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The Role of South African EducationalInstitutions in Re-engaging the SociallyTransformative Potential of ArtElmarie Costandius & Sophia RosochackiPublished online: 18 Jun 2013.

To cite this article: Elmarie Costandius & Sophia Rosochacki (2013) The Role of South African EducationalInstitutions in Re-engaging the Socially Transformative Potential of Art, Third Text, 27:3, 378-386, DOI:10.1080/09528822.2013.795695

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The Role of South AfricanEducational Institutions in

Re-engaging the SociallyTransformative Potential of Art

Elmarie Costandius andSophia Rosochacki

INTRODUCTION

Despite the transition to democracy, socio-economic injustice and inequal-ity remain definitive and divisive features in South African society. Conse-quently, analyses of the notion of social transformation have beenundertaken with increasing urgency across disciplinary boundaries inacademe and within public, political, institutional and media discourses.Many of the emergent analyses consider both the failures of the promiseddemocratic transformation and expectations of social transformation asan ongoing project. In this way, analysis may help to identify whatdoes – and moreover should – drive social transformation, not throughutopian imaginings but rather an invigoration of the project throughcritical dialogue and consequent action. Clive Kronenberg argues that:

. . . the rigorous questioning of – and hence, confrontation with – domi-nant beliefs, perceptions, norms, standards, and rules embedded in aneo-liberal, corporate aligned ‘democratic’ world order will, by its verynature, contribute to the demise of human misfortune and injustice.1

Because of its partially antagonistic relation to society, the field of art andcultural analysis is in a special position to take up the ‘moral project ofinquiry into injustice [and] oppression’.2 This article hopes to contributeto the intersecting discourses on transformation through a discussion ofthe nature of contemporary art production in South Africa, its relationto social transformation, and its reproduction through educational insti-tutions. The first part of the article will consider the limitations that domi-nant modes of contemporary art production impose on the project ofsocial transformation. It argues that much established art production in

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Vol. 27, No. 3, 378–386, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2013.795695

# 2013 Third Text

1. Clive Kronenberg,‘Contesting theMechanisms ofDisinformation, PartI. ContemporaryDevelopments in LatinAmerica: A South AfricanPerspective’, Critical Arts,vol 23, no 2, 2009, p 133

2. Ibid

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a capitalist, globalized (and Eurocentric) world order, an order in whichinstitutionalized South African art is enmeshed, is potentially sociallydivisive and elitist. It will then consider examples from a South Africancontext of both alternative spaces of artistic practice and experimentalwork within art education which seek to overcome these limitations.The question of whether art is by its very nature consigned to politicaland social impotence becomes central.

CRITICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

The wealth of theories and analyses of social transformation potentiallyrender the concept rather vague and empty. It is important to set outhow it is understood from a perspective of critical cultural analysis inorder to consider how the production of art can work towards oragainst social transformation. Keyan Tomaselli argues that the projectof transforming existing unequal power relations emerged as central tothe role of cultural theory and analysis – at least since the shift fromthe study of culture as stable ‘texts’ to the focus on relation between‘text’ and ‘context’, instigated by the critical theories deriving fromMarxism.3 In this sense social transformation is also the ‘project ofinquiry into injustice [and] oppression’, which is ongoing and can bedriven by various parts of society.4 However, the ‘hermeneutics of suspi-cion’ which followed from the production of critical theoretical positionshave subsequently been diluted and adapted to suit conflicting ends.5 Kro-nenberg refers to Tomaselli’s argument that theory which emerged from asocial justice imperative has in many instances been taken up in the intel-lectual justification of the status quo; beyond the besieged enclaves ofMarxism and socialism, the intrinsic alliance of cultural studies withpeoples’ struggles has all but dissipated. Certain variations of culturalstudies have thus been accused of becoming a channel for, and toward,‘pseudo-liberation’, and of being at the forefront of ‘new fascismsclothed in politically correct left-wing slogans’.6

Critical discourses may be employed in ways that do not necessarilypromote or enable social transformation; they may even play a stabilizingrole in cultural production. Tomaselli argues that thinkers such as PauloFreire and Frantz Fanon are critical of any stabilizing features of cultureand regard the notion of culture not as ‘a pre-determined model offeredby the past. . . not a state of being, but a state of becoming’.7 In thisway cultural production and analysis can be invested in the project ofsocial transformation as a ‘working class offensive against imperialism’and an articulation of ‘a reality that lies in the future as a perpetual cre-ation, but shaped by the revolutionary idea of total societal transform-ation’.8 The definition of social transformation used in this article isone driven by the imperative of social justice, in keeping with Kronen-berg’s endeavour to ‘not only apply a critical social perspective’ butalso adopt a ‘definitive, principled or ethical stance’.9

