Watershed

• Director: Lenore Manderson
• Organising Committee: Lenore Manderson, David Andrew, Christo Doherty, Isabel Hofmeyr, Craig Sheridan
• Assistant Directors: Zanele Madiba, Tobias Manderson-Galvin
• Origins Centre Curator: Tammy Hodgskiss
• Zines design and Production: Pxssy on a Plinth

Across the university and beyond, among others: Tegan Bristow, Reghana Burns, Blossom Catling, Ferna Clarkson, Robin Drennan, Michelle Gallant, Emma Ketzie,  Boniswa Khumalo, Ndhuvazi Kubayi, George Mahashe, Beverley Manus, Deborah Minors,  Pam Moodley, Magcina Nyoni‎, Tanya Schonwald, Oupa Sibeko and Bie Venter.  And especial thanks to the creative artists, humanities scholars and scientists, policy makers and activists, who joined us in this unique programme.

Origins Centre

There was free access to the Origins Centre from 10-21 September, for the two weeks of Watershed.

Digimine, Chamber of Mines Building

The new Sibanye-Stillwater Digital Mining Laboratory (DigiMine) was open to the public at select times. Guided tours of the facility took placr at 15.30 and 16:00 Tuesday September 11, 14.30 Thursday September 13 and 13.30 Friday September 14.

Research Posters

September 10-21, Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block, poster display; poster presentation Thursday September 13, 12:00-13:00

• Jenny Broadhurst, Future Water Institute, UCT, Exploring the Relationship between Mining, Water and Communities
• Jenny Broadhurst and Sue Harrison, Future Water Institute, UCT, Resource Efficient Approach for Mitigating Acid Mine Drainage Pollution Risks associated with Coal Waste
• Kirsty Carden and Neil Armitage, Future Water Institute, UCT, Development and Management of Water Sensitive Design Community of Practice Programme
• Aurelie Deroubaix,  Life Sciences Imaging Facility, Wits
• Mystecia Kanengoni, Anthropology, UCT, Commodification of Water has left Highfields Residents in Anguish
• Tamlyn Naidoo, Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, Piloting a Combined Metallurgical  Slag/Sugar Cane Bagasse Process  for Treating Acid Mine Drainage
• John Ndiritu, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Wits.Please Take Care! Water is Listening to what you are Thinking! Energised Water and the Rate of Seedling Development and Crop Growth.
• Kavisha Patel, Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, Design, Construction and Testing of a Laboratory Scale Membrane Distillation Bioreactor for Water Purification
• Letlakana Sebata, Wits Business School, Technological Innovation for Urban Water Resilience and Sustainability in South Africa
• Ruth Stephenson, The Development of An Adapted Residence Time Distributed Technique combined with CWM1
• Kevin Winter, Future Water Institute, UCT, The Water Hub
• Kevin Winter and Andrew Bennett, Future Water Institute, UCT, Liesbeek Life Plan: Enabling a ‘Community of Practice’ for Water Sensitive Design in Cape Town

September 10-21, Chamber of Mines Atrium

• Busisiwe Mashiane, Chemicaland Metallurgical Engineering, Wits, Slow Sand Water Filtration for Domestic Use, installation

Featured Artists

Atul Bhalla
10-21 September, Old Chamber of Mines Atrium
Looking for Lost Water (Explorations at the Cradle). Photographs and performative photographs, video with sculptural and textual interventions, performances

Yvette Christiansë
13-14 September, WiSER
Poetry Reading and Words on Water: Southern African Literatures and the Oceans

Hannelie Coetzee
10-21 September, Spirit World Room, Origins Centre
Synanthrope Series II: Hyena. Sculptures, reclaimed and found wood; guided walk Saturday September 15

Christine Dixie
10-21 September, NE Gallery Space, First Floor, Origins Centre
Below the Sediments. Mixed media (polymer, brushed steel), 5 panels 560 mm x 1200 mm

Brian House
31 August – 9 September, Fak’ugesi Festival, Tshimologong Precinct
10-21 September, Watershed
Acid Water Resonator. Installation sculpture, digital sound

