South African Visual Arts Historians
(SAVAH)

24th Annual Conference of the South African Association of Visual Arts
Historians

"Past the Last Post: The Posts in (South) Africa"
4-6 September 2008

This topic invites a critical consideration of the relevance,
appropriateness, and viability of the "posts" in the study of (South)
African visual culture. Post-nationalism, post-colonialism,
postmodernism, post-apartheid, post-humanism, post-black, post-feminism
are just some of the "posts" that are used in contemporary discourse
around visual culture. Do these terms contribute towards a nuanced
interpretation of the (South)African cultural sphere?

Conference Venue: Visual Arts Building, Victoria Street

DAY 1: Thursday 4 September
Venue: Visual Arts Lecture Theatre
16:00 - 18:00 Registration
18:00 - 19:00 welcome - Sandra Klopper, Vice-Dean (Arts), Stellenbosch
University
Keynote address ? Rasheed Araeen: Return to the Source: Art History as
an Indicator of the Future
19:00 Opening of Spit art exhibition, Fine Arts Studio, Visual Arts
building with finger supper and wine.
20:00 Continuation of keynote address.

DAY 2: Friday 5 September
08:00 - 09:00 Registration, tea/coffee

09:00 - 11:00 PARALLEL SESSIONS:

SESSION 1a: Body and Embodiment
Venue: Visual Arts Lecture Theatre
Chair: Karen von Veh
Bettina Malcomess: Embodiment, no body at the limits of semiotics?
Emma Taggart: Locating Experience: An analysis of Nandipha Mntambo's
solo
exhibition Ingabisa
Annette Blum: The Body and Em-Bodiment in contemporary South African
visual culture: representation of body and self in Body Maps as visual
narrative and "social memory"
Tavish McIntosh: The [Hair]itage of contemporary South African art.
Annabelle Wienand: Visual approaches to HIV literacy in South Africa.

SESSION 1b: Past and Post in Black and White
Venue: Art History Seminar Room
Chair: Mario Pissarra
Nomusa Makhubu: A "Pre-Black" Perspective in Post-Black Performance and
Video Art.
Jillian Carman: Is it too early for "White is Beautiful"?
Ivana Abreu: Deploying "blackness", a strategic approach to
transformation in the visual arts in South Africa.
Christine Eyene: Blackness in adversarial aesthetics.
Deirdre Pretorius: Visual representation and race in the printed
propaganda of the Communist Party of South Africa.

11:00 - 11:20 Tea/Coffee

11:20 - 13:20: PARALLEL SESSIONS:

SESSION 2a: Visual Media: Technologies, theories and analysis
Venue: Visual Arts Lecture Theatre
Chair: Jeanne van Eeden
Nasan Pather and Andrew Lamprecht: New Discursive Strategies within a
Wired World: The state of blogging about African art.
Landi Raubenheimer: We are all Zombies: Intuitive interactivity and
passive immersion in screen media.
Roline Bosch: Dollywood or Bollywood: The sexual objectification of
women
in popular Hindi cinema through the use of visual representation.
Frikkie Potgieter: Post-humanist advertising: Theorising sameness and
difference in South African television advertisements.

SESSION 2b: Postcoloniality in Nature and Art
Venue: Art History Seminar Room
Chair: Brenda Schmahmann
Sonja Britz: The representation of "Post-modern Animals" in
Post-colonial
Zoos within the context of a Post-human society.
Mark Haywood: Post-nature/Post-wilderness: semio(p)tics of animal
display
in South Africa
Aanwen Bates: Hedging History in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.
Ruth Simbao: Aftermath: Victor Mulutekesha and Contemporary Zambian Art
in the Wake of Diaspora and the Transnational African Avant Garde? Kurt
Campbell: The "Visualogue" of Postcoloniality in Contemporary South
African Art".