The collective functioning of established social structures needs to beexamined in terms of the social practices and hierarchies which they sanc-tion. From a critical theory perspective, the art institution can be seen toderive its authority from a configuration of institutional relations whichare ‘combined in such a way as to generate structural inequalities of

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3. Keyan A Tomaselli,Contested Terrain: StruggleThrough Culture,Inaugural Lecture deliveredat the University of Natal,Durban, 24 September1986, University of NatalPress, Pietermaritzburg,1987, p 12

4. Kronenberg, op cit, p 133

5. Paul Ricoeur, Freud andPhilosophy: An Essay onInterpretation, YaleUniversity Press, NewHaven, 1970, p 27

6. Ibid, p 134

7. Tomaselli, op cit, p 15

8. Ibid

9. Kronenberg, op cit, p 134

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power and access to resources’.10 Art institutions, whether educational,commercial, national or international, provide the frame which separatesart from life. Gene Ray uses T W Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s critiqueof the function of autonomy in bourgeois art to demonstrate how theinstitutionalized ‘art world’ may work in the service of the status quo.They argue that the one inviolable rule of Western art is the notion ofautonomy, which posits art as categorically different from life and poli-tics, a distinction maintained by art institutions. While this positionoffers freedoms which are not available in real life, they also ensure‘social and political powerlessness’.11 The content of art may provideinsight into the gaps between reality and unrealized, deferred desire,and thus have critical potential; however, ‘no practical effects followfrom this kind of resistance’.12 This means that the autonomous spacecreated for art functions as a safety valve, allowing social critique tobe contained and action to be deferred. Critical potential can only berealized if the boundary between art and life is not so strictly policedby art institutions, which inevitably work in the interest of establishedpower.

THE ART INSTITUTION INA CAPITALIST WORLD ORDER

Within a capitalist world order, institutionalized art is double-sided. Ithas a cultural value bestowed on it by its legitimate production withinan institutionalized setting, and, in order to function as a commodity, ithas a market value that derives from its ‘social capital’. The logic of thecapitalist culture industry is such that the ‘free market’ and commodifica-tion of art suggest the institution of a dimension of power which promisesmore democratic distribution and thus posit a challenge to autonomy.However, autonomy and political impotence remain the characterizingfeatures of art, so that ‘art’s double character as both autonomous andfait social is incessantly reproduced on the level of its autonomy’.13 Rayargues that ‘as a system, as an institutional totality, culture remains atool of capitalism and established power’ which functions as ‘a globalsystem of exploitation and control’.14 Art produced within this paradigmcannot be transformative if it perpetuates an order that generatesinequality and injustice; this is the case when the critique offered by artcannot be taken up into action and remains trapped within socialhierarchy. Brenden Leam Gray summarizes this problem as such: ‘theentanglements. . . in the aesthetic act and representation. . . provideartists and viewers with an alternative paradigm by which to challengeessentialist ideologies’; at the same time, however, ‘this “tangled. . . actof representation” might potentially be a closed one, materializing forconsumption by only a sophisticated circle of producers’.15 In the post-Apartheid South African context the legitimizing discourses and conven-tions of art practice tend to work in socially exclusive ways that renderinstitutional art irrelevant to the majority. Relevant questions of identity,social injustice and collective memory among others explored throughartistic production may lose their critical purchase outside academic dis-course. With reference to the South African context, Gray explains that‘the freedom and autonomy granted to artists by the economic structure

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10. Michael W Apple, Ideologyand Curriculum,Routledge, London, 1979,p 63

11. Gene Ray, ‘On theConditions of Anti-Capitalist Art: RadicalCultural Practices and theCapitalist Art System’, LeftCurve 31, 2007, p 2

12. Ibid

13. Ibid, p 3

14. Ibid

15. Brenden Leam Gray,‘Making Art in the WrongPlace: Violence andIntimacy in Speak Englishto Me’, Critical Arts, vol24, no 3, 2010, p 337

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in which they operate’ produce the ‘solipsistic frameworks’16 whichJospeh Gaylard sees as ‘being responsible for the failure of the local artworld to engage other audiences’.17

INSTITUTIONALIZED ART INPOST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