Richard Ketley
10-21 September, Foyer, Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block
Oo | 32o. Acrylic, tracing paper

Mark Lewis
10-21 September, Central Gallery Space, First Floor, Origins Centre
Watermark. Photography, 2 sets of 8 photographs (16 photographs, each c. 420 x 594 mm)

Zen Marie
17 September, 18:00, fem of colour | intersectional studio platform 39 Gwigwi Mwrebi Street Newtown (enter from side alley off Quinn Street, between Carr and Gwigwi Mwrebi)
Paradise Fallen. Photographic, paper-based, video, and performative work

Lehlogonolo Modise
10-21 September, Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block
Metsi ago koropa. Clay sculpture

Lucia Monge
10-21 September, SW Gallery Space, First Floor, Origins Centre
Mi Niño, Your Dry Spell, Their Waterfall. Sculpture and photography installation

Marcus Neustetter
11 September, from Yale Road to Chamber of Mines Atrium
Against the Shed. Performance

Tania Olsson
10-21 September, Anthropology Musuem, Robert Sobukwe Block
Waterpas (spirit level). Mixed media

Stacey Rozen
10-21 September, Anthropology Museum, foyer and courtyards, Robert Sobukwe Block
Drink at your own Risk.Tap, empty water bottles, yarn bomb

Raymond Shihawu
10-21 September, Anthropology Museum, foyer and courtyards, Robert Sobukwe Block
H2Woe-Mati. Acrylic paint

Myer Taub
Wednesday 12 September (16:00) and Sunday 16 September (12:00)
Tracing the Spruit. Performance/walk
Duration: Approx. 2 hours (1 hour of walking to the view point + 1 hour of performance at the view point)

Wendy Woodson
10-21 September, Africa’s Creative Explosion Alcove, Ground Floor, Origins Centre
Sourcing the Stream. Video installation and original sound, text and voice.

Day #1 | Tue 11 Sep

Guided DigiMine Tour
15:30 and 16:00 Basement 2, Chamber of Mines Atrium
Walkthrough:Meeting with the Artists
15:30-17:00 Origins Centre First Floor Gallery
16:00-16:15  Christine Dixie will speak about her work, Below the Sediments, with time for Q & A.

Dixie superimposes two visual registers or languages: the first register a depiction of a Karoo landscape in which over two-thirds of the image depicts the earth below; the second register from the realm of science and engineering. The collision and collusion of the two “languages” in Below the Sediments reveals the different epistemological strategies of art and science.

16:15-16:30 Lucia Monge will speak about her work, Mi Niño, Your Dry Spell, Their Waterfall, with time for Q & A.

Monge’s works are part of a long-term project that focuses on the tools used to collect, treat and transport water in different parts of the world. Starting with South Africa and Peru, Monge is interested in these tools as an expression of our anthropogenic touch and of the way water touches us back, shaping gendered, social, economic, and political structures. The morphological adaptations in groups of plants have respond to the challenges of water scarcity in areas such as the Namaqualand desert. Plant-inspired design has become the focus for this stage in the project.

Watershed: Opening and Reception

17:00-19:00, Chamber of Mines Atrium, West Campus

• Dance performance: Thirst – Bokamoso Malahlela, Megan Miller, Nkosinathi Mashaba, Sarah Buckland, Sibongile Palesa Nkosi, Lesedi Ramokgotswa and Thandokhule Myeni (Theatre and Performance, WSOA)
• Welcome and introduction to Vice-Chancellor: Lenore Manderson
• Welcome to the University: Professor Adam Habib
• Description of art program and introduction of Professor Gbadamosi: David Andrew
• Keynote address: Professor Raimi Gbadamosi, WiSER,The Possibility of Imagining Something New
• Academic program: Isabel Hofmeyr, African Literature and WiSER
• Performance with live streaming: Marcus Neustetter, Against the Shed

Day #2 | Wed 12 Sep

Tracing the Spruit (Southern Performance Research Under Interesting Themes) Performance : 16:00

As part of an ongoing performance project on an embodied ecological investigation into the counter urban narratives of the city and wate, join performance artist and playwright Myer Taub walking the spruit in Waverly and Melrose.

