13-14 September, WiSER

Poetry Reading and Words on Water: Southern African Literatures and the Oceans

10-21 September, Spirit World Room, Origins Centre

Synanthrope Series II: Hyena. Sculptures, reclaimed and found wood; guided walk Saturday September 15

10-21 September, NE Gallery Space, First Floor, Origins Centre

Below the Sediments. Mixed media (polymer, brushed steel), 5 panels 560 mm x 1200 mm

31 August - 9 September, Fak’ugesi Festival, Tshimologong Precinct

10-21 September, Watershed

Acid Water Resonator. Installation sculpture, digital sound

10-21 September, Foyer, Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block

O^o | 32^o. Acrylic, tracing paper

10-21 September, Central Gallery Space, First Floor, Origins Centre

Watermark. Photography, 2 sets of 8 photographs (16 photographs, each c. 420 x 594 mm)

17 September, 18:00, fem of colour | intersectional studio platform 39 Gwigwi Mwrebi Street Newtown (enter from side alley off Quinn Street, between Carr and Gwigwi Mwrebi)

Paradise Fallen. Photographic, paper-based, video, and performative work

10-21 September, Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block

Metsi ago koropa. Clay sculpture

10-21 September, SW Gallery Space, First Floor, Origins Centre

Mi Niño, Your Dry Spell, Their Waterfall. Sculpture and photography installation

11 September, from Yale Road to Chamber of Mines Atrium

Against the Shed. Performance

10-21 September, Anthropology Musuem, Robert Sobukwe Block

Waterpas (spirit level). Mixed media

10-21 September, Anthropology Museum, foyer and courtyards, Robert Sobukwe Block

Drink at your own Risk.Tap, empty water bottles, yarn bomb

10-21 September, Anthropology Museum, foyer and courtyards, Robert Sobukwe Block

H2Woe-Mati. Acrylic paint

Wednesday 12 September (16:00) and Sunday 16 September (12:00)

Tracing the Spruit. Performance/walk

Duration: Approx. 2 hours (1 hour of walking to the view point + 1 hour of performance at the view point)                                                                                                       

Starting Point : The Hyatt Rosebank – Tourist Bus stop

Main Performance activation location: Cnr. Hilson St and Pretoria St.Orchards-Waverly Spruit

After the Performance participants may walk back to the Hyatt with Myer, or arrange their own transport (such as Uber) as there is no public transport at the final location.

Please note:

• Participants must bring their own water and sun protection
• Make sure to wear comfortable clothes and shoes
• The artist will not be speaking during most of the performance so printed instructions will be handed out to participants for both performances
• The artist will not be responsible for the safety and security of any participants or their belongings
• Everyone is to walk in complete silence until the first view point
• No cell phones are allowed.

10-21 September, Africa’s Creative Explosion Alcove, Ground Floor, Origins Centre

Sourcing the Stream. Video installation and original sound, text and voice.

Tracing the Spruit (Southern Performance Research Under Interesting Themes) Performance : 16:00

As part of an ongoing performance project on an embodied ecological investigation into the counter urban narratives of the city and wate, join performance artist and playwright Myer Taub walking the spruit in Waverly and Melrose.

Workshop: Digital Ethnography and Environmental Crisis

09:00-12:00 Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block

Facilitators: Thomas Pringle, Brown and Christo Doherty, WSOA

How can digitally networked devices help visualize and broadcast regional crises? Does the documentary visibility gained by digitally networked devices work to reproduce structural inequalities driving the problems?

Bookings are essential as places are limited. Please email christo.doherty@wits.ac.za to reserve a place, and to receive copies of reading material and access to a vimeo.

Flash Lectures and Presentations

12:00-14:00 Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block

Chair: David Andrew

• 12:00  Melinda Barnard, Anthropology, Wits, From Sun Powered to Submerged: Finding the Energy to Power a Solar Airport once again

• 12:10  Adelaide Chagopa, Law, Wits, From Nine-to-One: A Single Catchment Management Agency for Sustainable and Equitable Use of Water Resource

• 12:20  Corey Glackin-Coley, Wits Humanities and Fordham University, NY, Livelihoods and Opinions of Communities who will be Displaced or Impacted by the Polihali Dam

• 12:30  Claudia Campisano, Anthropology, Wits, Water in Morocco

• 12:40  Gill Black and Jessica Drewett, Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, CT, Bucketloads of Health, video (Xhosa, English subtitles, 13:17); Q & A.

Guided DigiMine Tour

14:30 Basement 2, Chamber of Mines Atrium

How Johannesburg and Gauteng can Avoid a “Day Zero” Experience

15.00-17.00 Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry, Seminar Room, Engineering

Chair: Mike Muller, Wits School of Governance

Participants:

• Mike Muller, Wits School of Governance: Where Gauteng’s Water Comes from and the Challenges of Keeping it Flowing
• Ronnie McKenzie, International Water Association and WRP Engineers: The Science of Predicting the Unpredictable and Managing Uncertainty
• Gillian Maree, Gauteng City-Region Observatory: Gauteng’s Water Challenge in a Larger Context
• Khulukelile Mase, Gauteng Provincial Government: An Action Plan for Gauteng’s water Security

The speakers will outline the challenges of achieving water security in the city and province, and discuss how they can be addressed and what the people of the province can do to help avoid the dramatic water restrictions as experienced in Cape Town.

