Transnational identity, historical entanglements and the living archive: between Medu & me
Master Thesis
2021
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The doors of culture shall be opened is an audio-visual exhibition and self-reflexive research project that unpacks transnational identity, historical entanglements, and the living archive, through Medu Art Ensemble as the case in point. The project expands on the relationship ‘between Medu and Me', as a method of engaging fragments of the archive, the construction of history, and identity formation across Botswana and South Africa. As the culmination of research and fieldwork in Gaborone and Cape Town from 2019 to 2021, the title of the exhibition references a Medu poster once housed in the University of Cape Town's Special Collections Library. The project aims to unpack and sound a space that centres dislocation, by providing some analysis of the post-traumas of Botswana in the anti-Apartheid struggle, with an emphasis on lived experiences, as well as oral traditions of storytelling and radio. The exhibition and accompanying research document work together to present creative and scholarly ideation of the relationship between art and history in contemporary Botswana and South Africa. With a look at history as circular and cyclical, the project uses a narrative tone in order to engage in an open dialogue with fragments of the archive. In this way, I map the interconnected timelines of individual and collective memory, using photography, sound, installation and sculpture (namely ceramics and assemblage). With a focus on Medu, I engage an extended conversation of Botswana's national history as entangled with aspects of South Africa's. By tracing a coming-of-age story of identity formation across neighbouring nation-states, I simultaneously unpack transnational identity through an exploration of the living archive. With a look at sound as spatialised and socialised, I reengage the interlocutors of history, as in circular motion with my individual present and collective future.
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Makin, K.K. 2021. Transnational identity, historical entanglements and the living archive: between Medu & me. . ,Faculty of Humanities ,Michaelis School of Fine Art. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/35839