Day #3 | Thu 13 Sep

Workshop: Digital Ethnography and Environmental Crisis

09:00-12:00 Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block

Facilitators: Thomas Pringle, Brown and Christo Doherty, WSOA

How can digitally networked devices help visualize and broadcast regional crises? Does the documentary visibility gained by digitally networked devices work to reproduce structural inequalities driving the problems?

Bookings are essential as places are limited. Please email christo.doherty@wits.ac.za to reserve a place, and to receive copies of reading material and access to a vimeo.

Flash Lectures and Presentations

12:00-14:00 Anthropology Museum, Robert Sobukwe Block

Chair: David Andrew

• 12:00  Melinda Barnard, Anthropology, Wits, From Sun Powered to Submerged: Finding the Energy to Power a Solar Airport once again
• 12:10  Adelaide Chagopa, Law, Wits, From Nine-to-One: A Single Catchment Management Agency for Sustainable and Equitable Use of Water Resource
• 12:20  Corey Glackin-Coley, Wits Humanities and Fordham University, NY, Livelihoods and Opinions of Communities who will be Displaced or Impacted by the Polihali Dam
• 12:30  Claudia Campisano, Anthropology, Wits, Water in Morocco
• 12:40  Gill Black and Jessica Drewett, Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, CT, Bucketloads of Health, video (Xhosa, English subtitles, 13:17); Q & A.

Guided DigiMine Tour

14:30 Basement 2, Chamber of Mines Atrium

How Johannesburg and Gauteng can Avoid a “Day Zero” Experience

15.00-17.00 Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry, Seminar Room, Engineering

Chair: Mike Muller, Wits School of Governance

Participants:

• Mike Muller, Wits School of Governance: Where Gauteng’s Water Comes from and the Challenges of Keeping it Flowing
• Ronnie McKenzie, International Water Association and WRP Engineers: The Science of Predicting the Unpredictable and Managing Uncertainty
• Gillian Maree, Gauteng City-Region Observatory: Gauteng’s Water Challenge in a Larger Context
• Khulukelile Mase, Gauteng Provincial Government: An Action Plan for Gauteng’s water Security

The speakers will outline the challenges of achieving water security in the city and province, and discuss how they can be addressed and what the people of the province can do to help avoid the dramatic water restrictions as experienced in Cape Town.

Poetry Reading, Q&A and Reception

17:00-19:00 WiSER, 6^thFloor, Richard Ward Building

Chair: Isabel Hofmeyr

Poetry:  Yvette Christiansë (USA), Professor of Africana Studies and English Literature, Barnard College, New York

Yvette Christiansëis a South African-born poetand novelist. She lives in New York Cityand teaches at Barnard College. Christiansë’s published work generally deals with South Africa, and contains post-colonial themes such as slavery and displacement.^[ She is the author of a novel Unconfessed (2006) and poetry collections Castaway (1999)and Imprendehora (2009).

Day #4 | Fri 14 Sep

Symposium: Words on Water: Southern African Literatures and the Oceans 

10:00-12:30  WiSER Seminar Room, Richard Ward Building Level 6

• Chairperson: Brett Pyper
• Yvette Christiansë, Barnard College, New York
• Charne Lavery and Sarah Nuttall, WiSERand Isabel Hofmeyr, African Literature and WiSER

Yvette Christiansë will talk about her work on slave registers. This will be followed by a discussion with Charne Lavery, Sarah Nuttall and Isabel Hofmeyr.

Guided DigiMine Tour

13:30 Basement 2, Chamber of Mines Atrium

Panel and Roundtable: Under the Surface: 140 years on

14:00-16.30 Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry, Seminar Room, Engineering Building

• Chairperson:Keith Breckenridge (WiSER)
• Atul Bhalla (Shiv Nadar University, Delhi), Nancy Coulson (CSMI), Mark Lewis (Johannesburg), Marcus Neustetter (Johannesburg), Robert Thornton (Wits Anthropology), Deon Terblanche (Consultant: Weather, Climate and Environmental Services) and Coleen Vogel (Global Change Institute).