Poetry Reading, Q&A and Reception

17:00-19:00 WiSER, 6^thFloor, Richard Ward Building

Chair: Isabel Hofmeyr

Poetry:  Yvette Christiansë (USA), Professor of Africana Studies and English Literature, Barnard College, New York

Yvette Christiansëis a South African-born poetand novelist. She lives in New York Cityand teaches at Barnard College. Christiansë's published work generally deals with South Africa, and contains post-colonial themes such as slavery and displacement.^[ She is the author of a novel Unconfessed (2006) and poetry collections Castaway (1999)and Imprendehora (2009).

Symposium: Words on Water: Southern African Literatures and the Oceans 

10:00-12:30  WiSER Seminar Room, Richard Ward Building Level 6

• Chairperson: Brett Pyper
• Yvette Christiansë, Barnard College, New York
• Charne Lavery and Sarah Nuttall, WiSERand Isabel Hofmeyr, African Literature and WiSER

Yvette Christiansë will talk about her work on slave registers. This will be followed by a discussion with Charne Lavery, Sarah Nuttall and Isabel Hofmeyr.

Guided DigiMine Tour

13:30 Basement 2, Chamber of Mines Atrium

Panel and Roundtable: Under the Surface: 140 years on

14:00-16.30    Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry, Seminar Room, Engineering Building

• Chairperson:Keith Breckenridge (WiSER)
• Atul Bhalla (Shiv Nadar University, Delhi), Nancy Coulson (CSMI), Mark Lewis (Johannesburg), Marcus Neustetter (Johannesburg), Robert Thornton (Wits Anthropology), Deon Terblanche (Consultant: Weather, Climate and Environmental Services) and Coleen Vogel (Global Change Institute).

Mining has dominated Johannesburg’s history, as Atul Bhalla and Mark Lewis have documented. How has the management of land and its resources changed in the 21^stcentury?  What challenges do we face?

Watershed Walkabout

10:00-12:00, 5 km, approx. 2 hours.

Artist Hannelie Coetzee will lead a walk from the Origins Centre, following the continental watershed running through Johannesburg to the site where the Juskei daylights in Bez Valley. The walk will end at the Water for the Future Collective office at Victoria Yards.

Participants should bring hats, comfortable walking shoes and water. The walkabout can be booked at hannelie@hanneliecoetzee.com at R100 per person.

Tracing the Spruit (Southern Performance Research Under Interesting Themes) Performance : 12:00

Aspart of an ongoing performance project on an embodied ecological investigation into the counter urban narratives of the city and wate, join performance artist and playwright Myer Taubwalking the spruit in Waverly and Melrose.

18:00-19:00     Fem of colour | intersectional studio platform, 39 Gwigwi Mwrebi Street Newtown (enter from side alley off Quinn Street)

Zen Marie, Paradise Fallen. Private viewing of Zen Marie’s work at this new gallery.

Symposium Decolonizing Water

10:15-12.00 Exhibition Area, First Floor, Origins Centre

• Chairperson: Bina Venkataraman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Thabo Lusithi, EMG (Environmental Monitoring Group)
• Aja Marneweck, University of Western Cape
• Patrick Bond, Wits School of Governance

What does it mean to decolonize the narratives of water, the science disciplines that structure what we know and by what means, and the role of people in the everyday management, governance and stewardship of water?

Symposium Territorial Waters, Politics and Regional Commons

13:00-14:40: Exhibition Area, First Floor, Origins Centre

• Chair: Lenore Manderson, Wits School of Public Health and Institute at Brown for Environment and Society
• Clive Vinti,  University of the Free State, Bloemfontein
• Mucha Musemwa, History, Wits                                                             
• Mary Galvin, University of Johannesburg

Globally, regionally and locally, water is at the same time a commons, a public resource and often a privatised resource. Populations are suppressed and nation states controlled through water management and its abuse; economies are built on its sale or diversion. Panelists draw on their experience as researchers and civil activists to examine water politics and the implications of this for Lesotho, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and their neighbours.

Symposium Action on Water: Climate Justice and People’s Charters

15.00-17.00 Exhibition Area, First Floor, Origins Centre

• Chair: Tracy-Lynn Humby, Wits Law
• Vishwas Satgar, Department of International Relations, Wits
• Ferrial Adam,  University ofJohannesburg
• Bina Venkataraman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Jonathan Klaaren, WiSER

If water is a commons, what does it mean when access varies? How do we address the social inequalities that distort access to water? And how do climate change, drought, and water regulations and entitlements magnify social inequality?