Post-Apartheid South African art, according to James Alexander Sey,focused on the creation of a new cultural and aesthetic identity while fol-lowing the ‘mostly domesticated and careerist nature of the global artbusiness’, and in this way has negotiated its relevance in South Africansociety.18 South African theorists have been urged to question whythere are so few engagements with alternative audiences and communitiesin a country marked by extreme inequality19 and what has prevented therethinking of the role of art in the context of radical and ongoing social,political and economic change.20 The debate is not just about access toestablished discourses but about the reconfiguration of artistic productionand reception in ways that are more socially inclusive. In order for newdiscourses on cultural and artistic production to emerge, contestationof established practice is necessary. Artistic production is always thesite of power struggles because ‘all representation makes some thingsvisible at the same time as they make invisible other aspects of theworld’.21 Consequently, ‘complicities between power and art arisebecause of this, so that not all art allows newness to emerge’.22 Artisticpractice is often engaged in self-critique and recognizes its own complicityin power struggles. However, the preceding argument has suggested thatthe institutional character of capitalist art sets serious limitations on thesocial impact and accessibility of such critique. Gray argues that‘although aesthetic autonomy facilitates the development of new formsof subjectivity and identification. . . it may do so. . . at the expense of cov-ertly excluding others from the domain of creativity’.23 This is not to saythat extra-institutional art production necessarily advances a sociallytransformative agenda. Rather, art production committed to social trans-formation needs to take a critical stance in relation to institutional pro-duction and engage with alternative representational histories andcultural politics of representation.

Towards the end of the Apartheid era, Colin Richards pointed outthat:

Resisting co-option, risking legitimising exclusive cultural events paradingas inclusive, while challenging and re-appropriating existing culturalforums and resources to advance democratic, free culture remains as oneof the major challenges facing South African artists and culturalworkers.24

Although there certainly have been changes in cultural production interms of policy and equality of opportunity, structural social inequalitiescontinue to separate privileged from non-privileged in ways which echoApartheid relations. Consequently, the renegotiation and democratiza-tion of the terrain of cultural production remains as pertinent an issueas it was when Richards made his analysis in 1991. The limits imposedby the institutional character of much of South African art indicate the

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16. Ibid, p 378

17. Ibid

18. James Alexander Sey, ‘TheTrauma of Conceptualismfor South African Art’,Critical Arts, vol 24, no 3,2010, pp 438–456, pp445–446

19. Joseph Gaylard, ‘TheRetreat of Creativity:Reflections on the Role ofthe South African VisualArts in SocialDevelopment’, Artthrob,2005, http://www.artthrob.co.za/05nov/gaylard.html

20. Gray, op cit, p 377

21. Couze Venn, ‘Aesthetics,Politics, Identity: DiasporicProblematisations’, CriticalArts, vol 24, no 3, 2010, pp321–347, p 324

22. Ibid

23. Gray, op cit, p 378

24. Colin Richards, ‘AboutFace: Aspects of Art,History and Identity inSouth African VisualCulture’, Third Text 16/17, 1991, pp 101–133,p 124

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need for the recognition of alternative forums for communal engagementwith and reflection on the past. Richards argued that the onus falls on artand culture to work towards an uncovering of history and the recoveringof diverse, transforming and threatened traditions. He also suggests thatthis might need to happen in a space beyond the ‘sanitizing aesthetic dis-tance so characteristic of Western aesthetic discourse’, which ‘does nothave, in the African sun, the easy life it might promise elsewhere’.25

ART PRACTICES WHICH CHALLENGE THEINSTITUTIONAL MODE OF ART PRODUCTION

Gene Ray suggests three different strategies for art production that mightchallenge the institutionalized character of contemporary art and align itwith popular movements and struggles. The first is institutional critique,which might challenge formal convention but leaves intact the legitimiz-ing art ‘context’. Ray argues that only avant-garde or nomadic practicesmight unsettle institutional practice and hold the potential to activatesocial change. Within a Western trajectory, challenges to the dominantmode of production have historically taken this form. However, emergentmodes of art production are increasingly taking on a collective form andrest on a different set of assumptions about the relation between the indi-vidual, society and the natural environment, particularly in intersectionsbetween Western and Eastern traditions of cultural production.