Mining has dominated Johannesburg’s history, as Atul Bhalla and Mark Lewis have documented. How has the management of land and its resources changed in the 21^st Century?  What challenges do we face?

Day #5 | Sat 15 Sep

Watershed Walkabout

10:00-12:00, 5 km, approx. 2 hours.

Artist Hannelie Coetzee will lead a walk from the Origins Centre, following the continental watershed running through Johannesburg to the site where the Juskei daylights in Bez Valley. The walk will end at the Water for the Future Collective office at Victoria Yards.

Participants should bring hats, comfortable walking shoes and water. The walkabout can be booked at hannelie@hanneliecoetzee.com at R100 per person.

Day #6 | Sun 16 Sep

Tracing the Spruit (Southern Performance Research Under Interesting Themes) Performance : 12:00

Aspart of an ongoing performance project on an embodied ecological investigation into the counter urban narratives of the city and wate, join performance artist and playwright Myer Taubwalking the spruit in Waverly and Melrose.

Day #7 | Mon 17 Sep

18:00-19:00     Fem of colour | intersectional studio platform, 39 Gwigwi Mwrebi Street Newtown (enter from side alley off Quinn Street)

Zen Marie, Paradise Fallen. Private viewing of Zen Marie’s work at this new gallery.

Day #8 | Tue 18 Sep

Symposium Decolonizing Water

10:15-12.00 Exhibition Area, First Floor, Origins Centre

• Chairperson: Bina Venkataraman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Thabo Lusithi, EMG (Environmental Monitoring Group)
• Aja Marneweck, University of Western Cape
• Patrick Bond, Wits School of Governance

What does it mean to decolonize the narratives of water, the science disciplines that structure what we know and by what means, and the role of people in the everyday management, governance and stewardship of water?

Symposium Territorial Waters, Politics and Regional Commons

13:00-14:40: Exhibition Area, First Floor, Origins Centre

• Chair: Lenore Manderson, Wits School of Public Health and Institute at Brown for Environment and Society
• Clive Vinti,  University of the Free State, Bloemfontein
• Mucha Musemwa, History, Wits
• Mary Galvin, University of Johannesburg

Globally, regionally and locally, water is at the same time a commons, a public resource and often a privatised resource. Populations are suppressed and nation states controlled through water management and its abuse; economies are built on its sale or diversion. Panelists draw on their experience as researchers and civil activists to examine water politics and the implications of this for Lesotho, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and their neighbours.

Symposium Action on Water: Climate Justice and People’s Charters

15.00-17.00 Exhibition Area, First Floor, Origins Centre

• Chair: Tracy-Lynn Humby, Wits Law
• Vishwas Satgar, Department of International Relations, Wits
• Ferrial Adam,  University ofJohannesburg
• Bina Venkataraman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Jonathan Klaaren, WiSER

If water is a commons, what does it mean when access varies? How do we address the social inequalities that distort access to water? And how do climate change, drought, and water regulations and entitlements magnify social inequality?

Book Reading and Reception: Writing on Water

17:00-18.30 Exhibition Area, First Floor, Origins Centre

Jacklyn Cock, Writing the Ancestral River

Book display: Origins Bookshop

JACKLYN COCK, Professor Emeritus at Wits. has published widely on issues relating to gender, environmental and militarisation issues.She will discuss her recent book, Writing the Ancestral River an illuminating biography of the Kowie River in the Eastern Cape. This tidal river runs through a formative meeting ground of peoples who have shaped South Africa’s history: Khoikhoi herders, Xhosa pastoralists, Dutch trekboers and British settlers. The latter introduced a new form of accumulation “settler capitalism,” which commodified both land and labour with devastating consequences for the Xhosa.

Day #9 | Wed 19 Sep

Walkthrough: Meeting with the Artists

2:30pm – 6:30pm  Fem of colour | intersectional studio platform, 39 Gwigwi Mwrebi Street Newtown (enter from side alley off Quinn Street)

Zen Marie will engage in a discussion of his installation Paradise Fallen.

