Lucky Sun returns with a two-track release “Remember / Warm Breeze”

Aug 2, 2024 | New Release, Music

UK electronic producer Lucky Sun (aka Tom Lown) returns this August with a chilled and deep, beach-friendly 2 track single package titled “Remember / Warm Breeze”.

Released last summer, Lucky Sun’s single “Falling Fool” featuring Jaidene Veda received high praise including plays at Cafe Del Mar, Ibiza and on BBC Radio 1.

The first track on this new release, “Remember”, glides in with filtered strings over a subtly broken beat, moving into a more deep/percussive groove. In the chorus, the Rhodes chords take us even higher and even features some subtle acid sounds.

The second track “Warm Breeze”, has a slightly retro feel that would fit perfectly beachside, with a groovy synth bass sitting over the timeless piano chords and melody.

 

Listen to “Remember / Warm Breeze” here

Press Release courtesy of Only Good Stuff

SASH founder, Sakhile Cebekhulu on Visual Arts and Fashion As Storytelling Tools

Aug 1, 2024 | Interviews, Fashion

There’s a secret in fashion that all the best brands – led by the best designers – weren’t fashion designers to begin with. Virgil Abloh was an architect, Raf Simons was an industrial designer and furniture maker (until he came across Martin Margiela’s work, which changed everything) and Miuccia Prada was building a career in political science before she took over her family business – the rest, as they say, is history. There’s something incredibly potent about the work of fashion designers when the pursuit of the medium is born from an alternate point of view, and the evidence suggests that a truly rich and dynamic fashion design approach is the consequence of so much outside of the actual clothing: the clothing becomes the manifestation of a deeper searching and understanding of the world. 

Sakhile ‘Sash’ Cebekhulu’s creative journey has been a tense interplay between his path as a visual artist, and his deep love for fashion. His brand SASH South Africa has been murmuring on the scene since 2016, predated by his career as an accomplished artist and painter – and it’s been three years since Sakhile made the commitment to focus on SASH full time, as its designer, creative director and founder. Simultaneous to this, Sakhile is a part of UNKNWNPROJCTS – an ongoing research project with some of his friends, that focuses on upcycling in the South African context for a more sustainable fashion future. As a son of Joburg, Sakhile’s design approach is a constant homage to the country of his heart, with storytelling as his primary tool (alongside his hard-won technical ability, forged at the University of Johannesburg as a fashion design graduate). I spoke to Sakhile as SASH’s latest collection, Phola Park ‘Sunday Best’ is released, a secondary addition to the major success of Phola Park that dropped in March, featuring in-house design mesh textile, showcasing Black families in an oil-painted scene. As Sakhile details, this notion of the African renaissance is the heartline of his work – whether as an artist, a fashion designer or a storyteller. 

On his origin, Sakhile shares that, “I was pretty good at visual arts in high school. So, when it came time to register for varsity – it was obvious that I would pursue something in visual arts. I had this interest in clothing and fashion at the same time, and I ended up doing fashion design at the University of Johannesburg,” Sakhile found the medium challenging, and “the technicalities of those first six months were difficult, and it was the guidance of a lecturer after my first semester that I really became immersed in the degree. All while I’m studying, I’m still in love with visual arts and practising on the side — painting at night, seeing my friends in the arts department.”

Sakhile is the kind of artist for whom his own agency in the work is priority. Though an avid and lifelong learner, the confines of a degree and its singular focus led to a kind of separation between him and fashion as a chosen medium, “when I graduated, because I’d had such a hard time studying, I was sick of fashion! I think the rigidity of school can sometimes challenge our love for a subject. So instead of going straight into fashion, I actually began practising as a visual artist almost full time. I was still making clothes on the side. I’d make a few pieces to sell, to help me buy my art supplies.”

 

Phola Park ‘Sunday Best’ photographed by Kgomotso Tleane for SASH South Africa

“It was a real tug of war between art and fashion in my early career. I was always bouncing between the two. Visual arts was my first love that introduced to me this whole creative world,” notes Sakhile, as he explains that his career as an artist took off, “My visual arts career got quite serious. I was doing shows, locally and internationally, and even though it was my main focus — I’d make myself an outfit for a showing opening. I was kind of in the middle of these two spaces, where people who knew my art didn’t realise my background in fashion — and vice versa.”

The dichotomy of Sakhile’s Jozi studio expressed his dualism as a creative – an art studio, split down the middle, with canvas on one side and a sewing machine on the other. It was in this space that Sakhile returned to fashion, though he never really had a desire to start a ‘brand’ – perhaps this is due to his artistic instincts, an in-born reluctance to commodify his creativity. In today’s landscape, artists are required to be their own kind of brand – but the idea of formalising his creative expression into an entity of its own, that needed to operate as a brand (marketing and selling, logistics and production), was never the goal – and it was only when Sakhile unlocked the storytelling potential of fashion as a medium, did his concerns fall away. SASH South Africa was born. Sakhile reminisces, “SASH was lightly started in 2016. I had no real interest yet in starting a clothing brand, but I had this deep love of fashion and making clothes. Every time I’d leave, it would always find me. Then in 2017, I got an opportunity to showcase at Mercedes-Benz SA Fashion Week — and I realised maybe this was worth pursuing, that there might be something in this?”

“My first collection in 2017 for fashion week was really exciting. I’d always been interested in the concept of installations instead of the traditional runway show. SASH was always this avenue through which I felt I could tell South African stories through clothing. So, my whole show was this scene of a taxi rank. When I pitched it, they thought it was crazy. But they let me do it, if I could organise it myself. We brought a taxi out onto the runway. It was wild.” shares Sakhile, and then, “I dropped ‘Bantu Space Odyssey’ which was inspired by a song, made by a friend of mine. That collection explored sci-fi and afro-futurism, through this fictional character ‘Bantu’ and a future in which Africa is the leading global power in the world, and he’s travelled to space to fight this warlord who is threatening the peace on earth. I treat each collection as its own story entirely —and I find my design process flows if I have a narrative or world built around the collection, so the garments are part of the story. I never feel confined to have all the collections be connected to each other rather than that each of them expresses a story or narrative that I’m interested in at that moment in time.”

In 2018 Sakhile was awarded at Design Indaba, and headed to Paris for shows at a gallery and to participate in AKAA ‘Also Known As Africa’ Art & Design Fair – but fashion was beckoning, and having his heart split into two became notable,  “I think 2021 was the year that I was able to reconcile the fact that I wanted to do just one thing, between fashion and art. I was so drained and I knew I wanted to step back from art. I had never really given SASH the kind of chance that I knew it deserved; part of which was my full attention. I will always revisit art throughout my life, whereas fashion is a young man’s game, you know?”