A number of developing concepts and local practices give an indi-cation of the scope of response. Public space and social geography haveemerged as an important area of concern, first in terms of more tra-ditional creative interventions in public space and the development ofalternative productive spaces which focus on artist collectives and inter-disciplinary collaboration. A local example is found in the Gugulectiveart group practising in non-institutional spaces around Cape Town.26

The collective has been active since 2006, beginning in Cape Town’seastern townships where the group works and exhibits (primarily in alocal shebeen called Kwa Mlamli’s in Gugulethu). On the group’s blogKemang wa Lehulere reports on some of the activities and installationspresented at Kwa Mlamli’s in 2007, which ‘not only addressed issues ofaccessibility but was an on-going process of interrogating space’.27 Oneof the strategies was to address the misconception that ‘“Black” peopledo not read, which led to the creation of a study space in the bathroomand a sound installation in the toilet’. This work also sought to speakto the idea that ‘one’s environment is a major determinant in one’semotional and mental state’. The work seemed to reference SouthAfrica’s political and intellectual heritage, which was often shaped byconditions of confinement and isolation, but also sought to referencethe creation of ‘spaces of solitude for individuals living in overcrowdedhomes, which is a prevailing factor in most townships’.28

Their growing reputation has brought about interesting movementsbetween institutional engagement (exhibiting in prestigious galleries),accusations of ‘selling out’, and work beyond the white cube. TheGoodman Gallery described the collective, made up of a group ofyoung artists, musicians, writers, DJs, rappers and poets, as having ‘nego-tiated the boundaries that continue to fragment South African society’.29

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25. Ibid, pp 101–133, p 130

26. http://gugulective.net

27. Ibid

28. Ibid

29. http://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/gugulective

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They write that ‘the collective was born out of a need for intellectual andcreative spaces on the periphery of the mainstream art world’, and that by‘reimagining the shebeen as an exhibition space, the Gugulective havepersisted in having exhibitions in their own neighbourhood rather thanbeing pulled into the centre of town’.30 Their aim in choosing alternativespaces for exhibition and production is guided by a commitment to chal-lenging the patterns of social exclusion that permeate almost all aspects ofSouth African society. Their style also presents a challenge to the conven-tional ‘community development’ paradigm, as their project of inclusiveproduction and display of work rejects any concomitant notions ofpaternalism and ‘charity’, but rather sways towards provocative avant-gardism.

Second, there are new intersections between social movements,eco-urban concerns and art and design activism, which work towardsrethinking the relationship between the built environment, the naturalenvironment and the workings of democracy. The Dala project, whichbegan in the South African city eThekwini, takes as its starting point abelief in the ‘transformative role of creativity in building safer and morelive-able cities’.31 The project brings together creative practitioners fromdiverse backgrounds and disciplines, the municipality and the people andorganizations that live and work in the city to collaborate on creativeinitiatives. Dala seeks to cultivate creative practices outside the traditionalart institution in order to re-imagine public spaces and extend the socialand transformative power of art beyond the gallery space. Projects havetaken the form of theatre productions organized by a group of street chil-dren, a ‘city walk’ project that challenges residents to look differently at thedaily routes they take, architectural collaborations working on public artpieces, urban planning and development, and the ‘livelihoods initiative’which documents and explores informal entrepreneurial networks. Herenon-artists can participate in an expanded notion of the ‘art world’ notjust as spectators but as participants and agents in their own story-tellingprocesses. Within design practice, notions of human-centred design, acti-vist design (for example Adbusters’ ‘First Things First’ design manifesto),indigenous design, social ecology and social collaborative design aredemanding increasing attention in global forums and deliberations onthe role of art and design in shaping a sustainable future.

ART EDUCATION AS A VEHICLE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Educational institutions emerge as important points of contestation insuch debates, as they are spaces in which new and old modes of socializa-tion and knowledge production play out against one another. Edu-cational institutions in South Africa are under pressure to holdthemselves accountable to local socio-political circumstances character-ized by significant change. At the same time, they are compelled to partici-pate within a global system that operates through a neo-liberal capitalistlogic. Consequently, there are conflicting pressures to buy into or resistestablished practice driven by neo-liberal imperatives. How might theyresist these impulses, given their socially divisive tendencies, and helpto re-conceptualize the function of art and knowledge in society and itsalignment with socially transformative imperatives?