Paradise Fallen is a cycle of work that includes photographic, paper-based, performative and video components. The work was initiated in 2016 on a residency at Cité des Arts on Île de la Réunion, and continued while working through the residency and academic programs at the RAW Material Company on the peninsula city of Dakar, Senegal in 2017 and 2018.  Paradise Fallen explores conceptual and geographic ambiguities of islands, as they offer much imaginative potential for dreams, desires, fantasies, fears and anxieties to be rehearsed through them.  The work plays with narratives that float on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans as personal, emotive, historical and political registers that are courted, teased and provoked.

This will be the third iteration of the work, and is a collaboration with ideas, politics and people at fem of colour.

Day #10 | Thu 20 Sep

Symposium: Water Futures, Digital Imaginations

10.00-12.30 IBM Conference Room, Tshimologong Precinct

• Chair: Craig Sheridan
• Tapiwa Chiwewe, IBM Research Africa, Big Data and Analytics for Water Sustainability in an Urban Planet
• Henry Roman, Department of Science and Technology, Changing Climate, Water Security and Data: Making Sense of Complex Futures
• Gillian Maree,Gauteng City-Region Observatory, Making Research Relevant and Evidence-based Policy Making: The Case of the Gauteng Water Security Plan
• Amanda Lynch, IBES, Brown,Emerging Pathways in Water Governance in the Anthropocene

How do we bring together government and various publics to take account of climate change and water security. How does modelling future environments, use of big data anddigitally generated visuals provide policy makers with models of the future

Talk: Looking for Lost Water – Atul Bhalla

10:30-11:30 Chamber of Mines Building on West Campus, University of the Witwatersrand

As part of the Watershed: Art, Science and Elemental Politics programme, artist Atula Bhalla will give a talk on his work Looking for Lost Water (Explorations at the Cradle). The installation comprising photographs and performative photographs, video with sculptural and textual elements was created specifically for theWatershed: Art, Science and Elemental Politics programme in the Chamber of Mines Building on West Campus, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Atul Bhalla is Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Design and Performing Arts at Shiv Nadar University, Delhi, India. He is a conceptual artist whose work has been exhibited widely including in the United States; the Pompidou Centre, Paris; Valencia, Spain; London, United Kingdom and in India. In 2012 he was a fellow of the NIROX Foundation and began exploring in particular illegal mining and water sources around the city of Johannesburg.

Roundtable on Watershed: Reflectionson the Arts-Sciences Engagement at Watershed

1:30-3.30 Tshimologong Precinct

• Chair: Christo Doherty
• Panel: Amanda Lynch (Brown), Atul Bhalla (Shiv Nadar), Lenore Manderson (Wits and Brown), Amber Abrams (Kent), David Andrews (WSOA) and Craig Sheridan (CIWARD)

The curation of the Watershed Conference  deliberately brought together art works, in the form of installations, sculptures, photographs, video, and performative interventions, with scientific and activist discourses.  In this concluding panel, a group of participants including artists and scientists  from the conference will reflect on the implications of these engagements, including in furthering of Arts-Science collaborations in an African context.

Day #11 | Fri 21 Sep

Walkthrough: Meeting with the Artists

10am  – 4pm    Fem of colour | intersectional studio platform, 39 Gwigwi Mwrebi Street Newtown (enter from side alley off Quinn Street)

Zen Marie will engage in a discussion of his installation Paradise Fallen.

Paradise Fallen is a cycle of work that includes photographic, paper-based, performative and video components. The work was initiated in 2016 on a residency at Cité des Arts on Île de la Réunion, and continued while working through the residency and academic programs at the RAW Material Company on the peninsula city of Dakar, Senegal in 2017 and 2018.  Paradise Fallen explores conceptual and geographic ambiguities of islands, as they offer much imaginative potential for dreams, desires, fantasies, fears and anxieties to be rehearsed through them.  The work plays with narratives that float on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans as personal, emotive, historical and political registers that are courted, teased and provoked.

This will be the third iteration of the work, and is a collaboration with ideas, politics and people at fem of colour.