I ask Sakhile what his initial thought was behind focusing on SASH – what was the motivation? To which he says, “we’re in the city, we observe things and consume things constantly — and I always want to figure out how we can also challenge things, and take ownership of our stories and experiences in a creative way, and I wanted to know how fashion could achieve this. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been focused on the strategy and business aspect of the brand. I take longer in my process to work on collections because I’m so research focused, and finding ways to do textile development.”

Phola Park ‘Sunday Best’ photographed by Kgomotso Tleane for SASH South Africa

SASH South Africa has been a steady study in wearability, in a ready to wear context – and Phola Park (part one) launched in March, is built from a story that Sakhile has been writing for some years. It is a love letter – more than anything else – to the community, “Phola Park is this place where we will all go for healing and tranquillity, and all the people we love are there. I’d started writing about it before COVID, this beautiful place to connect and be with others, and after COVID – it felt more pertinent than ever. Everybody is dressed beautifully, in their Sunday best, and it has turned out to be a multiple part collection series. We’ve just dropped the second collection, which is a follow-up. My favourite day of the week is a Sunday and the collection explorers elevated ideas around what we did for the first Phola Park drop. I’ve tapped into my tailoring background, too.”

As an exploration of tailoring and contemporary cuts, Phola Park ‘Sunday Best’ is brimming with nostalgia – and its pieces are elegant yet carefree – with tartan suits and eyelet lace dresses, pink tailored sets for him and her – sharp tailoring across the board, and Sakhile’s most technically ambitious collection eyet. Encoded with emotion, as though you’ve seen old photographs of family members and realised their sartorial and spiritual influence on the person you are today, Sakhile clarifies that “Sunday’s are family days and people in South Africa dress up; there’s something nostalgic about Sundays. Whether it’s the memory of coming from church, to now meeting friends for lunch before the week ahead – Phola Park is about dressing up with the people you love.”

I ask Sakhile how he feels about this moment in South African design, to which he shares that “I’ve had the opportunity to travel, and yet I’m always reminded about what a unique place South Africa is. We are so layered here and there are just so many stories, from so many points of view — and we can’t overlook them. As South Africans, we are connected to each other beyond any of our divisions. I truly believe that. I even changed the name from SASH to SASH South Africa, because I want it to always be about South Africa — I want anyone who comes across the brand to know the brand’s origin instantly. It’s so important for me, and I’m a patriot of the country. Our nation is beautiful. There’s no place like South Africa,” and that from a specifically fashion design perspective, “I am really excited about this era of ready-to-wear that designers are doing in the country. We’re a new breed of designers who are making clothes that people can access and wear on a daily basis, and we’re breaking democratising fashion in so many ways. We’re almost the first to do what we’re doing – from luxury, to streetwear and so on. And storytelling seems to be intrinsic to the way fashion is being created in South Africa. It’s very exciting and very new.”

Lastly, Sakhile shares his wisdom of navigating brand-building while staying true to his creative freedom; and the constant task he has set himself to redefine his perspective and mediums, as he intuitively feels guided to, “I believe in organic growth. I’ve tried to work it as it goes with the brand, and move slowly but effectively through the years. I’ve never wanted SASH to overextend itself. I’ll be a student forever. I hope that no matter what I do, that I’m always learning and unpacking whatever I can – even if it’s difficult or frustrating. I think we’re in a powerful time where fashion is becoming a beautiful community where I know I can call on designers and friends, and we all have each other’s backs.” 

Phola Park ‘Sunday Best’ is a culmination of many years as a designer and storyteller and our conversation revealed Sakhile’s profound affection for South African – I can think of no greater artistic task, than to create art that is wearable, accessible and South African. Viva. 

Pre-order Phola Park ‘Sunday Best’ HERE

Written by: Holly Beaton

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za

Chapter 29 | The Evolution of E-Commerce and How it’s Changing the Way we Interact with Fashion

Jul 31, 2024 | Fashion, Interlude

In the valley of distribution warehouses and embedded beneath stratas of logistics, lies a story about just how much the way in which we interact with fashion has changed, forever. Online shopping is about as normal to us now as the smartphones that we use – but if you asked someone in the 2000s what their cell phones might be able to do in just a few years, they might struggle to reconcile a future in which one’s phone is almost an extension of the body – full of endless apps for every kind of human thought, desire or need. Fashion, too, has changed profoundly, benefitting from the same kind of integrated advancements that have touched just about everything else in our lives. Yet, the idea of ‘click, pay, delivery’ in the realm of fashion is still kind of novel, if we think of the relative influence this form of shopping has had in just two decades. With it, the concept of purchasing a piece of clothing has led to stunning changes in marketing, advertising, brand-building, logistics, technology and more. 

Fashion as an industry today is inseparable from the tech-start up culture originating out of Silicon Valley in the late 1990s, and its transformation is a tale of globalisation, influenced by the pursuit of accessibility and entrepreneurship. South Africa’s own local context similarly bears all the markers of this tale. This chapter of Interlude takes a look at how E-Commerce came to change the way we interact with fashion, and touches on the hyper-localised backdrop of South Africa’s growth in this regard. 

In 2000, Natalie Massenet changed fashion commerce forever with the launch of Net-A-Porter: an online fashion platform that introduced the concept of a truly “fashion-forward” e-commerce retail concept that integrated luxury fashion purchasability, professional styling, and editorial content. The internet in the year 2000 was in a very antiquated form of itself (compared to today) with dial-up-connection being its operating power, and website design was generally very basic (complex websites took up a huge amount of bandwidth to run). E-commerce was in its infancy and posed a huge cyber security risk – basically, it was the dark ages, and the idea of an online fashion ‘marketplace’ was actually revolutionary. When Net-A-Porter launched, it featured a magazine layout, and its marketing strategy used the technique of fashion editors and stylists to create the sense of a fashion catalogue; it was Vogue or Harper’s, only online, and you could click on the images of what you wanted and have it delivered to your door. This earliest iteration of the ‘digital magazine’ prototype fused with an actual commercial function was long before any brand or designer had their own website or Shopify – let alone an Instagram or any kind of presence on a rotation of social media platforms. 

Screenshot of Ssense.com Womenswear Page

Screenshot of Net-A-Porter’s edits style strategy

That same year, ASOS was launched – meaning ‘As Seen On Screen’ – as the ‘high-street’ mid-weight answer to fashion e-commerce. The aim was to democratise fashion, introducing the notion of ‘fast-fashion’ to a digital and clickable format, and targeted for a younger audience. ASOS and Net-A-Porter’s early conception showcase the ultimate motivation behind e-commerce; the abundance of choice, anytime, anywhere and for any occasion. By 2001, ASOS was already listed on the London Stock Exchange – and its success, along with Net-A-Porter’s, laid the groundwork for the emergence of platforms like Zalando and FarFetch, and niche vintage spaces like Vestaire.

