OpenLab2.0 Featured in the Design Indaba Magazine

pro:phile is a virtual, online entity, that was created as a facebook profile, which now suddenly finds itself displaced into a human body.

Contemporary psychology often ponders on the on the effects of virtual immersion on the human psyche, especially in terms of identity construction. In this multimedia performance, however, the artist investigates the results of removing a virtual entity and transporting it into a material reality.

pro:phile is the creation of Francois Jonker, a young Pretoria-based artist. Within this multimedia performance Jonker intertextually "hyperlinks" between themes and imagery from medievil literature, renaissance and baroque painting, Lacanian psychoanalysis as well as contemporary fashion and mass media. The work merges live performance with digital projection and sound innorder to translate pro:phile's existential crises through multiple narratives.

pro:phile will be performed live at Design Square (old brooklyn square) in Brooklyn, Pretoria. On 9,10,11 and 16th of July, of which the concluding performance will be accompanies by a discussion of the work, as well as an exhibition of documentation of the performace progress.

Admission for the performance will be free of charge, and the artist wants to encourage mall-goers to wonder into the shop-space which will be hosting the performance (above ocean basket) as if it where just another window shopping experience.

“Exploring the Moving Image”

CONCEPT
A short-film festival event that provides a platform for the exhibition of African-made student and non-professional films or videos that explore the possibilities of the moving image.

OBJECTIVE
A healthy industry is made up of a prevalent mainstream that embraces the traditional arm of that industry on the one side, and the exploratory end of the same industry, on the other side. All three expressions need to move forwards simultaneously in order for that industry to grow organically.
IMPAC’s objective is to foster the exploratory arm of the motion pictures industry in the African continent. To this end the emphasis is placed on innovation - not so much as a reliance on innovative technology, as much as the innovative use of available technology. Priority is given to the thinking that lies behind the technology.

GOALS
Our goal is to encourage a healthy interest in exploring image and sound in Africa on a common ground that is available to all – the innovative audio-visual idea!
Our hope is that this engagement will promote an awareness of the medium beyond the purely commercial and will feed towards the nurturing of a cinematic language characteristic of the African continent.

CONCERNS
With the understanding that it is today’s exploratory work that feeds into tomorrow’s mainstream industry, we place the concerns of IMPAC not in opposition to the commercial film industry in Africa, but as an initiative to see what is possible for African filmmakers to achieve if their thinking is given room to grow, with an identity that is uniquely their own.

PROCESS
The process is first and foremost to engage the African filmmaker to expand his/her creative boundaries, and secondly to initiate a process whereby the filmmakers are encouraged to promote their work and to network within the established industry framework. This is the only way to ensure long-term sustainability.

CULTURAL
It is the intention of IMPAC to build cultural relationships with countries that support our initiative and that will allow for an exchange of ideas and skills. It is hoped that with the aid of the various cultural commissions, we can expand the scope of the festival to include retrospectives and workshops with pertinent filmmakers, theorists and critics from overseas. People whose skill we can learn from and whose input can help us challenge our developing creative objectives.

Short exploratory films created by the students of The Open Window, will be screened on Saturday 30 May 2009 at the Miriam Makeba Hall, Unisa, Pretoria. 3 screening sessions: @ 11:00, 15:00 and 19:00. Tickets are available @ R25 per person from The Open Window. Contact Helen or Ann on 012 470 8680/1 to secure your seats. Ample free and secure parking and a cash bar will be available at the venue.

MARCH 8TH 2009.

THE 2ND ANNUAL COAL STOVE AWARDS

And Official Launch Of

SUNDAY 8TH OF MARCH

6.30 PM FOR 7.00 PM

AT PRIVATE PRACTICE

NO. 195 JEPPE STREET

History will be made at PRIVATE PRACTICE in downtown Jo’burg on March 8th 2009. Why? Because the 2nd Annual Coal Stove Awards® will be held in celebration of the newest and freshest locally created films of 2008/9.

Why is this historic?

The 2nd Annual Coal Stove Awards® is also the launch of M.E.E Movies®. M.E.E. stands for Movie Economic Empowerment. M.E.E Movies® represent an opportunity for ordinary people to participate in the empowerment of the South African movie business. More details to follow soon.

OFF THE SHELF WILL NOT TAKE PLACE ON THE LAST SUNDAY OF FEBRUARY (22ND) AS IT GEARS UP FOR THE AWARDS.

Mark Kannemeyer

Lorcan White

Drawings

19 – 29 November 2008

Opening of the exhibition and launch of Zombie on Wednesday 19 November at 18:00

Lorcan White's pen and ink landscape drawings occupy a creative space between gesture and concept. These drawings, subtly and ironically referencing the work of such diverse artists as Van Gogh, Cezanne and El Greco, render landscapes in gestural, impressionist marks by applying black ink in broad dashes and generous waves and swirls on the paper. In each drawing the landscape seems to swell out and culminate in an organic outcrop, similar in shape to Cezanne's ubiquitous, cubist Mount Sainte-Victoire, and El Greco's undulating Toledo hills. But the true genius of White's drawings resides in the Van Gogh-like dashes, waves and swirls that seem to form erotic, vulva-like shapes dispersed throughout his landscapes. Put side by side, these drawings form a type of landscape template, or map, each being modified and extended in the preceding one, evolving into a kind of rhizomatic survey of White's 'thinking in and through drawing'. His drawing is a generative space of thought in which concepts are positioned in conflict and coercion to one another. Nature and natural forces are posited in op position to hand-built and machine-made elements and environments such as boxes and box-like cityscapes. The creative clash between these is what makes White's landscapes truly iconoclastic in contemporary drawing.

LIAM LYNCH

South African trees hold many secrets. Every secret holds a function in a delicate eco-system that keeps the world together. These are the amazing stories about a wide variety of indiginous & non-indiginous trees, which makes readers appreciate and excited about the environment they live in. So why not publish a bi-monthly quality magazine which reveals these secrets bit by bit? Large size glossy lumback. Well written and richly illustrated with top notch photography and graphics.

© Joost Hulsbosch

Ellomennopee (pronounced LMNOP) is my general freelance creative label. I have a particular fondness for character design, which is evident in most of my work. The name Ellomennopee is an ode to the nostalgia of childhood’s alphabet song, when it is sung before the knowledge of an alphabet exists.

Necklaces made from vintage ceramic ornaments: poodle and swallow.