See Studio

The See Studio is a series of exchanges, expert presentations, tours and team work taking place virtually and in Cape Town from 1 to 30 November 2022. Ten experts from Africa and the Netherlands, representing a range of creative disciplines, will each be allocated a theme and a partner, and will work together virtually and on site in Cape Town.

The participants will exchange ideas, debate, and develop methodologies with the long-term goal of bringing about representational equity in the public life of cities shadowed by colonialism. The See Studio, led by Zahira Asmal and produced by The City, will conclude with a public programme where work created during the studio will be shared at locations selected by the participants and facilitated by The City team.

Urbanist Zahira Asmal says: “The See Studio brings people together from various geographical, cultural and creative backgrounds that have a connection to Cape Town’s past and present in order to fashion representative, inclusive places. I provided a brief, themes and guidance, and the outcomes will be revealed on 26 and 27 of November with the public programme.”

Zahira says Cape Town has been selected as the location of the See Studio as it is a global port city, a hub for both the voluntary and forced migration of people. While its citizens reflect multiple, diverse histories, Cape Town has largely been modelled as an assimilated version of Europe and is not equally inclusive of all its cultures.

“Cape Town was founded on public policy grounded on exclusion, initially through colonialism and later by apartheid, and lacks representation as a democratic city. It’s time for us to acknowledge and explore our pasts truthfully and meaningfully if we are to make Cape Town the city we wish her to be, for all.”

The See Studio is supported by the Creative Industries Fund and DutchCulture, in partnership with Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Research Centre for Material Culture. The Studio forms part of an ongoing transnational project, See, created by Zahira and produced by her agency The City, in collaboration with individuals and institutions interested in history, memory, and placemaking.

THEMES AND PARTICIPANTS

The See Studio participants will explore five broad themes, with the intention of making Cape Town more representative and inclusive:

1. Taming the Wild: (DE)colonial Imprints in Cape Town’s Natural World.
2. Invisible hybridity: A journey into Music, Language, and Literature of the Cape.
3. The rituals of remembering:  Intergenerational healing in forgotten histories.
4. Architectures of Resistance: Encountering justice through memory.
5. How to belong here? Ways of making home in Cape Town

These themes have been identified by Zahira, drawing on her research in both South Africa and internationally. The participants will present the outcomes in a public forum as part of the See Festival. The work will also be presented in the I See You website. Read more about the five themes and the participants who will explore them:

Theme 1: Taming the Wild: (DE)colonial Imprints in Cape Town’s Natural World.

The iconic reflection of Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town, surrounded by breath-taking mountains and beaches, is a well-known image of the city. This theme seeks to uncover the knowledges embedded within the ecological environment of Cape Town, providing spaces to explore the possible rituals or practices that unearth or access this knowledge. Some of these embedded knowledges have been subjected to historical forms of erasure and exclusion.

The erasure of significant spiritual landmarks, in particular, has re-emerged with the recent private sale of memorial grounds to multinational corporations and property developers. The continued imposition and benefit of consumer-driven institutions over these rooted rituals and practices of communities have become a common characteristic of the City of Cape Town: Detached bureaucracies that assume instead of engaging, and dictate instead of communicating with community stakeholders, what they envision for particular spaces. Examples of communities’ resistance to protect their land from the clutches of private development have been the Princess Vlei wetland system and the intersection of the Liesbeek and Black Rivers. These sacred grounds have been subjected to direct corporate threat.

The modelling of Cape Town as an assimilated version of Europe has created visible trauma on the landscape. From the forced removals in District Six (amidst the many other dislocations) to the imposition of the alien Port Jackson trees on the dunes of the Cape Flats, these have destroyed both the social cohesion of communities and the indigenous fynbos of the local floral kingdom.

The disruption and “taming of the wild” has been a common characteristic of the city, imposing control on nature. This theme further explores the environment for insights into recreational and physical activities prior to colonial settlement.

What are some moments of archival significance present within nature? The Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and the Company’s Garden in the city centre are both locations drenched in colonial history, rife with examples of attempting to control the environment. What are some ways in which self-organised collaboratives emerge, redesigning space through community gardens and parks?  This theme provides participants with creative spaces to not only imagine these encounters and how colonial settlement disrupted relations with nature, but their retaliation to this as well.

