VRT 2 launch

Very Real Time 2

•  Very Real Time 2 aims to examine and expose through its activities (projects, information and discourse) the psychological and emotional dimensions of daily interactions in South Africa and provide a catalyst for the traversing of boundaries and facilitating new connections.

•  The project aims to act on both a micro and an macro level, placing in the first place a value on personal and intimate exchanges (through the artists' projects), and in the second place an exchange and dissemination of ideas and awareness on an international level, through various publications, curated online discussions and the Very Real Time website.

•  It is an enquiry into and critique of the role of contemporary art in public space.

The project will maintain the principle pursuits of the Very Real Time, but with an aim to having a critical approach to the results of the first project and also a more academic research into the personal and interpersonal realities of people living in cities in South Africa and elsewhere. Whereas the first project focused on non-object-based and performative projects, emphasising personal encounters on a meaningful level, Very Real Time 2 will maintain the aspect of personal engagement but with a view to involving this experience in the development of a more sustained and more broadly based period of research and discourse.

The project will show a critical interest in affects of social factors such as the high rate of violence and crime in the city, the prevalence of HIV and Aids, the remnants of the apartheid mentality, the affects of a society in a dramatic state of change, on the lives of individuals.

Objectives of Very Real time 2:

The project will operate in two distinct phases:

1) A series of published online forums and debates

2) The residency, artists' projects, publications

The second stage of Very Real Time 2 will be a 1-month residency, involving a maximum of 5 artists from South Africa and abroad. This residency will take place in September/October 2006. Like its predecessor, Very Real Time 2 will favour performative and socially engaged projects but unlike its predecessor, will aim to engage a macro audience as well as one to one participation. This will be achieved though the development of projects which may have ephemeral aspects but do not exclude concrete products and strategies of dissemination.

The artists' projects will reach a wider audience and platform open to critique, through a series of cheap and easily accessible publications, printed on a weekly basis during the 4-week residency. This ‘newspaper' will act as dynamic point of access for the greater public and also a medium for the artists to extend their projects, through (for example) invitations of participation; development of fictions, rumours and intrigues; or simply reports and critiques of events and performances organised during the residency.

As with Very Real Time (2003), there will be no gallery exhibition component to the programme. This is a not a statement against the gallery context, but rather an extension of the need to make connections and reach audiences from all sections of society, most of whom do not visit art galleries regularly, or at all.

A catalogue will be published in the aftermath of the project, documenting the series of online discussions and the subsequent artist's projects. This publication aims to go beyond the scope of an art catalogue, providing a resource for information and debate around the issues of the project.

Workshops and artists presentations

As with Very Real Time (2003), there will be a series of presentations by the artists in which they discuss their work and projects for Very Real Time. Once again these will be integrated into the programme of the Michaelis School of Fine Art (University of Cape Town) and presentations will take place at the Michaelis Lecture Theatre as part of the Lunchtime Lectures.