The idea that order fulfilment could take place anywhere in the world to satiate all kinds of sartorial needs revolutionised the fashion industry. This global reach was facilitated by the development of sophisticated e-commerce supply chains with integrated and efficient logistics networks and advanced inventory management systems. Warehouses were built en-masse and strategically located near key markets, and enabled faster delivery times, while partnerships with international shipping companies ensured that products could reach customers in even the most remote locations. Supported by technologies like RFID and real-time tracking systems improved inventory accuracy and allowed for seamless order processing. The result of this intricate supply chain is what we know today – and which almost all brands are engaged with on some level. E-commerce has dawned an unprecedented level of convenience and choice for shoppers, who can now access the latest trends and niche items from around the world with just a few clicks.

In 2010 in a tiny shared office space in Salt River, Cape Town – Luke Jedeiken, Claude Hanan, and Daniel Solomon were cooking up ‘CityMob’, a startup initially focused on developing digital discount vouchers. It would be their rebrand into Superbalist that marked the trio’s entrepreneurial magnum opus; one of South Africa’s first and most successful fashion retailers. Founded during the millennial golden years, the founders recognised the growing potential of e-commerce in the South African market and built a platform that combined local fashion sensibilities with global trends: a local focus with a global vision. Using a symphony of integrated tactics from the site’s blog ‘The Way of Us’, an in-house team of stylists, editors, buyers, copywriters, UX designers – to say Superbalist was cutting edge for its time is an understatement. A little bit of my own lore includes being a ‘client concierge’ as one of my first jobs for Superbalist; they had just been bought by Takealot, and their massive open plan office in Foreshore felt like being immersed in a real industry with movers and shakers of the future. After selling to Takealot, Jedeiken and Hanan are now at TFG’s Bash – to spearhead the company’s digital transformation, leveraging their extensive experience in e-commerce to enhance TFG’s online presence and streamline its omni-channel strategies.

If you’ve shopped on Superbalist, you’ll know that there is always a discount available and some kind of sale taking place – this ‘flash sale’ marketing technique is omnipresent, and was a foundational factor in the development of Superbalist. In a landscape like South Africa, where online shopping was novel and unknown in the early 2010s, the incentivisation born from psychological manoeuvring in constant sales led to a significant boost in consumer engagement and trust. By offering continuous discounts and flash sales, Superbalist effectively lowered the perceived risk for first-time online shoppers, making it more appealing to try out the new medium – a tried and true strategy that encouraged repeat purchase globally, ultimately aiding Superbalist in building a loyal customer base that became accustomed to checking the site regularly for deals. The constant stream of promotions created a sense of urgency, prompting customers to make quicker purchasing decisions and reducing the likelihood of ‘cart abandonment’. This approach drove immediate sales and established Superbalist as a go-to destination for trendy and affordable fashion; with the promise of fashion for any person, almost anywhere in the country. 

“Consumption” by Ron Lach via Pexels

The success of fashion e-commerce is a feat of technological integration. With tech-driven business models, emergent strategies like ‘omni-channel’ touch points mean that your favourite retailer is a cohesive entity, available to you on a website, via an app, and has a unified identity on social media platforms. Tech has enabled companies to be present in your life no matter where you are; a huge departure from needing your arrival at their physical store in order to secure a sale. The pulse of online retailers are pumped by sophisticated data analytics that are constantly recording and negotiating every interaction with customers – old, new, potential or simply hard to win over. 

The future of fashion retail is poised to be shaped by a continued evolution of technology and shifting consumer preferences. We will likely see a future of augmented reality (AR) fitting rooms, AI-driven personalisation, and blockchain for transparent supply chains. As digital aesthetes prioritise authenticity, platforms like Ssense that use deeply thoughtful, culturally relevant and almost satirical marketing strategies signal online fashion’s behemothic position as entities of cultural production; as we look to them to define the tastes and desires that we never actually knew that we had. Simultaneously, the growing importance of sustainability and ethical practices present massive challenges. As I’ve written many times before, fashion faces immense mounting pressure to adopt sustainability as a core concern; and brands will have to find ways to reduce waste, and ensure fair labour practices, pushing retailers to rethink their supply chains and business models.

If in twenty four years, people can go from ordering over a telephone with a code from a catalogue to receiving a garment to clicking a few buttons on a screen — surely, technology can reshape the next phase of online retail?

Written by: Holly Beaton

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za

Cee Elassaad releases “Tribe” featuring Masaki Morii

Jul 26, 2024 | New Release, Music

Building on the success of their previous collaboration ‘Jump up to dis,’ which climbed to the Traxsource Afro House Top 10, Moroccan DJ and producer Cee ElAssaad and ENSOULED head honcho have teamed up once again with Japanese producer Masaki Morii. Together, they’ve released a soulful and groovy Afro track titled ‘TRIBE,’ out on ENSOULED. ‘TRIBE’ is a percussive masterpiece that seamlessly blends dubby elements with lead synth solos, underpinned by a powerful spoken word message: “We are a Tribe, We are interconnected, You and me, We are interconnected.” This track serves as a unifying call, inviting artists and dancers to come together as one tribe, bound by the universal language of music.

This new collaboration promises to be a soulful anthem for unity, merging Cee ElAssaad’s organic and percussive style with Masaki Morii’s soulful grooves. The track’s message of unity and togetherness is poised to resonate deeply with listeners, encouraging a sense of belonging and collective spirit. As the third release on the ENSOULED label, ‘TRIBE’ continues the tradition of high-quality House music that has come to define the label. Fans of Cee ElAssaad and Masaki Morii, as well as Afro House enthusiasts, can look forward to a track that not only delights the ears but also inspires the soul.

 

Listen to “Tribe” here

Press Release courtesy of Only Good Stuff

Japanese producer Yuu Udagawa has released “Ride It” (JKriv Remix)

Jul 26, 2024 | New Release, Music

Japanese producer Yuu Udagawa is back with some jazzy deep house, including remixes by the maestros Fred Everything and JKriv.  

Tokyo-based Yuu Udagawa inspired by a diverse range of genres, including Nu-Jazz, Kraut Rock, Hip-Hop, Minimal House, Detroit, and Electronica, is continuously exploring a unique style that captivates a broad audience. Her profound love for the sounds of analog synthesizers breathes an elegant and sophisticated atmosphere into her electronic sound. Her music offers a captivating fusion of uplifting and soothing elements, embodying Aristotle’s philosophy of the golden mean, which she adopts in her endeavour to contribute to society.

Yuu, who studied art and philosophy in high school, has since performed at clubs, festivals and fashion shows and is now a regular in the lounges of five-star hotels like the Park Hyatt Tokyo, showcasing her versatility as a DJ. Drawing on her insights and extensive experience in creating musical atmospheres in various spaces, she continues expanding her musical creation journey.