Kawthar Jeewa

Kawthar is an architect, a feminist, and an ecological activist. Her Master’s thesis in Architecture focused on creating activist spaces on a social level and accountability on industrial levels, with a concentration on regenerating ecology by countering waste production. An islander from Mauritius, Kawthar is acutely aware of the sacredness of nature and the repercussions of colonialism and climatic changes in social spaces. Kawthar is currently a PhD candidate at Nelson Mandela University, investigating the socio-ecological integration of creole architecture in Mauritius. This includes studying the processes of creolisation and the protection of architectural artefacts from enslaved and indentured people. This research is exciting because it proposes a decolonial approach to studying creole architecture.

Links to Kawthar’s work: Facebook |Instagram | Nelson Mandela University – Architecture

Sara Frikech

Sara Frikech is an architect and a doctoral fellow in the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS) at ETH Zurich. Her dissertation focuses on hydraulic infrastructures implemented in the region of Meknès, Morocco during the French protectorate. Her research has appeared in conferences and publications including the European Architectural History Network, Trialog Journal, and San Rocco Magazine.

Sara’s research-based art projects, which comprise sculpture, objects and print, stem from a deep interest in understanding the many layers of our hybrid realities. She has exhibited her work at Le18 (Marrakech), Salone del Mobile (Milan), and 2016 Marrakech Biennale. Her academic and artistic work has been supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL and a research fellowship from Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Links to Sara’s work: Instagram | Frikech.com

Theme 2: Invisible hybridity: A Journey into Music, Language, and Literature of the Cape.

The unique soundscape of Cape Town is displayed through multiple manifestations of particular forms of music, language, oral traditions, and poetic expressions. The diverse linguistic composition of Afrikaans, for example, is firmly embedded within the historiography of Cape Town. It creates a contemporary atlas that provides insights into Cape Town as a site for cultural hybridity and intermixing. As a language, Afrikaans can be viewed as an archival artefact that documents this creative hybridity, linguistic and cultural intermixing, thus showcasing the transnational influence and inspiration across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Cape Town, as a global port city, houses this process of cross-cultural collaboration.

Afrikaans has been culpable within the South African historical imagination as a transgressor and culprit for apartheid, with a particular style of white nationalism affiliated with the language. However, when looking into the genealogy of Afrikaans, the transcontinental influences and rootedness of the language can be highlighted. The genesis of the language has a strong connection to Arabic and its phonetic expression. This theme seeks to explore the multiple spoken variants that Afrikaans carries, unearthing its diversity and geographic adaptability. This theme will provide a portal into understanding this language through the contemporary as well as the historical. Engaging landmarks such as the noticeable Taal (Language) Monument in Paarl will afford participants a space to excavate the duality of this language’s history.

Furthermore, the sonic compilation of jazz in Cape Town carries a historiographical significance, evident to listeners who engage with the textures of this particular genre. Similarly, the poetics and oral traditions embedded within this locality have a significant cadence through which it moves. This theme seeks to uncover and explore the mechanisms within these soundscapes which afford them this unique composition. Why would the Cape be a site for such significant sonic intermixing is the point of departure for this theme.

Uzair Ben Ebrahim

Cape Town-based Uzair Ben Ebrahim is an educator, linguist, facilitator, social justice advocate, decolonialist, performance poet and writer. Uzair has been exploring their fascination with language and identity for the last decade and a half. Having studied both Arabic and Hebrew, they are interested in how language constructs identity and informs the ideas of belonging. With their identity a by-product of colonisation, and being of Malay and Indian descent, Uzair is attempting to explore the materiality of Asian ancestry and experience in a post-colonial South African context, asking “who are we to belong here?” To do this, Uzair is currently interested in deconstructing the historical position of Arabic-Afrikaans and, if reconstructed for the present, how this language (tongue) could potentially recreate a people.

Links to Uzair’s work: Facebook | Instagram | Die Kind – Ingrid Jonker – Arabic-Afrikaans | My Lidah

Judith Westerveld

Judith Westerveld studied Fine Art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, followed by a Master’s in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam. In her films, audio-visual installations, photocollages and performance-based work, she researches the relation between the archive, the voice and the narrative, probing who is heard and seen, remembered, and historicised in a postcolonial world. Language in spoken, written and embodied form, as well as memory, oral history and archival material are recurring elements that shape her work. She aims to address and reflect upon the multiple ways the colonial past continues to impact the present. Judith lives and works in Amsterdam and is represented by gallery Lumen Travo. Her films form part of the collections of LIMA and ARGOS.

Links to Judith’s work: Facebook | Instagram | Vimeo | Judithwesterveld.nl

Theme 3: The rituals of remembering:  Intergenerational healing in forgotten histories.

