Buffalo City protest inspires national ocean awareness exhibition at NAF
The Nahoon Reef car park protest which sparked an international outcry against the attempt by megalith Shell and the SA government to seismic blast and mine the oceans off the Wild Coast has made it to the National Arts Festival.
The exhibition, “Our ocean is sacred, you can’t mine Heaven”, in the Red Foyer at Rhodes University is a multi-media collaboration by Boudina Mcconnachie, Dylan Mcgarry, Michaela Howse, Luke Kaplan, Kelly Daniels, Case Pratt, Jacki Bruniquel, the Keiskamma Art Project, Songs of the Ocean, and Woodstock Art Reef Project: Abundance.
It features podcasts, a crochet piece, and photographs.
It was funded by the One Ocean Hub’s deep fund, the Coastal Justice Network, the Environmental Learning Research Centre and the National Arts Festival.
“Our ocean is sacred, you can ’ t mine heaven” was a slogan on placards displayed opposed to seismic surveys and ocean oil and gas exploration along the SA west and east coast.
The artists said in a statement: “Over the past year greater traction and public interest and advocacy against the rush for minerals and oil and gas in the sea have created a new public conversation around ocean heritages, cultures, and livelihoods deeply entangled and related to the ocean”
The exhibition has emerged through collaborative curation, between Dr Boudina Mcconnachie, Dr Dylan Mcgarry, Michaela Howse and Luke Kaplan. The collaboration includes:
The Keiskamma Art Project based in Hamburg on the banks of the Keiskamma River was pioneered by artist and doctor Carol Hofmeyr.
The project notes stated that oil and gas exploration ran contrary the organisation’s dedication to holistic care of the communities living alongside the river.
It also clashed with a vision to restore hope and dignity to people with very few resources, living at the precipice of change through dignified work, while communicating, through art, the reality of rural lives affected by both poverty and history.
Woodstock Art Reef Project ’ s installation “Abundance”, on display at the exhibition, was a community art project “with a critical ocean literacy, exploring the wellbeing and survival of coral reef communities, and how understanding the nature of symbiosis and community within coral reefs, lends us to understanding community and relationality in human communities.”
The piece has been in the making for more than a decade, where individuals from all walks of life have crocheted each individual coral artwork using a method of hyperbolic crochet.
“The SA reef is a satellite of the world-wide Crochet Coral Project created by Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring in Los Angeles.
Songs of the Ocean was the first in a series of podcasts “where, through the lens of music, we delve into South Africans’ relationships with water, seas and oceans.
“In this podcast, presented in isixhosa and English, we look at how the amaxhosa view the ocean and how important it is to spirituality, health and livelihoods.”
The series was conceptualised and created by Mcconnachie with Elijah Madiba, Bongani Diko, Dumisa Mpupha, Nombasa Maqoko, Vuyelwa Moyo and produced by Kuhle Ngqezana.
Mcgarry, an educational sociologist, scholar activist and artist from Durban, is a senior researcher at the Environmental Learning Research Centre (ELRC) at Rhodes and is the SA director of the Global One Ocean Hub research network.
He is the co-founder of Empatheatre, and a passionate artist and storyteller.
“He explores practice-based research into connective aesthetics, transgressive social learning, decolonial practice, queer-eco pedagogy, immersive empathy,
The exhibition, “Our ocean is sacred, you can’t mine Heaven”, at the Red Foyer is a multi-media collaboration
African spirituality and intangible heritage in SA.”
He primarily works with imagination, listening and intuition “as actual sculptural materials in social settings to offer new ways to encourage personal, relational and collective agency”.
Mcconnachie is an African musical arts activist and ethnomusicologist who co-ordinates music education courses at the Rhodes education department and the International Library of African Music (ILAM).
Mcconnachie plays the uhadi, mbira among a range of African percussive instruments as well as the classical flute.
Mcconnachie says creative sonic sound is good for knowledge dissemination.
Luke Kaplan is an artist and landscape and history photographer based in Makhanda.
Durban photographer Kelly Daniels explores themes of family and its connection to the natural world, and more recently she has delved into spirituality and the ocean.
Case Pratt, also a Kwazulunatal photographer, focuses on the intersection of conservation and human life.
Her photography, or visual storytelling, touches on nostalgia, art and emotion.
SA photographer and freediver Jacki Bruniquel, known for her distinctive portraits and emotional storytelling, has started a series entitled People and Sea, to start a conversation with “people of SA, and understanding their relationship with the ocean”.