 

In 2010, she composed “Blossom,” the main menu BGM for Sony PlayStation 3 (Torne and Vita), captivating gamers. After that, she released several tracks for various projects. In 2021, her music caught the eye of German artist Manuel Tur, leading to her music being released through prestigious labels such as Compost Records in Munich, Germany, Cyphon Recordings in London, founded by Jimpster and Tom Roberts, to the up-and-coming Cosmocities Records in Dijon, France, and the popular Razer- N-Tape in Brooklyn, USA. These collaborations have boosted her international visibility. She was invited by Freerange Records in London to deliver a DJ MIX on Apple Music to celebrate International Women’s Day 2024.

Beyond music, Yuu creates immersive soundscapes for various spatial environments, such as museums, installations, spas and aquariums. Her portfolio boasts remarkable achievements producing 7.1 channel surround sound for 3D hologram theatres. One of her notable works is her sound installation ‘Water Crest’, an immersive audio experience by Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, which was exhibited in Japan’s first immersive museum, which featured masterpieces by Monet, Degas, and other Impressionists and drew in 170,000 visitors.

 

Website:  www.yuu-udagawa.com

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/yuu.udagawa88

Instagram:  www.instagram.com/yuu.udagawa

Soundcloud:  https://soundcloud.com/vigoomix

Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/artist/0HD4Fb8pIvG6kaN97kUQDC

Bandcamp:  https://yuuudagawa.bandcamp.com

 

Listen to “Ride it” Here

 

Press release courtesy of Compost Records

AFROSPORT: an archive on sports as a creative phenomenon in Africa

Jul 25, 2024 | Interviews, Art

Sport is indisputably a creative art-form. It orients the body, the first point of expression, in relationship to movement, rhythm and space – whether accompanied by an extended apparatus of expression (be it a ball, gloves, surfboard and so on) – sport is inherently communal, and forms part of a larger expression of what it means to be human: what it means to inhabit a body. We are bound to this world by the arrangement of muscle and fascia that coalesce our bones, hinged by joints and operational through our neurological network – the body is technology, and sport is one of our greatest computing processes. With sport, we engage with reality through discipline and motivation and its expression, across the many forms and categories throughout time and cultures, are deeply embedded into who we are. I don’t have to convince you of the meaning in sport; as South Africans, we don’t need to look much further than the inarticulable unification across race, ethnicities and creed when it comes to the Springbok’s achievements since 1994. 

Sport stands as one of the single most relevant cultural projects that we have ever undertaken. 

As with much of the cultural dynamics within the African context, sport is a dichotomous expression between the precolonial lineages of movement, and later postcolonial inheritances, now embedded in the fabric of the continent’s vast and nuanced regions. This complex relationship forms the heart of AFROSPORT, a book creative directed by Peet Pienaar and containing the work of 25 writers and 30 photographers. The book has been published by Mami Wata, an African surf brand of which Pienaar and Nick Dutton are two of the co-founders. Using the substance of sport as a lens to explore design, the book is a seminal, visual and written study on the culture of design, expression and connection across the continent; from soccer mania in South Africa spanning to Morocco, or the Muay Thai revolution in Togo, or the tradition of wrestling in Senegal – to breakdancing in Nigeria and the story of building a basketball industry in Africa. From the perspective of design, the book is enriched with essays and graphic depictions, mapping ways in which motifs of such sporting movements give rise to cultural productions, whether through sartorial cultures among fans, experiences of identities, or stories told through logos. Within the relationship between African sport and design there is that innate spirit of resourcefulness and creativity that has always rendered the continent such a stunning ensemble of the senses. 

Among many things, the book charts the way in which soccer contributed to political liberation in Algeria’s fight for independence (achieved in 1962), and of course – our own transformation through rugby, arguably one of our truly achieved expressions of Mandela’s ‘rainbow nation’ from 1994 until today. AFROSPORT is a love-letter to the wild tales of movement in Africa, and the importance of its intent is so succinctly described in the book’s forward by former basketball player Joakim Noah – as he writes, “a young tennis player in Kenya can now show the world her skills through videos made on her phone. A Muay Thai fighter in Lome can take part in a global virtual competition hosted in Bangkok. This is already happening. Alongside the changes Africa is creating itself, the future of African sport will also be shaped by how we come together with the continent. We must know our history, our place in the present, and how we want to project ourselves into the future.”

AFROSPORT© Springbok Captain Siya Kolisi

AFROSPORT© featuring breakdancers in Nigeria

For Peet and Nick, the book is the second iteration following AFROSURF – a similar project that focused solely on the untold legacy of surf culture in Africa. As Peet explains, “after creating Afro Surf, we realised that there was a greater context of sport in Africa, of which surfing was part of. We wanted to learn what the history of that was and what role design played in that. At the same time I was researching design in Africa and its relationship with design in the west. Sport was a great place to look at as for a large part its universal, diverse and the place where different cultures meet but also has a big impact on local culture making.” Among Africans, there is a palpable sense of a revelatory moment for the continent, despite the challenges that we contend with – from the legacies of colonialism, the tides of globalisation, the political and socio-economic complexities of being the bread basket of the world, with little in return. The perception of the continent in the eyes of the world can be summed up by the harrowing and explicit geographical error in which Africa’s size is distorted on maps to look smaller than it is. Yet, Africa remains the mother continent – and her stories are yet to be fully told, loud and clear. 

As Peet notes, “sport in Africa is extremely creative, and what drives it mostly is the desire to be seen, and to be acknowledged. There is an ocean of new sports developing and these new sports challenge western culture in an incredibly creative way we don’t see coming from the rest of the world,” and that in developing AFROSPORT, the hope is that it will challenge tropes used to to confine the continent to singular perceptions, namely that “Africa is much more than a rural and traditional culture. Africa is challenging brands like Nike’s cultural meaning. Africa is challenging western design. Africa will produce not only the best new athletes in every sport, but will bring many new sports to the table. Sport in Africa cannot be separated from popular culture and design.”

Nick shares that, “for me, the book creates connections between different things – design, story telling, sport, data, creativity, history, popular culture – that hasn’t been done before. These new connections should inspire fresh thinking and perspectives that challenge and redefine how people think about the continent,” and AFROSPORT indeed undertakes the immensely tall order of condensing the vast and varied context of the continent into something comprehensive – that touches on the swathe of 54 countries that inhabit its 30,365,000 square kilometres from shore to shore. As Peet explains on their approach, “it’s a massive problem to try and box a whole continent with so many cultures into one book, so we tried not to simplify something extremely complex. We just started to speak to writers and researchers from all over the continent and let stories come in. It was very quickly that we started to see some links between stories and that was our golden thread. There are as many stories as there are people and some people might have more than one story, it’s obvious this is just a tip of something really big.”