The city consists of unseen moments that texture the experience of people and their navigation of this place. Cape Town, with its distinct histories embedded within the multiple experiences of the city, still impacts the movements and flows of people who have survived generations of colonialism and apartheid’s racial policies of exclusion and forced removal. Through trying to make these histories of exclusion and shame palatable, historical erasure of experience has taken place. This theme uncovers the nature of these contemporary representations, where participants will critically engage in the manifestations of the historicisation process.

Furthermore, there are rituals and practices that have been passed down from generation to generation. This theme seeks to create a space of remembrance and practice where rituals and intergenerational moments of knowledge-sharing occur, thus excavating. Memory is intertwined in every corner of Cape Town, with different historical experiences presenting themselves to people with different histories of experience within this space. This embedded memory is reawakened and can be felt when walking through spaces that are charged with the energy of the past. From Gallows Hill, Prestwich Memorial and Albertus Street with the District Six Museum (amongst other locations), the city carries spaces that are rife with trauma created under colonial impact. However, colonial impact could not infiltrate and erase everything which it tried to adapt or change.

Expanding on the experiences which have been left undocumented within the historical recollections of the city, this theme explores the attempts by various stakeholders to sidestep restitution and create alternative narratives. This theme further seeks to articulate intergenerational moments of healing that have filtered down beyond this sidestepping of history. What are those untouched memorialised moments within the city which have transcended colonialism? How were these memories central in affording people, who were previously subjected to marginalisation and other atrocities of colonialism, avenues to identify this trauma and create means of healing? What are the unseen ceremonies of remembering which have contributed to safeguarding individuals who have been subjected to extreme forms of marginalisation and displacement?

Nancy Jouwe

Nancy is a cultural historian, lecturer, researcher, public speaker and writer. She teaches courses on gender, race, sexuality, and visual and popular culture and is a fellow (2022-25) at the University of the Arts, Utrecht. She was the project leader of public history project Mapping Slavery, which maps the Dutch history of slavery in The Netherlands and its former colonies. Nancy has co-edited several publications on the Dutch history of slavery and colonial afterlives, including commissioned research and publications on the city’s history of slavery in Amsterdam and Utrecht. Her publications include: Gendered empire. Intersectional perspective on Dutch post/colonial narratives (Verloren, 2020), and Revisualising Slavery. Visual sources on slavery in the Indonesian Archipelago & Indian Ocean (LM Publishers, 2021).

Links to Nancy’s work: Twitter | Instagram | nancyjouwe.com

Janine Overmeyer

Janine Overmeyer, co-founder of Blaq Pearl Foundation, holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and Linguistics from the University of the Western Cape. She began writing poetry and songs at the age of twelve, with her musical genre being a fusion of Afro, soul, hip hop, jazz and R&B. She is proudly vocal about social issues and is actively involved in programmes for youth development. Janine has been a cast member in two award-winning musical theatre productions, Afrikaaps and A Plekkie in die Son. In 2015, she released her first self-published book, Karadaaa!!!, a collection of poetry, stories and songs written in both English and Afrikaans. In 2016, she completed writing the musical production Krotoa Van Vandag. Her latest production is a one-woman show titled Storie van My Lewe.

Links to Janine’s work: Facebook | Instagram | I Am Woman | Mandela Monday Hero

Theme 4: Architectures of Resistance: Encountering justice through memory.

The colonial project and settlement were met with stark forms of resistance, especially within the spatial makeup of certain spaces in the City. For example, the circle of kramats in Cape Town, shrines which honour holy persons in Islam, represent an anti-colonial legacy of land ownership and Cape Town’s Islamic community’s attempts to resist the historical erasure of important figures within the city’s Islamic history. The pacification of these popular historical recollections, in response to this, has been evident through the omission of important milestones on the historical timeline. These histories directly connect to the Indian Ocean’s forced and willing migration of people and the anti-colonial messages that travelled with them. The legacies of anti-colonial resistances are connected with different locations around the city. Robben Island is another geographical landmark connected to the resistance of colonial settlement and imprisoning of any anti-colonial leaders who rebelled against the imposed status quo. The prison is famous for the incarceration of Nelson Mandela but, as the exploration of this theme will illustrate, the position of Robben Island as an isolation facility is reoccurring through history.

This theme allows a space for the architecture of resistance to be reviewed and reflected on, allowing insights into places where these architectures celebrate and articulate messages that remember local populations, formerly forcefully removed. This theme will further highlight the immense organisation and involvement of counter-colonial movements.

