This essay, exploring how a classic 18th century gothic novel shines some light on modern-day South Africa is
in response to the competition’s prompt: How do art and social justice influence each other?
art
Winner: Hear our Voices competition
Welcome to Mo’s is a creative essay in response to the competition’s prompt: How do art and social justice influence each other?
Hear our voices!
Calling on young South Africans to share their ideas in the Thought Leader Ukuzibuza writing contest
The story as a creative psychological quest
To combat anxiety in a disrupted, pandemic-riddled world, it’s better to channel creativity into storytelling, art and design than into conspiracy theories
Celebrating art 250 years after Hegel’s birth
Why a German philosopher’s thoughts on art and the idea have proved to be of great historical significance
The age of the image is here
The digital age widens who is able to co-construct history and reconstruct South Africa
Art and mind: Healing arts in public health spaces
By Dr Thirusha Naidu Creativity, like mental illness, is mysterious to most. It is an inexplicable yet distinctly human attribute. Historically, creatives have been admired, revered, feared, ostracised and persecuted. From the genius of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter, Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, to ingenious hackers or clever moms who conjure […]
Popular art and the homogenisation of viewing subjects globally
The global hype around the HBO television series, Game of Thrones (GoT), which ended with what was apparently generally perceived by fans as an anticlimax of sorts, made me reflect once again on the pertinence of the intellectual work of that indomitable French thinker, Bernard Stiegler, for grasping the way that contemporary electronic technology is […]
Should one question technology’s drive for dominance?
In a sense, the titular question, above, is redundant. Technology is, after all, already dominant — a claim that hardly needs to be substantiated with evidence; it is there for everyone to perceive on a daily basis. Not that the objects of ‘perception’ are self-evident in any straightforward way. In social reality a good deal […]
Notre Dame, spirituality and technology
The recent devastating fire that nearly destroyed the more than 800 year-old Parisian Gothic cathedral, Notre Dame, has put something important in perspective. One could not but notice that the shock caused by this event was not restricted to Paris, or even France, which one might have expected. Understandably, Parisians have always loved this architectural […]
‘Searching for an Electric Peanut (part II)’: Jonathan Silverman’s liminal art
Liminality is a strange phenomenon: The Encarta dictionary online defines it as ‘belonging to the point of conscious awareness below which something cannot be experienced or felt’, which is only one of the ways the term is used, but nevertheless gives a good idea of what is involved when you call something ‘liminal’. The point […]
‘Pictures at an Exhibition:’ Mussorgsky, painting and Virilio’s ‘grey ecology’
In my previous post, I pondered the work of Paul Virilio on the ‘accelerated’ lives we lead in the early 21st century, and tried to explain what this has to do with the never-ending stream of images bombarding one on a daily basis. What I did not have space to do, was to draw attention […]