Peet is a renowned designer and artist, and AFROSPORT synthesises bold, graphic style signatures to his style, as an exploration of Africa’s design lexicon in the context of sport. The book is a kaleidoscopic, visual feast, portraying the efficacy of using sport as a means to understand Africa’s contemporary design vision. “Firstly we need to acknowledge that everything in terms of design in Africa is seen as vernacular in the west.” says Peet, adding, “One of the best places to challenge this perception would be to look at a space like sport and design in Africa. Except for a few traditional sports in Africa, sport in general is the melting point of different cultures. Design in sport in Africa comes from within the sport community and is not drenched in traditional culture, and is a good place to start looking at design in Africa that is not only about traditional culture. This allows one to see a much better version of what drives contemporary design on the African continent. I looked at design influences from outside on design in Africa, how it was interpreted and how Africa influenced design in western culture. I believe all design is this constant play of influence presented with a new local context. Instead of visual influence only, I focused on the conceptual influence behind the visual influence. I reject the idea that western design is the universal default of design.”

AFROSPORT Featuring Caster Semenya

AFROSPORT© photographed by Jo Voets

From Mami Wata’s perspective, AFROSPORT forms part of the brand’s larger vision as an exploratory vehicle for Africa, their adage is ‘creative force for good’, to which Peet explains the precise reason why the book fulfils this vision, “because of the population explosion in youth, Africa will in the next 10 years have a massive impact on world sport. Books around design and sport on the African continent are non-existent, we need to be able to understand ourselves better and where we fit into a bigger picture of design and sport in the world. And the world needs to understand what cultural impact this will bring to the world. Our first book had a massive impact on how the world now sees Africa and surf. We believe this book will also have an impact in how the world sees sport and Africa,” and Nick adds that, “As with AFROSURF, profits from AFROSPORT will go to African youth surf therapy organisations. Also, we do see a part of our ‘creative force for good’ vision as changing the narrative around Africa and using creativity to do this. There are many facts, pieces of information and perspectives in the book that we’ve tried to communicate in new ways that we hope allows people to view Africa through new and different lenses.”

AFROSPORT is a limited edition publication of 2000 copies, and it beckons a new era of exploration in African design and its tangibility is precisely its skilfulness, with Nick explaining that, “one thing that we want people to feel is that in a very fast moving digital world of content (of all sorts) that the physical object of a book, a tangible real world thing, with its investment in time, investigative thought, research, craft and design is a compelling way to engage with new ideas,” and Peet hopes that “If you are from Africa we hope you feel excited and seen and want to learn more about ourselves. If you are not from Africa we hope you realise the African tsunami is real, that it’s very exciting and because it’s a sport, it allows a connection and participation point to engage with Africa.” AFROSPORT is a formative and influential archive of Africa’s 21st century. A hardcopy talisman that predicts that it’s Africa’s century – the cultural renaissance for the aeon has just begun. 

AFROSPORT is published by Mami Wata, purchase a copy HERE.

  

AFROSPORT© photographed by Rogers Ouma

AFROSPORT, Photographer Unknown (image of Robert Wangila)

Written by: Holly Beaton

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za

John Galliano Is Reportedly Leaving Maison Margiela After A Decade At Its Helm

Jul 24, 2024 | News, Fashion

British designer John Galliano, the king of theatrics and extravagance, has spent the last decade revitalising his relationship with fashion while at the helm of Parisian couturier Maison Margiela. Emerging on the scene in the 1990s as an alumni of Central Saint Martins, Galliano has been lauded as one of the most incisively brilliant designers in the modern era. Now, it seems, Galliano is concluding his tenure at Maison Margiela, with reports that he will not be renewing his contract when it expires at the end of this year. 

As HYPEBEAST reports, “sources in the industry have reported that Galliano is ready for change. Maison Margiela’s owner Renzo Rosso has reportedly urged Galliano to stay at the house, but despite ample requests, Galliano is said to have made up his mind about not renewing his contract with the Paris-based fashion house.” This speculation has been amplified by Galliano wiping his Instagram, generally noted as a digital strategy in signalling change.

This year has been regarded as the most successful for Galliano’s tenure at Maison Margiela; while industry insiders and fans have noted his work at the house for the last decade, his 2024 ‘Artisanal Collection’ show in January under the Pont Alexandre III swept the stage, with mass congratulation and many saying this show single handedly brought back ‘true fashion’ against the swathe of logomanic, hyper-consumption in luxury fashion. The show suffused the mood of early 20th century Paris and Galliano’s love for burlesque, along with fabric manipulation techniques that evoked distortion of the body and brought to question notions of beauty outside the constraints of societal norms. 

Maison Margiela Artisanal Co-ed 2024 Collection by John Galliano, sourced via @maisonamargiela IG

Maison Margiela Artisanal Co-ed 2024 Collection by John Galliano, sourced via @maisonamargiela IG

Wanting to leave on high note feels pertinent for a designer like John Galliano, who along with his brilliance, has been no stranger to difficulty – marked by intense pressures in the fashion industry and personal battles with addictions and controversy, which ultimately led to him being fired from Dior in 2011. Perhaps as a means to rewrite this past incident, Galliano’s foresight in knowing that this current moment is the best time to leave could speak to the immense growth and solace he has found at Maison Margiela – a brand that he has made his home, and his own, with the reported blessing of Martin Margiela himself as detailed by System Magazine.

Some are saying the designer could head to Fendi, though nothing has been confirmed regarding his exit from Margiela – and a return to Dior seems very unlikely, given his history with the house. With John Galliano’s redemptive arch continuing and the promise of a healthier, ‘second’ career in fashion – we look forward with bated breath to see fashion’s darling ‘enfants terribles’ next and no doubt exceptional, move.

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za

Framing Flavour: Art and Photography at Food Indaba

Jul 24, 2024 | Lifestyle, Community

Now in its tenth year, Food Indaba has been exploring our complex food system in unconventional, educational and fun ways. This year Food Indaba is taking place from Monday 22 July to Sunday 4 August with various events at venues across Cape Town, including the V&A Waterfront precinct, Mowbray, Langa, Philippi and Stellenbosch.

The first of two Art Café High Tea events at the 16 on Lerotholi Gallery features artist and culinary curator Parusha Naidoo. As the descendant of Indian indentured slaves who laboured on sugarcane plantations in Natal, and the grandchild and child of anti-apartheid activists, Naidoo will share stories and readings of food, power and belonging over a thali of South African breads, spreads, chutneys, pickles and cakes served with masala teas. This event takes place on Saturday 27 July from 14h00 to 16h00.

