The most recent very significant threshold to note is that the Greatmore building in Woodstock, which will house the Laboratory of Kinetic Objects, has finally been secured and we are in the process of beginning to occupy the spaces and to initiate the launch as well as research, and to creative initiatives with the Artists in Residence.

The Chair, together with some colleagues from the CHR, as well uKwanda Puppet Collective, held a two-day workshop in Barrydale in order to plan and begin to conceptualise the puppet show that will be undertaken in Barrydale at the end of the year.

The Chair facilitated a performance by Pumeza Rashe, one of the Artists in Residence in the Faculty of the Arts, for Professor Tammy Shefer, of the Gender and Women’s Studies Unit at UWC. This was followed up with a seminar by the Chair for the graduate students in that unit.

The Chair has been engaged in several international conversations. The Doctoral Workshop at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, invited Professor Taylor to participate in March in a conversation about research and writing. This focused on her recent research on Wittgenstein. This has led to possible further conversations about exchanges, and Professor Taylor has been invited to examine a PhD forthcoming from U of Geneva. The Chair then visited the University of Washington in Seattle, and gave a paper on her recent book on William Kentridge for the School of Art; and also led a workshop with graduate students in the Music School. Professor Taylor participated in a research initiative with a group of scholars at U of California, Berkeley, located in Oslo, Norway. The workshop wrote a major funding grant that will examine the animated object in Japanese cultural practice, and Professor Taylor will establish a comparative case study looking at the animated object in Southern Africa, with a particular orientation toward puppetry arts. Professor Taylor participated in a public dialogue at the Townsend Centre for the Humanities at U of California, Berkeley, with art historian Joseph Leo Koerner, on Art and Power.

The Chair also presented a Keynote paper at the WISER Critical Theory Colloquium; and a paper at the “Missing and Missed” Conference at the CHR.

Professor Taylor attended a workshop at the William Kentridge “Centre for the Less Good Idea” as an observer, and potential curator; and was in public conversation at the centennial celebrations at Northwestern University in the past week. While in Chicago she met with several scholars from Northwestern and the University of Chicago, in order to further the dialogues between UWC and the two major universities from the Chicago region. Professor Taylor also served as the external evaluator, assessing Faculty creative outputs at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Professor Taylor has this week been participating in the Wall Colloquium at STIAS, U of Stellenbosch, with the theme, “Being Human Today: The Theory and Practice of Social Transformation through the Arts”. The colloquium is exploring the special case of the work of arts intervention that is ongoing between Handspring Puppet Company and the CHR.

Professor Taylor is currently writing a new catalogue for an upcoming exhibition of William Kentridge’s work, That Which We Do Not Remember, for an exhibition in Sydney, Australia.