Date/Time
Date(s) - Wed - 08 Jun
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Categories
Dear friends of the UFC,
The Urban Futures Centre (DUT) is pleased to invite you to its 15th seminar of the year! Join us for a presentation entitled “Inter-Sections”, delivered by photographer Peter McKenzie.
PRESENTER: Peter McKenzie
TOPIC: “Inter-Sections”
DATE: Wednesday, 8 June 2016
TIME: 12H00-13H30
VENUE: Steve Biko Campus – DUT, S2 Block, Level 1, BS2103. Entrance Gate 1 & 2. 79 Steve Biko Road
ABSTRACT – “Inter-sections”
“African cities are characterized by increasingly flexible, mobile and provisional intersections of residents that operate without clearly delineated notions of how the city is to be inhabited and used. These intersections, particularly in the last two decades, have depended on the ability of residents to engage complex combinations of objects, spaces, persons, and practices.”
– AbdouMaliq Simone (2012) Afropolis. City Media Art
Following AbdouMaliq Simone’s insightful observations, Durban could be interpreted as a narrative where past and present are blurred, where the apartheid borders of the inner city are today spaces of in-betweeness, rich in possibility. The unpredictability of the urban spatial character, and its fast shifting dynamics, point to a restlessness that in Durban is tempered by musty climes, shaped by the finiteness of the ocean as frontier. The city periphery – like tides, voyaging, still, to the centre, transgressing phases of inherited urbanity – intersects the impossible. Subliminal nodes the relics of the past: enter the wary Warwick, across the healing bridge to seedy Casbah, down new Dadoo to Pixley, straight on to makwera Kinshasha, the arse end of the Golden Mile. These intersections could be interpreted as recalcitrant spirits, having an obstinately uncooperative attitude toward authority or discipline, here seen as a departure from the modernity of colonialism. This versus the ‘order’ sought by apartheid’s austerity. The restless city could be construed as a continual revolution, redefining rules against the backdrop of an alien metropolis.
BIOGRAPHY
Peter McKenzie has recently co-founded the Durban Center for Photography (DCP). The DCP hosts regular workshops, photography student projects and exhibitions. He has recently exhibited on the ‘Rise and Fall of Apartheid’ at the International Center for Photography in 2013, and three shows in France during the French/SA seasons. He was an artist and co-curator of the recent ‘Homing’ exhibition at the KZNSA. He has lectured at Durban University of Technology, Tswane University of Technology, the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism and the Market Photo Workshop, and facilitated photography workshops internationally. McKenzie has exhibited extensively internationally and his writings on photography published widely. His present pre-occupation in Durban is the re-imaging of urban space and a study of the history of African photography.
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We look forward to seeing you at the seminar!