The second Art Café High Tea event at the 16 on Lerotholi Gallery features Tapiwa Guzha. ‘Svutusove’ is a five-course drink and ice cream (and sorbet) conversation, highlighting foraged fynbos and continental plants while introspecting on the displacement of native plant life from both domestic and agricultural space. ‘Svutosove’ is a chance to reignite the practice of homemade, healthier alternatives to the ultra-processed commercial standards. This event takes place on Saturday 3 August from 14h00 to 16h00.

Each of the Art Café High Tea participating artists is contributing works toward a group exhibition which will run for the duration of Food Indaba at 16 on Lerotholi Art Gallery in Langa.

Portrait of Tapiwa Guzha supplied by Food Indaba

Portrait of Parusha Naidoo supplied by Food Indaba

Snap and Savour: Photography Food Scene

The V&A Waterfront’s Luxury Lane will host the photography exhibition of recipes and meals cooked and enjoyed in African homes, featuring a series of 12 works by winners of the ICLEI Africa African photography competition from last year’s entries. The art exhibition will run for the duration of Food Indaba from 22 July to 3 August 2024.

In addition, the #AfricanCITYFOODMonth campaign, in collaboration with AfriFOODlinks, runs in conjunction with Food Indaba and invites photographers across the continent to highlight an unsung hero or champion in their city’s food system. This could be a grandparent keeping a traditional food culture alive, a researcher uncovering food system dynamics, a food vendor at the market, a small business selling vegetables in your neighbourhood or even an entrepreneur working with food waste – but all with a personality, story or outlook that will inspire.  Entries must include a short explanation of the person’s work and what makes them a food systems hero. For more information and to submit your entry visit here.

Food Indaba features a range of events, both ticketed and free. Many are open to the public, while some, which are geared more toward academic and industry audiences, are by invitation only. One of the informative free events for all to attend is the Pan African Webinar hosted by Afrifoodlinks. The online webinar titled Power and Hunger is a significant discussion about the weaponising of hunger. The annual in person conference with the same title, for the first time this year, will be a full day affair and will see the D-School (UCT’s design school) creating a Design-Dash, which is a design thinking problem solving toolkit around the solutions to food issues.

Photography by Steyn Hoogakker

Photography by Steyn Hoogakker

For more information:

Website: foodindaba.org 

Facebook: fb.me/foodindaba

Instagram: @food.indaba

Twitter: @foodindaba

LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/showcase/food-dialogues 

Press Release courtesy of TenX Collective

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za

Caged by your Career? How to navigate feeling stuck, professionally.

Jul 23, 2024 | Lifestyle, Navigating Reality

Have you ever seen those absolute anxiety-inducing caving videos on YouTube? The ones where people explore ridiculously tight (and often uncharted) cave systems with nothing more than a GoPro and the hope that their morning bowl of oats didn’t bloat them enough to get stuck. Even consuming the content seems to come with its fair share of gut-wrenching moments when it looks like there is no end to the suffocating, all-encompassing tightness around them, no light at the end of the tunnel, just damp, dark dirt. 

Now, let me ask, have you ever felt stuck not in the physical sense but rather in a mental capacity?

Ironically, when the team landed on this very topic for this month’s volume of Navigating Reality, it really resonated with me. Maybe some keen-eyed readers have picked up that from at least the start of 2024, the topics in our Navigating Reality segment have seemingly tackled an overarching theme of doubt, repackaging and rediscovering oneself. This is no coincidence, as the topics I generally put forward mirror my life and psyche. “Write what you know”, they always say! Well, here’s the truth. What I know at this moment is that my life closely resembles the caving experience I described above. I find myself navigating an increasingly complex world with increasingly complex battles. Truth be told, I feel stuck. Stuck in a professional sense, stuck in mundane routine and stuck creatively. 

I know I’m not the only one who is facing this feeling and I wonder if maybe we just had too lofty expectations? Nonetheless, I am here to say that despite all this sense of self-doubt, uncertainty, and imposter syndrome still being very present in my daily life, it’s not as hopeless as I may have made it seem. First and foremost, it is vital to be aware that none of us are alone in this feeling of being stuck in our lives or careers. A shocking 75% of people in a study conducted by Oracle in the US said they felt stuck in a professional capacity. 

Statistics out of South Africa, unfortunately, aren’t much better. In an extensive survey in 2019 by Universum SA reports that South Africans list their job satisfaction at around a 6 out of 10 and unanimously say that job security trumps job satisfaction. This is all pre-Covid, mind you, and current stats show job satisfaction has absolutely plummeted. Despite some lazy journalism and clickbait titles claiming South Africans are some of the happiest in the world (based on nothing more than work engagement), it takes no more than a quick ctrl+F in the same Gallup State of the Global Workplace used to see that this statement is horrendously misleading. Less than half of the respondents said that it would be a good time to find a new job and a meagre 32% of the respondents, who already are from a small sample of actual employed South Africans, thought that they’d be in a better situation five years from now.  

Photography by Mark Forbes via Death to Stock

Image sourced via Pexels

I think it is also here within this report by Universum SA and Gallup that something becomes apparent. Although that feeling of being stuck in your job is more or less universal, the manner in which individuals in different regions and economies experience being stuck is drastically different. The experience of feeling stuck professionally within a thriving German economy with 5.8% unemployment and an incredibly strong social welfare and grant system simply isn’t comparable at all to the South African experience. 

I distinctly remember that on a month-long trip to Berlin in 2019, a friend’s roommate suddenly lost their job. Coming from our job market, I extended my sincere condolences, offered support and asked what her plan was going forward. Her response was calm, almost unnervingly so, as she simply said she’d file for benefits which would be enough to cover her rent and her expenses, take some time off and maybe go to the job centre in a month or two. Losing a job in South Africa seems like a devastating, potentially life-altering event. Here’s the last bit of depressing statistics, I promise. From 2008 to 2023, tertiary education graduates’ unemployment doubled from 5.8% to 12%. Damningly, that means that graduate unemployment in SA is higher than overall unemployment in Greece (11%), which is a notoriously unstable and struggling economy. 

Not for it to be all doom and gloom, but I have sifted through the annals of the internet to find some solution for those of us stuck, trapped, and terrified of what the future may hold. In this there is a dilemma, as regurgitating advice from predominantly US-based publications, holistic coaches, and shady finance gurus would be misplaced and potentially dangerous. Simply put, we are in a different boat and in a different economic sphere. We are a tiny economy, filled with stories of rags to riches and the inverse of that, entrepreneurs and tenderpreneurs, hustlers and those who are hustled out of their hard earned cash.

Now, I think we must first analyse why we feel stuck, and honestly, the range of reasons is as vast and complex as you can imagine. No two individuals experience life in the same way; thus, their reasons for experiencing a professional or personal dead end will also vary greatly. We could have outgrown our current situation, becoming too comfortable in the known, we could simply be overwhelmed with the present or with a future that doesn’t seem all too inviting, or we fear that we will be judged a failure, a quitter and not measure up to our contemporaries. In fact, as is the case with me, all the above can be true. So how, then, do we actively work towards untangling ourselves from this mental cage? 

