Having found myself stumbling upon more amazing blogs from local and African curators I decided to do another chapter in Tumblr blogs to follow piece. There is so much content being made online so it’s understandable that one may feel overwhelmed by internationally made and curated content. Yet, online readers are now no longer just…
Photographs have become indispensable to our nightlife: there’s no party unless it’s pictured. Amid the lazer beams, and tri-coloured stage lights, is the cacophony of tiny camera-phone flashes, setting off about the crowd. Snapping images is part of what it means to share, enjoy and curate our after-dark experiences. A night on the town clusters…
Youth, drink and beauty are the currency of late nights the world over. But with all this some people still seem to be having more fun than everyone else. In his first solo show SA born Robert Lang offers a visual legacy into Camden in the early to mid noughties; in the time of beautiful,…
One thing you don’t necessarily expect to see in Braamfontein are the streets shut down by thousands of kids having a rowdy, but fun, moshpit. Or what looks like a scene from a Nirvana music video being sound-tracked by Kayne West and Desiigner. But that’s exactly the positive energy that the Onyx collective have been…
Conceptions of the masculine form are in a constant state of flux. Unathi Mkonto captures a redefined kaleidoscopic facet in his strikingly subtle images. Boys of South Africa emerged in January last year out of a desire to document the overlapping social and physical spheres around him. “I don’t believe masculinity can be strictly defined….
Artlifers are a collective of passionate young creatives from Johannesburg whose interests connect art, politics, society, music and fashion. They first came together while at university, realising that their mutual interests could be better advanced as a crew. Their initial efforts focused on producing streetwear which won them international exposure on a Yahoo feature about …
Who is Emma Tollman? The reason you should be taking notice of this Johannesburg based artist and entrepreneur are due to her big plans for the often misunderstood and inaccessible genre of performance art. Her work, she explains, is located in the “avant-garde and hyper visual arts”. She explores the “deep metaphorical states such as…
Bogosi Sekhukhuni consolidates millennial media technology and inherited cultural practices – creating complex modes of identity in the digital age. Although geographically located in Johannesburg, the web of his reach extends far beyond the metropole. “I was raised to understand myself as an African first, and secondly as a South African. My grandmother is from…
One cannot separate the business from the man. Though many would argue the separation of business and pleasure ought to also apply to the divorce of the Political from the business. The BrownSense Group is such a group injecting the political back into business. Its Facebook page describes the group as being “about promoting, rating and…
In the 1990s, South Africa experienced the subcultural supernova of Kwaito. Fuelled by post-1994 optimism, and inspired by international hip hop, dancehall and house, local artists created a thriving underground of music, dance and fashion, spread through cassette tapes and taxi sound systems. In almost no time at all, this became the mainstream with the…
Staccato stabs erupt between creviced creases of the mountainous form. Backlit by blue skies, institutional columns stem forth. Symmetrical colonial stone is foregrounded by five womxn. The iconic campus of tertiary education was the site of recent student protests – a rupturing ripple that will resist all forms of erasure. The figures stand armed, in…
Johannesburg has a dark past of violence and exploitation, and even to this day is often presented as an urban dystopia. But the flip side of this is a long history of creativity, resistance, style and flair. In 2016, the city is keeping this legacy alive with exciting and overlapping developments in music, poetry, literature…
