Workshop – VIAD Thought Dialogue “The Imagined New, vol III”, 02-04 September 2025

The Imagined New (or, What Happens When History Is a Catastrophe?) led by the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD,University of Johannesburg) and the Ruth Simmons Centre for the Study of Slavery and Justice(Brown University), is a three-part project connecting African and African Diasporic critical thought and creative practices dealing with issues of historical and contemporary violence and catastrophe. Its third volume, for which IFAS-Research is a partner, took place on September 2-3 at IFAS and on September 4 at the Forge (Braamfontein).

This three-day programme, “Confronting Violence and Catastrophe: Power, Grief and Hope”, brought together a group of artists and researchers invited to engage in dialogue on the imaginaries of catastrophe in research and in the arts, especially on the historical continuities of violence and catastrophe, as well as the role of creative practices in resisting oppression and imagining desirable futures.

Watch these three interviews of participants looking back on the workshop: 

• Rheyna Pattni, MA international relations, University of the Witwatersrand;
• Dr Annael Le Poullennec, director of IFAS-Research;
• Samukelo Ndlovu, PhD student in international relations, University of the Witwatersrand.