In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Dr Ralph Borland, an independent artist-researcher and curator based in Cape Town. Ralph has a degree in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town, a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. His PhD was a critique of first world design interventions in the developing world. His subsequent post-doctoral work at UCT focused on the African city and North-South knowledge inequalities. He has continue ..read more

In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty speaks to Professor Nathaniel Stern, an artist, writer and teacher who holds a 50/50 dual appointment at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a Professor in Art and Design and Mechanical Engineering where “He teaches artists how to engineer, engineers how to art, and everyone how to sustain their work with entrepreneurial thinking.” Nathaniel’s most recent art project, a travelling exhibition, called The World After US: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures, is a fascinating and constantly mutating physical melange of botany and discarded electronics that c ..read more

In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty speaks to Professor Bruce Barton the Director of the University of Calgary’s School of Creative and Performing Arts, and the Co-Artistic Director (with Pil Hansen) of Vertical City, an interdisciplinary performance hub they co-founded in Toronto in 2007. Bruce is a teacher and theorist of artistic research and is also a top creative practitioner. He has extensive experience as a director, playwright, dramaturg, and designer with numerous intermedial performance companies across Canada and internationally. In addition he has published widely ..read more

In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Prof Tanja Sakota, an artistic researcher, writer, and filmmaker in the Department of Film & Television in the Wits School of Arts. Tanja is the author of an important new book, just published by Wits University Press, called Uncovering Memory: Filming in South Africa, Germany, Poland, and Bosnia/Herzegovina. Tanja has had more than 20 years of experience in the academic teaching of film and television, and Uncovering Memory is her first book publication. I’ve been looking forward to talking ..read more

In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Doris Bloom, a multidisciplinary South African artist who has been based in Denmark since 1976. She currently has a major exhibition called Bird Bone Whistler at the Origins Centre Museum in Johannesburg. Doris was born on a farm outside Vereeniging and her deep imaginative engagement with the African landscape has powerfully informed her work over the last 46 years. She began her career by studying ceramics at the Johannesburg College of Art and then a Masters in contemporary art at the Royal ..read more

In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks to Dr Sela Adjei, a multidisciplinary artist, researcher and curator from Ghana and a leading proponent of a distinctly African approach to artistic research. Sela has degrees in communication design and African art and culture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and received his PhD in African studies from the University of Ghana, Legon. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Media, Arts and Communication in Ghana. He has participated in over 20 exhibitions and cu ..read more

In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Jayne Batzofin, the digital archivist on the Reimagining Tragedy from African and the Global South (RETAGS) project. This performance-as-research project is being led by Prof. Mark Fleishman with Mandla Mbothwe in the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at University of Cape Town. The project seeks to create space for an extended interrogation of the vast body of tragic works produced in the theatres of Africa, using performance methodologies as analytical tools to gain purchase on the complex realities of the colonial afterm ..read more

In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Prof David Andrew, from the Department of Fine Arts in the Wits School of Arts. We focus on the relationship between arts pedagogies and artistic research looking at his background as an arts teacher, the formative influence of his education in both South Africa and Swaziland during apartheid, the way that he has sought to bring the concept of the artist’s sensibility into both arts education and research, and his own work as a researcher and supervisor of postgraduate artistic research. David has served both as Head of the Fine Arts Dep ..read more

In this concluding podcast of the Mellon funding cycle, the ARA podcast's technical producer (and journalist) Elna Schutz hosts a discussion with the key members of the ARA project about what was achieved, what was learnt, and what opportunities were missed during the 5 + 1 years of the Mellon grant. Prof Brett Pyper, the ARA principle investigator; Zanele Madiba, the project co-ordinator; and Prof Christo Doherty, the project director open up about the project which sought to develop artistic research in the Wits School of Arts and to advance the understanding of what this approach can mean i ..read more

In this dialogue Prof Christo Doherty of ARA speaks to Leora Farber Associate Professor and Director of the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg . Under Leora’s leadership the Centre has become a vibrant hub where an international community of visiting professors, research associates, and postdoctoral fellows have conducted interdisciplinary research over the last fifteen years around the theme of African and African diasporic histories and identities; with visual practice and questions of representation ..read more