The tangibility of justice has been a constant attempt within the recent historiography of South Africa. The theoretical development of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hoped to usher in a space and moment for South Africans subjected to grotesque crimes and violence under apartheid. However, the practicality of this Commission has received a large amount of criticism, sparking the question whether the TRC provided a cathartic moment for those subjected to apartheid state-sanctioned violence.  This theme seeks to uncover the practicalities of justice, providing a space for participants to understand what this could manifest as. What have been the shortcomings of engineering restitutive justice and are there ways to address this? There have been encounters of resistance from the historical which manifest in the contemporary. This theme makes space to uncover them.

Mitchell Esajas

Mitchell Esajas, a Dutch anthropologist, is co-founder of New Urban Collective, a network for students and young professionals from diverse backgrounds with a focus on the Surinamese, Caribbean and African diaspora. Mitchell studied Business Studies and Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In 2016 he co-founded The Black Archives in Amsterdam, a cultural centre based on a collection of books, documents and artefacts documenting the histories of Surinamese and Black people in the Dutch context. The Black Archives develops exhibitions and public programmes based on the collections and urgent societal issues.

Links to Mitchell’s work: Instagram Facebook – Mitchell | Instagram Facebook – The Black Archives | Exhibition Facing Blackness | Exhibition Documenta 15

Theme 5: How to belong here? Ways of making home in Cape Town

The historical design and makeup of Cape Town has been mirrored from a Europeanised imagination, which attempted to implement Eurocentric logic onto African environments. This included expelling local populations from the heart of the city at a particular time, banishing them to the townships located on the outskirts to occupy a distant periphery. This logic is an apartheid hangover that continues in a post-apartheid South Africa. It impacts the considerations of home for people who have historically been subjected to these forms of marginalisation. They are not able to settle due to the imposition of colonialism and apartheid’s segregative spatial policies. In a city such as Cape Town, with a compromised public transport system and large amount of time spent travelling to and from these peripheral areas, the question remains: how do people make home and place within a city such as Cape Town? What are some of the markers of home for people? Most importantly, how has the African continent’s presence existed within a city that often attempts to forget its locality as an African city? How do people access spaces which have been historically distanced from them, sidestepping the access to amenities and resources, which is often policed? The perpetuation of colonially devised mechanisms of admission to amenities and resources has created a peripheral innovation. Creating alternatives out of necessity is part of this ability to re-create a home.

This theme further explores practical examples of place/home-making within the city. What are some of these examples that display resilience through home, in a city that is grounded on exclusion, and engrained in public policy? How are people from across the African continent (and other parts of the world) creating home through activating familiar customs and traditions? What are examples of these forms of resilience and what creative means have contributed to safeguarding these customs within a space such as Cape Town? With strong traces of Afrophobia and other forms of nationalist rhetoric constantly re-emerging, this theme also explores the difficulty that accompanies the idea of making home within such a space as Cape Town. What are the practical, emotional, and other difficulties experienced when trying to engage with official immigration laws? Thus, this theme will explore/elicit the mechanisms for building home in a colonial city such as Cape Town.

Zamindlela Solwazi Mkhwanazi

Zamindlela is a housing practitioner, cultural enthusiast, social entrepreneur, artisan tea maker, and community builder who pursued a three-year Bachelor of Social Science and Human Settlements at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Zamindlela is employed by the Housing Development Agency in Cape Town, providing extensive technical support in land and property identification and acquisition. He also leads project planning and packaging for the development of human settlements and facilitates activities for the successful completion of housing projects. His passion for community development has led to work on various national housing projects that aim to address the imbalances of the past and the present. Both his interests and work are invested in transformation and creating sustainable communities.

Links to Zamindlela’s work: Artisan Teamaker | Culinary Taste Experience | Conversation of black love in communities

Afeefa Omar

Afeefa Omar, an East African poet and spoken word artist living in Cape Town, is currently pursuing a BA degree in psychology at the University of the Western Cape. Much of her writing is born from navigating physical and metaphorical borders between people, through exploring themes such as emotional censorship and ideas surrounding belonging, otherness and identity. She began sharing her work in 2017 and was awarded second place in the Cape Town poetry slam and first place in the Western Cape Current State Of Poetry slam. She is passionate about using poetry to challenge the boundaries imposed on narrative and to reclaim the lost voice. She is part of the C.Y.P.H.E.R youth programme under the Lingua Franca Spoken Word Movement.

Links to Afeefa’s work: Misplaced Prayers | On Silence