johannesburg, the Monument celebrated the memory of the Irish Brigade: 'physical force' Irish nationalists who fought on the side of the Boers against the British in the South African War (1899-1902) in what has been celebrated as an early act of anti-imperialist solidarity. The design of the Monument and its location on the west of Johannesburg represents a crisis in both the strategy of memorialization and a particular moment within Afrikaner nationalism. In 2001, part of the Monument was unilaterally relocated to the white-separatist settlement of Orania by a grouping of white right-wingers in order to save it from demolition. Against the background of the 2015 #RhodesMustFall protests by black students in South Africa directed against the public symbols of previous regimes, this paper argues the Irish Brigade Memorial was the product of a strategic alignment between Irish settler nationalism and Afrikaner nationalism in response to the success of the international campaign to isolate the apartheid regime in the 1970s. The subsequent history of the Monument, and its relocation to Orania in 2001, reflects the changing balance of forces within Afrikaner politics and the emergence of a modernist separatist tendency within that politics.
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This paper argues that the phenomenon of fraudulent '419' emails throws light on the negative eff... more This paper argues that the phenomenon of fraudulent '419' emails throws light on the negative effects of digital media in Africa. Through an analysis of the genealogy and structure of the emails showing that these emails are a remediation of a much older form of fraud but within a digital African context, the paper asserts that the '419' emails must be understood within the specific social and historical context of Nigeria in the beginning of the 21 st Century.
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Papers by Christo Doherty
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English in Africa, Oct 5, 2015
This paper examines the recent appearance of several ‘anti-heroic’ memoirs of the South African ‘... more This paper examines the recent appearance of several ‘anti-heroic’ memoirs of the South African ‘Border War’ written by conscripts. The use of the medical diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in these writings is critically examined. The memoirs reveal how difficult it is to articulate memories of contemporary war without drawing on a medical explanation. The South African memoirs also demonstrate the ambiguous role that the diagnosis of PTSD plays in, on the one hand, enabling the authors to speak about their experiences, while, on the other, providing an opportunity for them to distance themselves from the ethical implications of their own involvement in the war. The paper concludes that the tension within the identity of victim-perpetrator is perhaps too easily collapsed into simple victimhood.
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Critical Arts, Sep 1, 1981
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Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Sep 9, 2020
The shifting relationship between physical monuments and the public memory that they seek to cons... more The shifting relationship between physical monuments and the public memory that they seek to construct is explored through a photographic and textual examination of the social and political forces behind the construction and subsequent relocation of the Irish Brigade Monument in South Africa. Unveiled in 1975 in Johannesburg, the monument celebrated the memory of the Irish Brigade: “physical force” Irish nationalists who fought on the side of the Boers against the British in the South African War (1899–1902) in what has been celebrated as an early act of anti-imperialist solidarity. The design of the monument and its location on the west of Johannesburg represents a crisis in both the strategy of memorialization and a particular moment within Afrikaner nationalism. In 2001 part of the monument was unilaterally relocated to the white-separatist settlement of Orania by a grouping of white right-wingers in order to save it from demolition. Against the background of the 2015 #RhodesMustFall protests by black students in South Africa directed against the public symbols of previous regimes, this essay argues the Irish Brigade Memorial was the product of a strategic alignment between Irish settler nationalism and Afrikaner nationalism in response to the success of the international campaign to isolate the apartheid regime in the 1970s. The subsequent history of the monument, and its relocation to Orania in 2001, reflects the changing balance of forces within Afrikaner politics and the emergence of a modernist separatist tendency within that politics.
