Live Art Network Africa (LANA) will be launched at the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA), University of Cape Town at an event comprising a symposium, performances and screenings from Thursday 30 November to Sunday 3 December 2017 at the UCT Hiddingh Campus.
LANA will be a platform for connecting artists and academics practicing and researching in the interdisciplinary, disruptive field of live art.
- Live art is a specific form of performance practice that transcends boundaries of visual and performance art categories.
The Symposium will feature addresses, panel discussions and papers around some of the salient issues of live art. Seminal performances and screenings will punctuate the proceedings. The programme will also include sessions for delegates to come together in a more formal capacity and form a network that will take forward ideas around: platforms for ‘staging’ live art; the theorising and critique of live art (publications and conferences); education (workshops, laboratories and curriculum development); and dissemination of live art (exhibitions, documentation, recordings).
LANA Programme
The programme features nationally and internationally acclaimed curators and artists, as well as prominent academics who straddle the fields of art and academia.
Emerging voices in performance art research and criticism, include: Panaibra Canda (Mozambique), Nora Chipaumire (Zimbabwe/USA), Christian Etongo (Cameroon), Jelili Atiku (Nigeria), N’Goné Fall (Senegal), Andrew Mulenga and Mwenya Kabwe (Zambia/South Africa), Bernard Akoi-Jackson (Ghana), Syowia Kyambi (Kenya), Massa Lemu (Malawi), Andrew Hennlich (USA), and from South Africa, Nomusa Makhubu, Sarah Nuttall, Dee Mohoto, Gabrielle Goliath, Nondumiso Msimanga, Bettina Malcomess, Katlego Disemelo, Alan Parker, Khwezi Gule, Same Mdluli and Catherine Boulle. Performances will include works by Nora Chipaumire, Khanyisile Mbongwa, Dean Hutton, Mamela Nyamza, Chuma Sopotela and Jackie Manyaapelo.
The three and a half days of the LANA Symposium will be divided into conference sessions, open to the public, where local and international speakers will present papers, as well as the networking sessions where invited delegates will discuss the vision for the Live Art Network, and how this can be taken forward.
The ICA envisages this LANA Symposium as the establishment of the Network and the first of many such symposiums (festivals, exhibitions, etc.), to be hosted by other institutes and in other African countries, in the future.
Further confirmations will be made in the coming weeks. So watch this space!
WHERE: Institute for Creative Arts (ICA), University of Cape Town, Hiddingh Hall, 31 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town 8001
PHOTO: Jelili Atiku at the ICA 2017 Live Art Festival. Photographer: Ashley Walters
