Jyoti Mistry and Rory Bester at the Very Real Time discussion event, The Drill Hall, Johannesburg, 4 February 2006

Online discussions (16 February - 2 March 2006)

Very Real Time 2, the follow up to Very Real Time (2003), has been structured to take place in two stages. Stage one is a series of discussions involving artists, art theorists, researchers, psychologists, sociologists, social workers, bureaucrats, ethnologists and urban planners from South Africa and abroad. The first forum will be a live event at the Point Blank Gallery in Johannesburg in early February 2006. Panelists will address the 3 themes of:

• Personal rituals of self-preservation
• Love, sex and intimate relationships
• The value of 'socially engaged art.'

This live event was followed by an online forum, during which discussion of these 3 topics was prolonged on an international level. The outcomes effectively form the basis of research for the second stage of Very Real Time 2: a 1 month artists' residency and projects for 5 local and international artists, to take place in Cape Town, October 2006.

Live event at the Point Blank Gallery (The Drill Hall), Johannesburg

The Point Blank Gallery on Saturday 4 February, 2006 from 6-10 pm. The evening will be chaired by Gregg Smith and involve an intervention by Johannesburg based artist, Jose Ferreira. Transcriptions of the presentations are available in the discussion archives.

Online discussions

These discussions formed prolongations of the live discussions using an online forum. The forum will took place over a duration of 2 weeks (16 February - 2 March 2006), and is also thoroughly arhived on the various discussion pages.