The Office image licensed by Alamy

Many suggest we try to make concrete what we want and don’t want, but I find this almost to be too large and abstract an idea. I much prefer the advice that we should break tasks down as small as possible to avoid that overwhelming burnout that is always a risk. As Allison Zweig, a licensed clinical social worker, says, “small actions mean you avoid analysis paralysis”. She also emphasises that big decisions shouldn’t be made at a whim and that plenty of time and planning should go into a decision that carries so many consequences. With this in mind, the South African College of Applied Psychology suggests some measures to take some of the financial pressure off through planning, if possible by setting aside an emergency fund and recreating a monthly salary while you hunt for your next position. In truth, I think one of the most important aspects for me comes down to broadening my knowledge, whether it be in a field I am already in or something new I find interesting. You often hear that people really found their professional passion in something that started out as nothing more than a new hobby they were interested in.

There is so much power in the freedom that a career pivot can provide, and your 30’s and after are the absolute perfect time for such a shift in time and energy. As Caroline Castrillon writes for Forbes, “Your thirties can be an ideal time to reinvent your career. At that point, you have substantial life experience, a solid set of transferable skills and a strong professional network. Plus, you’re more financially stable than you were a decade earlier. Some reasons for changing careers at 30 include wanting more flexibility, needing a new challenge or a desire to start a business, among others”. 

Queen and certified bad bitch Martha Stewart pivoted from being a full-time model to a stock broker before starting her cooking and cuisine empire. The brainchild behind the brain rot that is Buzzfeed, Jonah Peretti, was teaching high school kids Microsoft Office in his 30s before breaking the bank one “11 Delightful Poems Found In PornHub Comments” headline at a time.  

This brings me to my final point: we need to allow ourselves the joy and privilege of failure. 

It’s ok to start something new. It’s ok to not really know what you’re doing. It’s okay to fail, to start over and over and over again because however necessary money may be and however much we envy those with enticing, endless riches, your own personal happiness is the one thing that should always take priority. “Comparison is the thief of joy”, and when it comes to your career and achievements, it can hit extra hard. Take my uni apartment mate and me as an example, he just made the Mail and Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans, and I just called Martha Stewart a bad bitch, but fuck it I’m figuring it out, and I know that at some point I’ll find my calling and purpose. Whether that is through writing or something completely different is yet to be decided and that is also ok. The average person will change careers five to seven times in their life. Maybe to move forward in a personal and professional capacity, it is time to take a step back to see a picture and a whole future of possibilities that far exceed the day-to-day drab of comfort at what cost. So send that CV, upskill, update that LinkedIn bio and good luck finding or even creating your dream job.

Written by: Casey Delport

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za

The Body As Technology And Other Sci-Fi Wisdom with Film Director and Media Artist, Hallie Haller

Jul 22, 2024 | Interviews, Creatives

The way that we engage emotionally and intellectually with film is a kind of interactive experiment with the human psyche – and from it, we can derive our own meanings on navigating the complexity of life, and the nuanced matrices that compose who we are, who we want to be and where we might want to go. It is an incredibly exciting time to be a South African creative – this publication aims to stand as a testimony to this – and in the cavernous depths of difficulty in our nation’s socio-economic and political climate, art continues to serve its role as our species-specific medicine. In it, we trust.  

Hallie Haller is a film director and media artist whose career and life charts the necessity of art precisely as this indisputable requirement for negotiating life; creating beauty, telling stories, building worlds and, as with their work with Girls in Film, impressing upon the lives of others along the way. In our conversation, among many things, Hallie offers an incredibly beautiful perspective on the role of SciFi and the surreal as genres to uncover the fabric that forms South Africa’s artistic, co-cultural landscape. Through their work across varying storytelling formats, from the art form of the commercial and branded films, to personal short and long-form films, to interactive media art and design, I find myself instilled with renewed understanding of the silent vow between all artists in this moment in time, as we face a digitised, unknowable future: the commitment to create, no matter what. 

Of their formative years, Hallie shares that “I was born in Durban and I was in grade one in 1994 – you know, you’re colouring in an image of Nelson Mandela’s face in grade one, and that really defines the timeline you’re on. My parents wanted me to have access to certain things, so I went to schools where people didn’t look like me at all. Navigating these spaces of privilege, and reading a lot growing up, I desperately wanted to see more of the world.” With this sense of internal displacement, Hallie moved to Taiwan for six years – and for anyone who has left their home country, you will know just how critical this can be for reconciling and renewing parts of ourselves we may otherwise have waited many more years to find. To find ourselves in the cracks in the roads of other cities, or in the faces of strangers – where your anonymity is a kind of sacred treasure. As Hallie says, “I think there’s something important in living somewhere where you exist beyond your demographic. In Taiwan I wasn’t any of the labels that I grew up with and I got to feel very fluid, to be detached from my nationality and I think that helped me come back and occupy more fluid identities in the stories that I tell and shape the way that I view myself. That was really important for me and a huge privilege that I got to do that,” and from this experience, “there’s something about occupying multiple identities that is very present in my work now.”

 

Hallie Haller photographed by Gcobisa Yako

Hallie Haller photographed by Gcobisa Yako

Hallie’s entry into filmmaking came as a consequence of their studies in screenwriting – and this medium emerged sort of unexpectedly, as they recall, “I studied screenwriting and drama directing. I’ve always written stories – it’s how I live – and after studying screenwriting, nobody cares that you’re a twenty-year-old screenwriter! So, I started trying to make some of my own films. Film directing is such a complicated thing and especially at the time that I graduated, I didn’t see anybody like me lecturing, or have anyone as a role model. I didn’t realise I could actually be a director for a very long time.”

This realisation began to shift when Hallie created a short dance film called Belovely, inspired by a woman they loved. Hallie shares that, “you can really feel it in the film, the crush I had.” It was established filmmaker and executive producer of Fam Films, Mpho Twala who saw Belovely and believing in Hallie’s potential, encouraged them to try their hand at commercials; “It took somebody to tell me I could do it, and give me that permission, to pursue it as a career path,” Hallie says, and that “I now find really addictive about directing is the amount of self-work that you have to do, to work with other people under that pressure, with those timelines and expectations – it’s so unbelievably character building.”

