How can we think of participation, attachments, membership, and commitment to equitable artistic practices under restricted movement and collapsing economic infrastructures?
A multi-purpose studio, research group, and peer-to-peer platform to support collaborative contemporary arts practice, born-digital works through the sharing of tools, resources, skills and knowledge amongst members. The studio promotes co-responsibility for the thriving of creative arts in Johannesburg’s art industry, amongst individual artists, collectives, galleries, art schools, and other non-profit organisations. The online studio draws upon existing independent studios space such as DGI Studios and Bag Factory Artists’ Studios in Johannesburg, and leverages existing networks to facilitate new connections. Collaboration amongst members for participation on the platform is incentivised in the form of tokens for each action or exchange. Members vote annually on the status and shaping of the studio and its publishing platform. The functioning of the studio relies on hospitality and respect for different positions and ideas.
Bhavisha Panchia is a curator and researcher of visual and audio culture, currently based in Johannesburg. Her works engage with artistic and cultural practices under shifting global conditions, focusing on anti/postcolonial discourses, imperial histories and networks of production and circulation of (digital) media.
Chad Cordeiro is an artist and printmaker currently based in Johannesburg. Together with Nathaniel Sheppard and Sbongiseni Khulu, Cordeiro co-founded Danger Gevaar Ingozi Studio in 2016. DGI Studio is a co-operative space for artistic research and collaboration, with a focus of print-based media. Cordeiro is currently focused on processes of working with archived or collected material as a response to multiple, interconnected narratives that are embedded in archives or collections.
Carly Whitaker is an independent artist, curator, researcher and lecturer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a MA in Digital Interactive. She has participated in numerous exhibitions at art spaces in Johannesburg, Freiburg, Casablanca, Miami and Sao Paulo. Her curatorial projects include Floating Reverie, an online digital residency programme, which has been running for over five years and Blue Ocean an online digital project space. Through her practice she engages in a constant exploration of how we communicate through media and the ways we use technology to create dialogues, form connections between ourselves and the digital space.
