On Wednesday, 23 October 2024 at 17:30 for 18:00 SAST, Professor Pather will deliver his lecture titled “Shifting spaces, tilting time: art and art education in a Society that aches for transformation”. The lecture will be held in Hiddingh Hall, at Hiddingh campus.

How do artists take on the complexities of political and economic transformation? Without indulging in easy representation of the abject, how do artists grapple with the depths, expanse and nuance of emotion in a society that is so slow to transform?  Further, how do artists work with the site of the artwork, ensuring that the colonial inheritance of exclusivity and access to art are troubled and dismantled? In this lecture, Professor Pather explores these questions – drawing from his performance research, speaking to how this work considers the velocity of change as well as in many instances, inertia and stasis and its manifestation in performance for multiple publics.

Professor Pather also addresses art education in the academy as needing to be courageous, transgressive, interdisciplinary, collaborative and generative and not simply obedient to narrow disciplinary silos, a meticulously preserved inheritance from the colonial, insular conservatoire.

Professor Pather is a curator, choreographer and an academic. He is a professor at UCT, where he directs the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA). He curates Infecting the City and the ICA Live Art Festivals in Cape Town and Afrovibes in several cities in the Netherlands. He has co-curated for the French Season Africa 2020/21 and Spier Light Art, Stellenbosch. His choreographic work includes re-imagining Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. Recently, he directed Nadia Davids’ What Remains and Hold Still. His publications include articles in Changing Metropolis, Rogue Urbanism, Performing Cities, Where Strangers Meet, and a book he edited titled Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa. He has served as juror for the International Award for Public Art, as board member of the National Arts Festival of South Africa, on the TURN Fonds Jury and was recently made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

Date: Wednesday, 23 October 2024
Venue: Hiddingh Hall, Hiddingh Campus, University of Cape Town, Gardens
Time: 17:30 for 18:00 SAST

Register to attend