New Media in South Africa

Hey there,

this is my first posting on rhizome…

I'm an American expat artist/teacher in Cape Town. i arrived a few months ago (i lived in this amazing city before, couldnt stay away…), and just started work at city varsity, a local media arts college. its very exciting…there place is just buzzing, everyone running around in every direction, all sorts of changes and new ideas…

I've been assigned the task of creating the school's foundatioins program for first years, and researching/exploring for the school's grounding educational philosophy, looking at new design possibilities for organizing the structures of its various interlaced communities/departments. theres a general agreement that there's potential for some interesting things to happen…

i'm looking for anyone and everyone who can dialog with me about this process…i'm looking in every direction: from materials science (for structural systems), to institutional design, media studies and arts programs all over the place, people doing work on arts and media education development in the context of post-apartheid south africa…and so on…

the thread that i have in my head today is some kind of systematic use of how south africa's experience now parallels global trends. South Africa's historical/contemporary shift from segregation and violent social design to integration and conscious social transformation is progressing at the same time as global culture's drive toward further integration reaches ever-louder crescendos…

theres another important point, which i have made before…that all of the terms that seem to characterise our lives today and the terms we use to describe/theorise the mediascapes of global culture (intertextuality, multimediation, appropriation/sampling, performative call-and-response modes of expression, etc.)….these are the same principles that have animated african artistic thinking and creativity from antiquity…long before anyone thought of being post-anything.

i wonder what media objects will look like when their multiple expressive technologies have been remixed by the first post-authoritarian generations of artists???

what would an intermedia arts college look like if it were to respond not only to the global stimuli of hypertechnology, media-saturation, hyper-technology, etc, but also to the specifics of the south african context–also in motion from radical segregation to radical integration…

what shape? what structure? its primarily an image media school, but keep going back to sonic/audio rather than physical or visual metaphors…i.e. the school/community sets down a rhythm, the teachers and learners improvise rhythms and harmonies in collaboration within that original track.

I have not come up with any specific models…but i'm trying to get people talking about it wherever i go…

im really interested to hear what anyone has to say.

cheers,
kevin