MissionStatement

Aims

The core of the project is an imaginative engagement with the realities and challenges of living in urban and township environments, working with the specific context, skills and creative resources of people living in the different areas. This project intends to tap into diverse South African DIY articulations and materials, impacts and dynamics, drawing on research, exchange of techniques and expertise in a process of creative interaction and production, as well as facilitating and documenting dialogues around related issues, such as living conditions and health, the African metropolis and urban regeneration.
This is a multidisciplinairy art/architecture/design project. For this purpose we have selected Dutch and South African artists with experience in the field. We intend to build a temporary, functioning, mobile village in collaboration with the selected artists and 'existing community structures', initiatives and craftspeople from New Crossroads. The artists are analists, intermediates, translators, designers and builders, working out of their own discipline, workmethod and experience. Not ego is asked, but artistic quality, engagement and the ability to translate the information and emotions of the residents towards a shape/design that leaves room for collaboration or additions. A shape/design that invites and activates the residents. Not a solid, perfectly planned, but rather a dynamic shape. A shape that can be hooked on to, a carrier or a framework. We want residents not to be mere spectators, but participants at some level as well.
We are not going to offer solutions to key needs in the community, but rather a collective proces, without hierarchy, stimulating cross-disciplinary collaboration. The platform of our mobile village can put a spotlight on relevant issues for New Crossroads, be an inspiration to residents and offer a different approach/technique to adress issues from the known township cultural expressions.
The project will involve the participation of a wide range of parties. On the one hand, inner city and township residents will be involved as both participants and audiences, and the project will be set up in strategic locations so as to draw large numbers of the latter group. On the other hand, the project will also engage professionals, managers and activists involved with housing and urban development issues, located both inside and outside of city administrations. The project will also be aimed at raising awareness of urban development and housing issues among a broader public, drawn in through extensive publicity in the local press and media.
The scope and nature of ‘Cascoland’ will change from location to location. In each city it will have its own set of activities, participating local artists and crafters and supporting programme. In Cape Town the project will be developed with Public Eye - the laboratory will be set up at the arts community centre in the New Cross Roads township in conjunction with the Mandlovu Development Institute. The presentation will be liaised with the Cape Town Festival.in March 2006. The Johannesburg component is being co-managed by the Joubert Park Project. In Durban the Dutch team will be working with two artists on developing the project, Greg Streak and Doung Anwar Jahangeer.
The intention is to compile the documentation on this project in form of a publication that will capture and reflect the ideals and conceptual intentions of the exhibition/installation. It will, essentially, outlive the project as a representative, informative and insightful catalogue about the collaboration between artists in the Netherlands and South Africa. The publication will combine conceptual text and image to evoke the qualities of the project and capture the feelings of the communities that it will impact. The publication will offer an ideal vantage point from which funders will gain exposure and association with the project.

Activities

Research into DIY-architecture, creating exchanges, documentation, interactions and developing audiences across a wide board

Creating an innovative, imaginative and mobile ‘village’

Integrating artistic and spatial disciplines like architecture, design, sculpture, theater and film

Creative collaboration between Dutch and South African artists and self-trained craftspeople

Generating viable dialogues and contacts/networks between different sectors with a view to addressing urban development and housing issues through an arts/cultural/creative prism

Involving local creative and technical skills and talents as integral part of the project

Developing a publication to document the entire process of research, conceptualization, construction and presentation.

Support of South African initiatives, collectives and organizations and contributing to the cultural development/agency (e.g. audience development, sustaining programmes, promoting artists)