Centre for the Less Good Idea Shares Lineup for Season 4

The Centre for the Less Good Idea is excited to announce outstanding collaborative and interdisciplinary work in SEASON 4 scheduled to take place between 16 and 21 October 2018. SEASON 4 is curated by Jane Taylor along side founder William Kentridge and animateur Bronwyn Lace and brings together 20 practitioners in the form of visual artists, architects, choreographer dancers, theatre practitioners, writers, composers and pianists.

SEASON 4 includes installations and performances by Walid Raad,William Kentridge, Billy Langa, Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, Mitchikazu Matsune,Terry Norton,Tony Miyambo, Jill Richards, Kyle Shepard, Ilze Wolff, Gerard Marx, Shane Cooper, Jessica Nupen,Thulani Chauke, Fana Tshabalala,Themba Mbuli and Mamela Nyamza taking place in 3 venues at Arts on Main,The Maboneng Precinct.

How does art influence the way we engage with information? What shape would an academic conference take if its participants were made to present their research and ideas through the mediums of art and performance? Season 4 of The Centre of the Less Good Idea, curated by writer, academic, and theatre-maker Jane Taylor who currently holds the Andrew W Mellon Chair in Aesthetic Theory at the CHR at UWC, explores these ideas through the form of a 'Collapsed Conference.'

With participating artists specialising in the areas of dance, visual art, music, research, performance and more, Season 4 will offer its audiences audio-visual road trips through a car-wreckage-turned- musical-instrument, and it will make lecture halls out of dance floors. Meditations on history and our varying interpretations of it will be explored through the keys of a piano, the movements of a puppet, and the fragmented and free-flowing imagery of overhead projections.

Lectures will take the forms of nonsensical operas, and embodied and geographical histories will be confined to the spoken word.What results is something of a circus of information and interpretation, refined and distilled through the collaborative and improvised performances of some of the country's leading artists and intellectuals.

"This Season takes something of its forms and contents from the conventions arising out of the standard Conference ---There is some suggestion that the performances are engaging with one another, while each work is striving to be unique, stretching the limits of its own form" says Jane Taylor.

"Some of the performances actually engage with the practices of the lecture, though none of the lectures are entirely governed or disciplined.There will be an artist's lecture by Walid Raad, the Lebanese/New York performance artist/videographer, and ironic archivist; there is an exemplification of performance in the voice and the body by the 'theatre duo' Billy Lange and Mahlatsi Mokgonyana(Salt); there is a lecture/performance ( Pan Troglodyte) on Primate research, Artificial Intelligence, puppetry and race theory by Jane Taylor,Tony Miyambo and Terry Norton

There is also an endeavour to prompt particular media to interact, and to comment on one another. So, for example, there is a showcase program of piano performance.The two immensely gifted pianists, Kyle Shepherd and Jill Richards, while each is esteemed within their own sphere, are unlikely to have ever performed in a shared program, because one (Richards) generally plays the repertoire of western work (broadly defined, often rather inadequately described as 'classical) while the other is a renowned Jazz pianist.We are delighted to have them perform together (at times on the same piano); because of what we learn about both traditions from the dialogues between them. It is also a joy to watch their engagement with one another's practices. Music of various kinds is a key part of the Season.There is a performance of William Kentridge's staging of Schwitters' Ursonata, which is a combination of spoken word, chants, and vocal virtuosity; and there is extraordinary (and unique) musical improvisation on two car doors, modified into string instruments by artist Gerhard Marx.The performers are celebrated musicians Shane Cooper and Kyle Shepherd, who improvise startling sounds out of the installation conceived and made by Marx, with a spoken word element written and spoken by Toast Coetzer.This work provides us with an affective lesson in multi-media work.The work is up as an installation during the full days of the weekend and there will be two staged performances of the piece, Vehicle, that will draw together spoken word, strings, and installation.

Dance and its variety is explored in various performances: Mamela Nyamza's thrilling style is exemplified in her recent work, Black Privilege. Choreographer Jessica Nupen's Don't Trust the Border, was first workshopped at the Centre, it has since been performed in Germany and travels home with a troop of German dancers joining Jessica Nupen,Thulani Chauke and Themba Mbuli in an iteration for the season. Again, the dialogue implicit across the dance work sets up an enquiry into the relationship between form and content".

Over 14 live events make up the full Season. Make sure you get to the Centre for the Less Good Idea from 16 - 21 October to catch these events.

Full program & bookings at : https://lessgoodidea.com/tickets/

All ticketed events are R 100. Booking is essential

Bookings : www.lessgoodidea.com

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