The Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria (Javett-UP) hosts this new exhibition Buffer Zones by the Preempt Group, recipients of the 2021/2022 Visionary Award.
The Preempt Group is a multidisciplinary collective run by Mbali Dhlamini and Phumulani Ntuli. They use archives and other open-source technologies as tools to interrogate and create alternative forms of knowledge. The duo explores the limits and possibilities of analogue, hybrid and transmedia when viewed through the lens of traditional epistemologies. In doing so, they highlight the lapses of technology within decoloniality.
Buffer Zones is situated on the second floor at Javett-UP near the entrance of the National Treasures of Mapungubwe Gold Collection. Buffer Zones is a result of research focused on the historical site of Mapungubwe. Using performance the Preempt Group is interested in investigating the landscape around Mapungubwe as offering signposts of an ecosystem in which humans and animals have crossed paths.
By reading Mapungubwe's landscape through the notion of an ecosystem, the film offers a break in response to the ongoing narrative around the histories of this place which are predominantly digested and distributed through a scientific academic lens. Using simulation, orality, holography, and photogrammetry the Preempt Group attempts to present an unbroken view of the site.
Also presented as part of Buffer Zones is a supporting work titled Spatial Fabrications: An Uninhabitable World, a series of films revolving around the screen and its politics, questions of representation, land, justice and spirituality.
Attend the opening on Sat, Oct 8 at 12:30.
