Tuesday-Saturday from 2 PM-8 PM
Sundays from noon to 6 PM.
Every year, la Gaîté Lyrique sets out to explore the artistic peculiarities of major cities, the places where all change, movement and acceleration take place. After Berlin, Istanbul and Portland, we're taking a look at the blind spots of Johannesburg to discover the vitality of this other urban reality.
Sharp Sharp Johannesburg is thrilled to welcome artists working at the crossroads of music, the visual arts, performance, collaborative practices and pop culture.
In the vernacular, sharp sharp means "it's all cool." So let us take you through this city of 3 million people, this city in mutation, this laboratory of urbanity and self-reinvention.
4 thematic weeks to lift the veil on 4 different facets of the city, with 4 weekends of talks and presentations with guest artists, 4 installations and 4 evenings of concerts. Contradictory, radical and sensitive, Johannesburg is constantly transforming herself, on a quest for an experience of otherness, of humanity and cohabitation in a system that has become a world.
october 12 > 18
Lab of everyday life
A symbol of the right to the city won by black South Africans at the end of apartheid, Johannesburg has gone through the desertion of the whites, the influx en masse of African migrants, and entry into a neoliberal economy. This combination has propelled the city into dynamics of transformation that makes sensitive issues even more sensitive, such as the question of community, the relationship to space and to the common good. The city must reinvent her everyday life, groping and experimenting with new ways of being together.
october 19 > 25
Street cultures
Liberated from political struggle and driven by the emergence of a consumer society, the middle-class youth have taken over the streets and the world of pop culture, mixing U.S. type urban culture and the aestheticization of the township as a tool to build a new identity. These generations have turned the body into a statement of style and the street into a giant screen onto which they project an imagination that breaks away from existing affiliations.
october 26 > november 1st
A city in mutation
The metropolis bears the scars of racial politics and a conditioned urban culture. Johannesburg is calling her present into question and could very well go beyond her status of counter-urbanity to become the model of a city in transformation. By giving a voice to the buried fears and collective hopes, she is using science fiction to invoke the future. A fantastical city, Jo'burg is the future... and Spoek Mathambo is doing the soundtrack.
november 2 > 8
Reinventing the difference
The search for identity undertaken by blacks after the fall of apartheid is a true feat of strength. As free men and women, younger generations are questioning this identity. Bringing to light issues of homosexuality and racialization, they express the need to reinvent difference beyond assignment. Kwaito, the first electronic musical trend on the continent, has been the stimulating background noise for this movement .
SHARP SHARP JOHANNESBURG PARTNERS
Event organised as part of the South Africa ‐ France Seasons 2012 & 2013.
SHARP SHARP JOHANNESBURG MEDIA PARTNERS