383

30. Ibid

31. http://www.dala.org.za

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One way in which art may be reconfigured as a socially emancipatorytool is by making use of artistic production, creative and critical practicewithin educational institutions as a means to address issues relating tosocial transformation, engagement with past injustice, negotiation ofsocial identity, questions of ethics and self–other relations. Creativethinking and imagination are crucial in all spheres of life and should bedeveloped widely in education and society, not only as the prerogativeof a privileged few. This is the premise of the recently established ‘Crea-tivity in Spaces of Learning’ Art in Schools Initiative, starting in Modder-dam High School in the Western Cape, in collaboration with StellenboschUniversity and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD inCanada) and artists working in the Modderdam/Bonteheuwel area.The project aims to ‘develop, encourage, and promote creative thinkingamongst teachers and learners by inserting visual art projects into the cur-riculum’ and to create ‘a dynamic network of artists and educatorsworking together to transform society by extending the power of creativethinking into the everyday lives of the youth’.32 The educational strategyseeks to impact the individual experiences of the students and those oftheir wider communities, and also to invigorate the field of art educationthrough innovative practice.

The project started in 2012, and one of the participating teachersreflects on it as living up to its inspiring aims, but also as burdened bythe complexities of work in the field. The participant reflected on thedaily challenges of working in an environment in which:

. . . students may come from ‘broken homes’. . . single parents work longshifts to make ends meet and the kids are left to fend for themselves,where domestic violence might be prevalent, where crime is a means of sur-viving and circumstances seem bleak.33

Negotiating a space for art practice within these harsh conditions sets insharp relief questions of social relevance and breezy notions of ‘socialtransformation’. Within this context, the function of art productionand creative expression is not easily contained by notions of aesthetic dis-tance and social critique, but rather becomes enmeshed with priorities ofdaily life. The participant described a project called ‘body relationships’in which ‘students work in groups of two and one student traces his/her partner’, after which they visually engage with:

. . . different themes such as the environment, health, nutrition, sexualhealth, sport and relationships in relation to their body. . . The studentsengage with their themes and in the process they learn something thatcould potentially be applied in their everyday lives.34

Martha Nussbaum argues that one of the central purposes of educationis to ‘cultivate [a student’s] ability to see complex humanity in placeswhere they are most accustomed to deny it’.35 This kind of skill requiresnot only theoretical and experiential knowledge but also the use ofimagination. Creating an imaginative and conscious citizenry is notthe sole prerogative of art as a singular discipline but rather of theliberal arts and their critical attitude in general. Thinking of artistic pro-duction as embedded within this wider sphere of practice might allow‘Art’ to function in a diverse and democratic, rather than insular andsolipsistic, way.

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32. Roderick Sauls and DavidSmith, funding proposalfor the Discretionary Fund,Stellenbosch University,2010

33. Monique Biscombe,informal written reflectionon the Modderdam Project,2012

34. Ibid

35. Martha Nussbaum,‘Education for Citizenshipin an Era of GlobalConnection’, Studies inPhilosophy and Education,vol 21, no 4/5, 2002,pp 289–303, p 301

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Art educational institutions might respond to the call for transformativepractice by engaging their students and staff in socially based practices andinitiatives in ways which radically democratize the relation between theacademy and the community. Yusef Waghid advocates a practice-orien-tated mode of knowledge production in educational institutions so that:

. . . knowledge is negotiated whereby people (educators, students, parents,communities, academics and other groups) make sense of their ownworlds, to determine their own interests, both individual and collective,and connect their experiences to relevant social issues.36

These challenges (if taken up as more than empty lip-service to nationalpolicy imperatives) propose a radical reconfiguration of institutional prac-tice. Art practice might be considered as a form of methodology and colla-borative research with communities in a way that enables ‘knowledgeproduction in the context of its application’.37 Based on the idea of usingartistic practice and design as a problem-solving tool and a medium forcross-cultural communication, the Visual Communication Design Depart-ment at Stellenbosch University developed a module called Citizenship aspart of the core curriculum. The department has developed a partnershipwith a youth-focused NGO based in Kayamandi, a township in Stellen-bosch, in which high school learners and university students collaborateon art and design projects on diverse themes such as race, cultural toler-ance, power relations, ecological preservation, health and community.The projects have ambitious aims of fostering a critical social conscienceamongst participants and exploring possibilities of the ways in whichissues that concern and mobilize the community might shape the university,rather than the other way round. This process will take time and requiresvested critical interest and analysis, and a radical reformulation of theimplicit hierarchies of intellectual heritage in South African institutions.