Book Reading and Reception: Writing on Water

17:00-18.30 Exhibition Area, First Floor, Origins Centre

Jacklyn Cock, Writing the Ancestral River

Book display: Origins Bookshop

JACKLYN COCK, Professor Emeritus at Wits. has published widely on issues relating to gender, environmental and militarisation issues.She will discuss her recent book, Writing the Ancestral River an illuminating biography of the Kowie River in the Eastern Cape. This tidal river runs through a formative meeting ground of peoples who have shaped South Africa’s history: Khoikhoi herders, Xhosa pastoralists, Dutch trekboers and British settlers. The latter introduced a new form of accumulation “settler capitalism,” which commodified both land and labour with devastating consequences for the Xhosa.

Walkthrough: Meeting with the Artists

2:30pm - 6:30pm  Fem of colour | intersectional studio platform, 39 Gwigwi Mwrebi Street Newtown (enter from side alley off Quinn Street)

Zen Marie will engage in a discussion of his installation Paradise Fallen.

Paradise Fallen is a cycle of work that includes photographic, paper-based, performative and video components. The work was initiated in 2016 on a residency at Cité des Arts on Île de la Réunion, and continued while working through the residency and academic programs at the RAW Material Company on the peninsula city of Dakar, Senegal in 2017 and 2018.  Paradise Fallen explores conceptual and geographic ambiguities of islands, as they offer much imaginative potential for dreams, desires, fantasies, fears and anxieties to be rehearsed through them.  The work plays with narratives that float on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans as personal, emotive, historical and political registers that are courted, teased and provoked. 

This will be the third iteration of the work, and is a collaboration with ideas, politics and people at fem of colour. 

Symposium: Water Futures, Digital Imaginations

10.00-12.30 IBM Conference Room, Tshimologong Precinct

• Chair: Craig Sheridan
• Tapiwa Chiwewe, IBM Research Africa, Big Data and Analytics for Water Sustainability in an Urban Planet
• Henry Roman, Department of Science and Technology, Changing Climate, Water Security and Data: Making Sense of Complex Futures
• Gillian Maree,Gauteng City-Region Observatory, Making Research Relevant and Evidence-based Policy Making: The Case of the Gauteng Water Security Plan
• Amanda Lynch, IBES, Brown,Emerging Pathways in Water Governance in the Anthropocene 

How do we bring together government and various publics to take account of climate change and water security. How does modelling future environments, use of big data anddigitally generated visuals provide policy makers with models of the future

Talk: Looking for Lost Water - Atul Bhalla

10:30-11:30 Chamber of Mines Building on West Campus, University of the Witwatersrand

As part of the Watershed: Art, Science and Elemental Politics programme, artist Atula Bhalla will give a talk on his work Looking for Lost Water (Explorations at the Cradle). The installation comprising photographs and performative photographs, video with sculptural and textual elements was created specifically for theWatershed: Art, Science and Elemental Politics programme in the Chamber of Mines Building on West Campus, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Atul Bhalla is Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Design and Performing Arts at Shiv Nadar University, Delhi, India. He is a conceptual artist whose work has been exhibited widely including in the United States; the Pompidou Centre, Paris; Valencia, Spain; London, United Kingdom and in India. In 2012 he was a fellow of the NIROX Foundation and began exploring in particular illegal mining and water sources around the city of Johannesburg.

Roundtable on Watershed: Reflectionson the Arts-Sciences Engagement at Watershed

1:30-3.30 Tshimologong Precinct

• Chair: Christo Doherty
• Panel: Amanda Lynch (Brown), Atul Bhalla (Shiv Nadar), Lenore Manderson (Wits and Brown), Amber Abrams (Kent), David Andrews (WSOA) and Craig Sheridan (CIWARD)

The curation of the Watershed Conference  deliberately brought together art works, in the form of installations, sculptures, photographs, video, and performative interventions, with scientific and activist discourses.  In this concluding panel, a group of participants including artists and scientists  from the conference will reflect on the implications of these engagements, including in furthering of Arts-Science collaborations in an African context.

Walkthrough: Meeting with the Artists

10am  - 4pm    Fem of colour | intersectional studio platform, 39 Gwigwi Mwrebi Street Newtown (enter from side alley off Quinn Street)

Zen Marie will engage in a discussion of his installation Paradise Fallen.

Paradise Fallen is a cycle of work that includes photographic, paper-based, performative and video components. The work was initiated in 2016 on a residency at Cité des Arts on Île de la Réunion, and continued while working through the residency and academic programs at the RAW Material Company on the peninsula city of Dakar, Senegal in 2017 and 2018.  Paradise Fallen explores conceptual and geographic ambiguities of islands, as they offer much imaginative potential for dreams, desires, fantasies, fears and anxieties to be rehearsed through them.  The work plays with narratives that float on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans as personal, emotive, historical and political registers that are courted, teased and provoked. 

This will be the third iteration of the work, and is a collaboration with ideas, politics and people at fem of colour.