It's official! The Data Stream relocates ...

It's official! The Data Stream has temporarily relocated to the blog of Goal 2010!, an online and social media project in conjunction with the FIFA World Cup.

Up through the final match on July 11, the project will focus on the tournament  and related activity, and the social issues spotlighted by the first World Cup in Africa. We hope you'll visit often, and we invite your comments and feedback.

Goal 2010!

[screengrab from Goal 2010!]

Robben Island: A Greater Goal

Last night U.S. television sports channel ESPN premiered a short film on South Africa's Robben Island as part of its Outside The Lines series.* Through interviews and footage of the country's most infamous prison, 'home' to revolutionary opponents of apartheid, the documentary charts the relationship of the formation of a prison soccer association to the crafting of the 1996 South African constitution - one based on both the rule of law and the practice of justice.


Robben Island: A Greater Goal
RT: 18:37

WATCH

[* "The series examines topical issues off the playing field. It includes interviews and opinions from leading authorities on the issue at hand. Hosted by veteran journalist Bob Ley, Outside the Lines has investigated trends and topics ranging from sports teams' hazing to the overseas labor practices of U.S. sneaker companies." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

SPace

Museum Africa‎
121 Bree Street
Johannesburg 2001
South Africa
011 833 5624‎

SPace – Currencies in Contemporary African Art

Berni Searle
Avant Car Guard
Godfried Donkor
Barthelemy Togue
Willem Boshoff
Kudzanai Chiurai
Collectif 212

"The concept SPace embodies two notions, space and pace, which signify sites/contexts and tempos/energies that are part of societal make up. Space is wherein ideas are negotiated and meaning produced through various human activities and social practices, while pace is speed, the rate at which change or advancement of such activities and practices take place in society."

Statement by Thembinkosi Goniwe and Melissa Mboweni, Curators

Through July 11 - the final day of the first World Cup to be held in Africa.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Graphic from Museum website. Caption: "Berni Searle. 'Water's Edge II.' From the series 'Black Smoke Rising.' Archival pigment ink on photographic paper. 2008."]

The Bag Factory | Border Farm

The Bag Factory
10 Mahlatini Street · Fordsburg
Johannesburg · 2001

mailing address: PO Box 794 · Newtown ·
Johannesburg · 2113
South Africa

+27 11 834 9181

Border Farm

"...an exhibition conceptualized by Thenjiwe Nkosi, featuring videos and writing by migrant farm works on the South African/Zimbabwe national border The show features works by Nkosi, Raymond Marlowe and the Maroi Farm Art and Drama Group.

Nkosi has been participating in a group project called Living In-Between, based in Musina, in Limpopo Province – the last town before the Zimbabwean border. Due to its ongoing history as a mining town surrounded by several productive farms, Musina’s population is largely comprised of migrants. The community of Maroi farm is made up of both Zimbabwean and South African farm workers.

Through a series of workshops held by Nkosi and Marlowe, along with Tapiwa Marovatsanga, Michelle Harris and Daniel Browde, a group of farm workers from Maroi Farm have been taking photographs, filming and writing about their experiences. Through their experiences one sees a confluence of contemporary issues and questions about national borders and their impact on individuals and communities – particularly communities under pressure. The idea of belonging is central to how self and group identities operate in situations of dislocation."

Through May 5.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text and graphic from Factory website.]

Babel

Blank Projects
113-115 Sir Lowry Road
Woodstock
Cape Town 8001
South Africa

Candice Breitz
Babel Series

"The Babel Series consists of seven constantly stuttering DVD loops. Each steals a fragment of footage from the history of music video. The content of each video is relentlessly simple and literally monosyllabic: the seven different moments are appropriated from various pop performances (the line-up ranges from Madonna, Wham and Grace Jones to Queen, Prince, Abba and the Police). Each of the seven moments is then trapped in repetition as it is looped endlessly and noisily before the viewer on a series of television monitors. The seven loops play simultaneously in the space of the installation, creating a cacophonous babble that allegorically echoes the biblical story from which the work takes its title. What the seven videos have in common - beyond their reflection on narcissism and their deliberate choice of ambiguously-gendered stars - is that each evokes the primary building blocks of language. Together, the videos bang a millennial baby talk out of a series of dissonant beats,a baby talk that approaches sheer pandemonium."

The installation, on view through January 8, 2010 at Blank Projects is part of Dada South? an exhibition curated by Roger van Wyk & Kathryn Smith at the South African National Gallery.

Dada South? draws together a range of works by South African artists dating from the 1960s to the present, representing a range of avant-garde positions in the aftermath of Dada. South African art production is understood not simply as by-products of western avant-garde practices, but as drawing selectively and even randomly on these practices to articulate specific, local conditions. Through an eclectic collection of material, imaginary and intellectual work of our recent history, the exhibition proposes a review of the ambivalent relationship between cultural creation and political resistance."

[Text and graphic from Blank Projects website. Caption: "Candice Breitz, Babel Series, 1999, DVD Installation: 7 Looping DVDs, Installation view: O.K Center for Contemporary art, Linz. Photograph: Jason Mandella." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Speculating on Change

The New School
Kellen Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
New York City, New York

October 16, 2009 - 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
Michael A. Cohen
Speculating on Change: Four Paradoxes of Our Urban Future

Each year, an inaugural lecture launches the Vera List Center's annual theme, defining the intellectual territory that will be explored in public programs throughout the year. The lecturer introduces the theme in the broadest sense, serving as a guide to the range and richness of the topic at hand, and rooting the concept within The New School's intellectual tradition.

This year's programs call for a speculation on notions of "change," specifically some of the descriptions, procedures and perceptions associated with change that inform collective action, whether political, scientific, or cultural. The inaugural lecture is delivered by Michael A. Cohen, Director, The Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School.

The current global economic crisis demonstrates the impact on the economic welfare and political stability of both rich and poor countries of accelerating global flows of people, ideas, capital and competition for control over human and natural resources. Cohen discusses cities both as sites of the greatest impacts of global change, but also as sites providing solutions to some of the challenges that result from such change.

Admission: $8, free for all students, New School faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID

[graphic and text from New School electronic mailing. Caption: "Slum, Cape Town, South Africa." Photo by Theo Scheffler. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]