For further information about ArtTalk 50/30 at the National Arts Festival please go here
The ArtTalk 50/30 series explores the deep existential questions humanity faces with key thinkers, artists and healers. This multi-disciplinary ritual seeks to cleanse and heal the land, and humans, by invoking the ancestors through story-telling, song, dance, film and indigenous ritual.
South Africa’s modern history is haunted by the land question. Cycles of violent dispossession of land, from colonial times onwards, has caused communities to be partitioned from ancestral graves, their indigenous knowledge systems and practices, the natural environment and a connection to a sense of self. The enclosure of land, to the exclusion of black people and for the benefit of extractive colonialism and capitalism, has also instigated intergenerational patterns of forced migrant labour, physical and psychological trauma and spiritual disorientation.
This erasure of people and their histories from the land has not been reconciled within post-apartheid South Africa. The land restitution process is glacial in pace and ill-equipped to deal with what is not returned when land eventually is – ensuring people remain bereft.
In recognition of this “haunting”, and the debilitating and transgenerational nature of the violence South Africans have experienced, ArtTalk 50/30 gathers story-tellers, musicians, an indigenous local farmer and a survivor of the Marikana massacre, amongst others, for a trans-disciplinary cleansing ritual which seeks, through film, song, dance and story-telling, to extend the dialogue to the non-human environment: the land, the ancestors, the soil, plants and animals. The intention is to heal ourselves and the land while exploring future imaginaries.
Production Credits
Curators: Rucera Seethal and Niren Tolsi
Production Assistant: Shenka Naidoo
Sound Installations: MadeYouLook
Films: Simon Gush
Mantras: Siyabonga Mthembu
Additional Production: Xolile X Madinda
About the Artists
Litha Booi (Spiritual Guide) is a Traditional healer, Ancestral Medicine practitioner, Shamanic practitioner and qualified NLP coach dedicated to empowering people to live a more holistic life and reach their full potential. Having dedicated his life to learning and personal development, he has trained under a number of organisations and spiritual mentors, learning various methods of healing through yoga, meditation, discovering life’s purpose and psycho-phonetics. With his gifts he offers ancestral healing sessions, spiritual retreats, conscious business coaching and accountability partnerships.
He is co-founder of Ancient Wisdom Africa – a platform that facilitates connections between traditional healers and ritualists for the purposes of personal, societal and Earth healing. His practice is guided by the Southern African concept of Ubuntu, which speaks to the interrelatedness of Earth, humans and the spirits. Through the Ancient Wisdom Foundation, he is involved in collaborative projects with other organisations and communities related to the protection and promotion of Indigenous Knowledge Systems.
Mrs Lungiswa Madinda-Mago (Elder) resides in Makhanda, on a small farm close to the town of Salem. She was born on Lindale Farm, owned by Mr Henry Amm. Her forefathers were born, raised and buried there, making the place her first home. Growing up was exciting for her as a youngster, because every school holiday they would go to the fields and start planting as a family. This is where she got her skills for planting, making it her passion. Unfortunately, she and her siblings couldn’t finish school due to hardships that occurred. She then had to take care of her parents when they moved to Castle Farm. Her passion for farming grew stronger along with her siblings and taking care of livestock remains one of the things she has enjoyed since her early years.
Xolile ‘X’ Madinda is a Hip Hop artist, arts activist and founder and CEO of The Black Power Station in Makhanda, South Africa. He is a firm believer in the African philosophy of Ubuntu building a community of creatives ngentsebinziswano yobunye. His practice is rooted in the re-imagining and re-archiving of African creative works to educate, liberate and empower the self and communities.
Molemo Moiloa lives and works in Johannesburg, and has worked in various capacities at the intersection of creative practice and community organising. She currently works on notions of ungovernability, social infrastructures of cultural organising, and relationships to nature. She is one half of the artist collaborative MADEYOULOOK, who explore everyday popular imaginaries and their modalities for knowledge production. She also co-leads the Open Restitution Africa project, an Africa-focused research platform for restitution of African heritage under the auspices of Andani.Africa. She also co-leads the ungovernable, an experiment in communitary practice and ungovernability.
Siyabonga Mthembu
Simon Gush is an artist, filmmaker and researcher with the Society Work and Politics institute (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His research explores the relationship between waged and unwaged work, land, migration, home and belonging. He has held a number of solo shows with Stevenson including How to fix a lift, (with Bridget Kenny), (2022); The Busiest Airline in Africa, (2021), Welcome to Frontier Country, (2019) and Work (2013). Other solos include S.G., 59 Joubert Street, Johannesburg, Sala10, MuAC, Mexico City (2020) and Al final del trabajo, Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City (2018). He has exhibited in a number of biennales including Biennale: für aktuelle Fotografie, Ludwigshafen (2017); Dakar (2016); and Bamako (2015/17). Group shows include: Every leaf is an eye, Göteborgs Konsthall (2019); African Mētrópolis. An Imaginary city, Maxxi, Rome (2018), Recent Histories, The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm (2017) and Afriques Capitales, La Villette, Paris (2017). His films have been screened in numerous museums and film festivals.