13:20 - 14:20 Lunch

14:20 - 16:20: PARALLEL SESSIONS:

SESSION 3a: Miscellaneous Artists, Miscellaneous posts
Venue: Visual Arts Lecture Theatre
Chair: Ruth Simbao
Karen von Veh: Wim Botha‘s use of "Post-Christian" imagery to
investigate an "ontology of the present".
Brenda Schmahmann and John Walters: Against the Colonialist Picturesque:
Christine Dixie‘s Bloodspoor
Elizabeth Rankin: Post-Apartheid revelations in Diane Victor‘s Disasters
of Peace.
Maureen de Jager: Sans Story: The Landscape (Post)-Narrative in Brent
Meistre?s Sans: A Stranger Who Came With a Book in the Crook of His Arm.
Juliet Leeb-du Toit: Repositioning the work of Helen Sebidi from a post-
feminist psychoanalytical perspective

SESSION 3b: Communities, markets and visual culture
Venue: Art History Seminar Room
Chair: Sandra klopper
Svea Josephy: Postcards from the edge: Markets for Photography in
Contemporary South African art
Paul Cooper: Playing the Illusion: Public Sculpture at the New Irene
Village Mall.
Nadja Daenke: All Together Now: notions of interaction, participation
and the microcommunity in South African contemporary culture.
Beverley Price: Re-Appraising the preciousness of Jewellery in South
Africa
Bernadette Van Haute: African tourist art as product of the
postcolonial exotic.

17:00 - 18:30 Bus to Rupert Museum and cocktails
19:00 - 22:00 Conference Dinner at Cognito

DAY 3: Saturday 6 September
08:00 - 09:00 Registration, tea/coffee

09:00 - 11:00: PARALLEL SESSIONS

SESSION 4a: Visual Culture and Identities in South Africa
Venue: Visual Arts Lecture Theatre
Chair: Federico Freschi
Scott Stirling: Global trends in African Hip-Hop: Robin Rhode, Mustafa
Maluka and Kudzanai Chiurai
Ernst van der Wal: Preconceived/postponed identities: narrating carnival
and Cape Town in contemporary South Africa.
Andy Mason: From Cannibals and Monsters to Scorpions and Showerheads:
Discursive shifts in the representation of alterity in South African
comic art, as seen from a post-Polokwane perspective.
Hannelie Marx: South African popular visual culture and the construction
of the rainbow nation. A critical reading of four South African soap
operas.
Leandra Koenig-Visagie: A Postcolonial Reading of Front Covers of Vrye
Weekblad.

SESSION 4b: African Art: theoretical frameworks
Venue: Art History Seminar Room
Chair: Lize van Robbroeck
Mario Pissarra: Decolonizing art in Africa: a ?post-apartheid?
perspective
Azeez Ademola: Post-Colonial Cultural Legacy and its influence on Art
Teaching and Learning in Nigerian (African) Schools.
Royce Smith: Post-Biennale: Rethinking Africanness in the Age of the
Contemporary Mega-Exhibition.
Gavin Younge: Making ugly/preserving self: Makonde and the Cape slave
trade

11:00 - 11:30 Tea/Coffee

11:30 - 13:00 SAVAH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Venue: Visual arts Lecture Theatre

13:00 - 13:45 Lunch

13:45 - 15:45: PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 5a: Photography, Memory, Time
Venue: Visual Arts Lecture Theatre
Chair: Svea Jospehy
Gerhard Schoeman: Filtered images: Confronting ethnographic
theatricality
and quasi-forensic foresight in Pieter Hugo‘s Messina/Musina
Michael Godby: ?hanges in the View of the City in Fifty Years of David
Goldblatt‘s Photography.
Annemi Conradi: That‘s so last century: Ethnography, fieldwork and
writing history in a time of "posts".

SESSION 5b: Heritage, Museums, Memorials
Venue: Art History Seminar Room
Chair: Jillian Carman
Sarah Lowe: "New" memorials in the "new" South Africa: how a
postcolonial, post-apartheid nation chooses to remember.
Gavin Younge and Wilma Cruise: "Satan‘s Seat": The Cape Town Slave
Memorial as postcolonial context
Marelize van Zyl: Reorganizing Museum Culture: Considering the Social
and
Cultural Value of Art Museums in South Africa
Sabine Marschall: Public Art as Heritage: Revisiting postmodern
discourses of representation and gender in public monuments dedicated to
women.

16:00 Bus trip to Waterford for wine and chocolate tasting

DAY 4: Sunday 7 September
(no registration or charge)

9:00 - 16:00 Wikipedia Marathon
Venue: Computer Lab.

10:00 - 11:00 South African Cartooning Post-Polokwane, Andy Mason
interviews Zapiro.

14:00 - 15:00 Andrew Lampbrecht and Nasan Pather interview Robert Sloon