Podcast: Download (40.2MB)
Broadcast: 7-8pm, Thursday 10th December.
The speakers were Nadia Davids and Ozlem Koksal.
Nadia led the discussion:
The idea of moblising art as a tool to advocate for political, social and cultural change has, understandably, gained serious credibility (and funding) over the last thirty years. It’s a seductive thought, but how do we value the contribution artists make, and what are the bases for these value systems? It may be that we are tricking ourselves into believing a compelling story that nevertheless fails to conclude well.
The show was hosted by Seph Rodney.
Speaker biographies:
Nadia Davids was born in 1977 in Cape Town. She writes in a range of forms; plays, short stories, essays and articles. Her two most well-known theatre works are At Her Feet and Cissie. At Her Feet won two 2003 Fleur de Cap Theatre Awards (Best Actress and Best New Director) and was nominated for the 2008 Noma Award for best book published in Africa. Cissie was nominated for three 2008 Fleur de Cap Awards ( including Best New South African Play). Both plays are studied texts at a wide range of South African and North American Universities. She was a finalist in the SA Pen competition (judged by J.M.Coetzee) in 2007 for her short story Safe Home and was placed third in 2009 for her story The Visit. She has written articles for a variety of South African magazines, the Mail and Guardian and the New York-based Brooklyn Rail. Nadia holds a PhD from the University of Cape Town and has been a visiting scholar/artist/lecturer at the University of California, Berkley, and at New York University. She is a part of the New York Women’s Project Theatre’s Playwright’s Lab for 2008-2010. In 2009 she took up a lecturing post in the Drama Department at Queen Mary, University of London.
Ozlem Koksal is a doctoral student at the London Consortium, writing a dissertation on the relation between film, representation and memory in the context of Turkey. She is interested in the politics of memory and the way cinema represents/shapes/reinvents memory.