The 2017 annual meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) explored the multiple ways in which improvisation has enabled and facilitated the study of the humanities, not least in times of great social upheaval. Under the theme of The Humanities Improvised, the annual meeting gathered together artists, art commentators and humanists from member institutions to reconceptualize the relationship between art and the humanities against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world of work, politics and technology. The very concept of the public sphere is being recast in the twenty-first century as a consequence. The CHCI annual meeting explored these shifts against the backdrop of an African and South African context where debates about nationalism, decolonization, neocolonialism, postcolonialism, globalization and neoliberalism have found complex expression and contestation in burgeoning arts initiatives across the continent, producing possibilities for new models of aesthetic education and cultural critique.
A short documentary on the Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, held at the Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town
About one hundred graduate students from a range of South African and international partner institutions participated in the Winter School Annual and the Consortium for Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI) annual meeting at the Castle of Good Hope from the 10th to the 12th August 2017.
Athlone in Mind is a digital platform, book (edited by Heidi Grunebaum), and exhibition of commissioned contemporary art – a group show curated by Kurt Campbell.