DEVELOPING LOCALLY ENGAGEDAESTHETIC DISCOURSES AND PRACTICES

Brenden Gray seeks to lend the field of socially engaged art some criticaltools, and argues that ‘socially engaged art discourses cannot avoid issuesof representational violence, and would benefit from understanding themas intrinsic and valuable to aesthetic practices conducted in everydaycommunity settings’.38 The Eurocentrism of many academic institutionsremains one of the most significant barriers to social transformationand local embeddedness. The role of art and culture is crucial in re-estab-lishing and re-invigorating intellectual and aesthetic practice that speaksto an African reality and heritage. Here we must be aware that the devel-opment of African art practice will not and should not ‘be characterisedby parochialism and ethnic essentialism’ because the ‘genesis of modernAfrican art is as closely linked to Europe as its future paths seem to belinked to globalism’.39 However, as Everlyn Nicodemus and KristianRomare argue, this process must ‘build on analyses of international aswell as of African structures’, of which the latter is given little space forarticulation within a Eurocentric intellectual paradigm.40 This dilemmapoints again to the importance of opening up access to spaces of creativeexpression, in terms not just of drawing in those previously excluded from

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36. Yusef Waghid, ‘KnowledgeProduction and HigherEducation Transformationin South Africa: TowardsReflexivity in UniversityTeaching, Research andCommunity Service’,Higher Education, vol 43,no 4, June 2002, p 457–488, p 466

37. William Cummings, ‘TheService UniversityMovement in the US:Searching for Momentum’,Higher Education 35,1998, pp 69–90 quoted inWaghid, op cit, p 458

38. Gray, op cit, p 368

39. Everlyn Nicodemus andKristian Romare, ‘Africa,Art Criticism and the BigCommentary’, Third Text41, 1997, p 57

40. Ibid

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established discourses, but also of opening up a space for new discoursesto emerge. Here we might heed Steve Biko’s insight that ‘other peoplehave become authorities on all aspects of African life’ and, consequently,‘a sincere attempt should be made at emphasising the authentic culturalaspects of the African people by Africans themselves’.41 Biko’s politicaland intellectual commitments suggest that his call is not exclusive interms of race or ethnicity but rather entails a persistent consciousnessof injustice, which should remain a driving force in both contemporarySouth African art and educational institutions.

Gray’s project Speak English to Me, conducted in Yeoville between2007 and 2008, problematizes relations between the art institution andthe society with which it engages. Referring to Stephen Wright, Grayargues that the ‘encoding of otherness for an “art audience” is at theheart of the problem of community-based art practice’.42 He argues thatthe following dilemma emerges: in order to disrupt the dominance of estab-lished aesthetic discourse, which frames community-based practice interms of ‘what the essence of art brings to a needy community’, we needto look at ‘what actually takes place (material transactionality) when aes-thetic representations perform outside of their normative institutional anddiscursive frameworks’.43 However, over-emphasizing the materiality ofartistic production risks stripping the process of its critical capacity. Con-sequently, community-based art practice either strays too far into the realmof the ‘everyday’, and sacrifices critical autonomy, or it ‘runs the risk ofcolonising and exoticising the everyday, imposing its normative definitionsof creativity in new places. . . in order to reinvent legitimate culture for pri-vileged audiences’.44 This dilemma stems from the condition of autonomywhich gives art its authority, but also from the institutions which protectthis autonomy and the broader systems of power in which they are compli-cit. As Gray suggests, there is no easy way out of this dilemma, and perhapsthe only way forward is through the recognition of the violence inherent inthe transactions between art and the realm of the everyday. Further criticalanalysis of these issues might contribute to a better understanding of thecomplex interweaving of institutional, social and cultural power, but itwill not necessarily enable the realization of more democratic and inclusivemodes of cultural production.

CONCLUSION

As we suggested earlier, educational institutions may provide the stagingground for contestations over legitimate knowledge production, andproblem-based social engagement itself could reveal new ways of imaginingcreative production and strategies of representation. Emerging interdisci-plinary practices like human-centred design and collaborative communityarts-based research are not as reliant on a ‘home’ of art, as they draw legiti-macy from their practical and emancipatory social potential. In this waythey can no longer necessarily claim legitimacy from or even be translatableto an established ‘art audience’. However, as their allegiance is pledged to‘a reality that lies in the future as a perpetual creation, but shaped by therevolutionary idea of total societal transformation’, such practices shouldbe considered as legitimate artistic and cultural production.45

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41. Steve Biko, I Write What ILike, Picador Africa,Johannesburg, 2004, p 40

42. Gray, op cit, p 387

43. Ibid

44. Gray, op cit, p 388

45. Tomaselli, op cit, p 15

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