Sci-Fi and speculative fiction serve as the modern medium for myth-making in our age, with imaginative narratives and allegorical tales that can reflect and critique contemporary issues while envisioning possible futures – whether through a queer lens that builds worldscapes beyond the binaries of society and heteronormativity, or as a tool to observe the cultural context of in say, South Africa – Hallie’s interest in Sci-Fi and the surreal has emerged as seminal grounds on which to walk their artistic journey, “I really love Sci-Fi and I also come from a documentary background, and I think elements of the two come through in my work. I love the hyper visual mode of storytelling that worldbuilding requires. It’s such a cool time to make Sci-Fi because everyone is asking questions about the visual language that we have inherited. A lot of Sci-Fi, historically, has had these Cold War, machine gun, action movie elements – and it doesn’t really have to be that anymore.” 

This distinct vision for Sci-Fi through a more tender, etheric and resolved lens is extended to Hallie’s photographic work; most notably, the images they shot of Moonga K for the release of GARDEN last year. Hallie shares that, “my photography is very much an artistic practice. It falls into the documentary and sci-fi space – like those images of Moonga K were about imagining him as this inter-planetary deity that exists beyond gender and time, and also archiving him as he released the new album – GARDEN – a work that he felt really embodied his voice and experience as an artist at that time. I’m learning to bring that lens to everything I do.”

Moonga K photographed by Hallie Haller

Moonga K photographed by Hallie Haller

“There’s something about revisiting Sci-Fi in a very South African space that I’m really drawn to. There’s so much to uncover in looking at the genre in a new way, when we can look at it through the lens of South African mythologies and histories,” Hallie explains, and that their fascination with the surreal is able to contain multitudes across genres, in which speculative explorations of the integration between the body, movement, and technology is a triadic focus in their creative approach, “I’m really excited by the surreal. The body, movement and technology are my focus and I think world building visuals allow me to play in that space. I can never get away from the body as technology, especially. I grew up dancing and if I move away from all American media tropes and move towards what is our Sci-Fi, it always brings me back to the body, movement and things that are rooted in nature. In one way or another, all the work I do is about intimacy and liberty. I want to imagine it better – for myself, at least, and hope that some of it resonates.”

Girls in Film was founded by Nikola Vasakova, a filmmaker and producer based in London, who launched the platform in 2017 with the vision to address the gender disparity in filmmaking, creating a space in which women, trans and non-binary filmmakers could connect, collaborate, and showcase their work. Since then, the organisation has grown to include chapters across the world – one of which is in South Africa, and for whom Hallie is a co-founder and director, alongside a team of filmmakers. Their fundamental aim is to equip people with the kind of roadmap that they wished they had when entering film, and Hallie explains that “I work with an incredible team. Vidal Thaver is the youngest person on our team and very important for that reason, she keeps us very connected to the purpose that we started the organisation for – to be the community  we all needed when we were stepping into the industry. Gale Maimane and Jabu Newman are very established directors, and Chantel Clark occupies a completely different part of the industry in terms of being really respected as a screenwriter, and directs her own long-form work. Then there’s me, working between film and media art, so I think we have a really good balance.”

Collective action and community are what has kept lineages of women and queer folk safe throughout all history; and it’s within this legacy that Girls In Film finds its foundation as a support network, in which mentorship and guidance are integral for moving through one’s professional and personal life, within the context of film. Hallie explains that “there’s so many people asking questions like, ‘is it normal that somebody treats me this way in an internship?’ or ‘do you know who I can talk to about applying for a fellowship?’. A lot of the work we do is on a very one to one, human level. Representation is really important for many reasons, but to share in how to deal with similar problems, you need advice from someone like you who is dealing with those challenges, and that’s essentially what our organisation does.”

Girls In Film is a registered NGO, and they’re in the process of looking for funding to initiate their alumni program, which will “be focused on running emerging filmmakers through every step that they need to understand the ecosystem. GIF is hoping the alumni program will launch filmmakers by facilitating press opportunities, local and international screenings, panel appearances and, most importantly, getting introduced to the markets and other film communities that get films made. As Girls in Film, we can’t fund your film but we can help you to navigate the industry. And for young filmmakers who don’t inherit the social capital and networks to do that, my experience has been that the information and support is critical.”

 

  

‘Thati Zulu Road to Paris’, a film by Hallie Haller for adidas

Ecstatic Exit, a film by Hallie Haller, poster design by Isabel Pereira

The strategic focus of Hallie as director at GIF and film-maker in their own right, is the acceptance and understanding that finance – and economic barriers – are ever-relevant, and requiring continued development, to which they explain that “something we’ve noticed is that some people from previously disadvantaged backgrounds who become filmmakers find themselves in the commercial space, because of the economic opportunities, getting the funds to sustain themselves as an artist, but never really bridge into the long-form world because the industries are completely separate spaces to each other. We’re trying to build that bridge between the brand space, and those who want to pursue the longform space, because commercials are where a lot of young filmmakers are getting upskilled, and there can be an information gap in how to move beyond that.”

Hallie doesn’t abide by confinement to a singular form of expression; and in service to their own occupation of a multiplicity of identities, their initiation into media art is a continuing practice of discovery. Earlier this year, they showcased ‘Machine Swim’ – an interactive display of lights at the Spier Light Art Festival, with viewers using their own body movement to create illuminated figures in contact with an artwork where people dance with a machine, and see it respond through projection in real-time. I ask Hallie what brought them to this point of inquiry, from behind the lens and into the installation space; “The first job I ever had was at Design Indaba and that makes you a terrible employee because you just want to change the world through art, forever. cinema is its own interesting niche space,” but that, “sometimes you make something for two years and people watch it for ten minutes, and something I’ve been thinking about is how to expand that world so that I can get feedback, or co-create co-create with an audience rather than just speaking to them. That’s what has brought me into the media art world, it’s really about wanting interaction and for the audience to be part of the making process.”

Hallie muses that “everything has been in post (production) for ages!” with the rest of 2024 set to welcome a variety of releases. ‘Ecstatic Exit’ tells the story of survival and interconnectedness, through dimensions and using movement, with Hallie noting that, “I’m really excited for Ecstatic Exit. It’s taken us so long to get it through post, and it’s a very clear expression of how I would like to use Sci-Fi. It’s taken me a long time to find that language and this film is the first step in that direction, and I want it to be a series.” and that in addition “I’ll be releasing ‘It’s Lit’, a South African horror film – a dystopian look at what it’s like to be abandoned as a young person in our country, and we’re currently in production with ‘Jodie Is Infinite’, shot with Yellow Bone.”

Lastly, Hallie shares their advice for emerging filmmakers and artists; and it’s one that we hear often at CEC – that trial and error is truly the practice –  as Hallie says, “just keep making work. It actually doesn’t matter if you like it or if it’s perfect. You just have to keep making work, you learn so much each time you do it, and waiting for permission or for the resources, can be a trap. Just make something, make anything. And find community. It’s such a waste of energy to think that you need to do things alone. The quicker you find community, the quicker these spaces open up.” 

  

Written by: Holly Beaton

For more news, visit the Connect Everything Collective homepage www.ceconline.co.za