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This thesis is part of a creative arts PhD which explores the possibilities of constructed images... more This thesis is part of a creative arts PhD which explores the possibilities of constructed images and the memory of the South African Border War. It was presented together with an exhibition of constructed photographic images entitled BOS. In the thesis I argue that the memory of the war, an event now almost three decades past, continues to be problematic. I also argue that photographs are themselves complex and constructed objects that do not provide a simple truth about either history or memory. Photographs can supplement or support memories but they are always to be viewed with suspicion. In Chapter One I explore the limitations imposed on the speech of conscripts, both during the conflict and in the years following the conclusion of hostilities. In Chapter Two I examine the recent appearance of several ‘anti-‐ heroic’ memoirs of the conflict written by conscripts. The use of the medical diagnosis of post-‐traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) in these writings is critically examined. Chapter Three focuses on a development in the ideas of the two most influential figures in the field of Anglophone photographic theory, Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. I argue that their initial hostility to the photographic image on ethical/political grounds has been replaced by a more nuanced engagement with the power of the image. I then examine the views of two contemporary writers on photography, both deeply involved with the analysis of traumatic images: Ariella Azoulay and Susie Linfield. In Chapter Four, I engage with the artistic practice of the American photographer, David Levinthal, an important reference point for this project because of his photographic work with miniatures and toys and his place within what I describe as ‘critical postmodernism’. In Chapter Five, I examine the themes of silence and censorship as these pertain to the photography of the Border War using Susan Sontag’s notion of the “ecology of images”. I analyze the types of images which have been produced from the war, looking at the “limited photojournalism” of John Liebenberg and the role of iconic images in the propaganda war. Finally, in Chapter Six, I present an account of the process of creating the work for the BOS exhibition in which I employed a combination of strategies involving appropriation, miniaturization, and re-‐staging
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Leonardo, Jul 29, 2021
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Leonardo, Jul 29, 2021
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Journal for Contemporary History, Dec 15, 2016
All wars have an afterlife, in which the meaning of the war is contested long after the shooting ... more All wars have an afterlife, in which the meaning of the war is contested long after the shooting has stopped. As the recent controversies over the display of the Confederate Flag in the United States of America (USA) demonstrate (Diamond and Scott 2015), the memories of civil wars are particularly fraught, the issues still raw after more than a century and a half. Although South Africa’s “Border War” was fought in neighbouring Namibia, and was primarily a conflict over the control of that territory, it had many of the characteristics of a civil war but also, when it spilled into neighbouring Angola, was a particularly toxic regional conflict. Nearly thirty years have elapsed since the end of the war, but its particular afterlife continues.
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TURBA: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation, 2022
In 2021, after a year’s hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual My Body My Space public a... more In 2021, after a year’s hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual My Body My Space public arts festival in South Africa, was relaunched in a radically different online form. Under the lockdown conditions of 2021, the festival was presented exclusively through the WhatsApp messaging application, running on a “behavioral chat platform” originally developed for public health text messaging. The experience of launching the festival into this new medium led to several unexpected insights, notably the specific affordances and limitations of the chosen online platform, an expanded understanding of the “interactivity” possible with online communications, and the digital empowerment that the process offered to practitioners who were mentored through the process of online translation. At a theoretical level, the experience of My Body My Space as an online festival also challenges the dichotomy between the relative status of performance and documentation in live arts.
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South African Historical Journal, 2017
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Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Jul 1, 2020
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Conference Presentations by Christo Doherty
The focus is on the mechanisms of collaboration that have both evolved and been purposefully put in place, for a trans-disciplinary education structure to be successfully run. These exist between subject divisions in the School of Arts; and further between the Faculty of Humanities (in which the Digital Arts Division is housed) and the Faculty of Engineering, at the University of the Witwatersrand. We address historical collaborations and how these allowed for further developments across disciplines. Through a process of unpacking and presenting, we explore the errors and identify those aspects that we feel are still missing. These include a focus on concepts that have been passed over due to issues around course structure and discipline ownership. We conclude with a look to the future, to opportunities to develop uniquely African digital arts practice.
Drafts by Christo Doherty
Papers by Christo Doherty
The focus is on the mechanisms of collaboration that have both evolved and been purposefully put in place, for a trans-disciplinary education structure to be successfully run. These exist between subject divisions in the School of Arts; and further between the Faculty of Humanities (in which the Digital Arts Division is housed) and the Faculty of Engineering, at the University of the Witwatersrand. We address historical collaborations and how these allowed for further developments across disciplines. Through a process of unpacking and presenting, we explore the errors and identify those aspects that we feel are still missing. These include a focus on concepts that have been passed over due to issues around course structure and discipline ownership. We conclude with a look to the future, to opportunities to develop uniquely African digital arts practice.