This research interrogates the different strategies and methodologies employed by collectives (with a focus on South African collectives in the past two decades) to raise fundamental questions about art; the nature of artistic work, forms of production, authorship, autonomy and collaboration as an artistic strategy. The research sets out to explore collaboration as a field of art practice. The criteria for selection of the collectives in the research was each collective needed to comprise of three or more artists who have produced and authored work together under an umbrella name, they also needed to use multi-disciplinary practices. The selection included: Galerie Puta (2003), Avant Car Guard (2004), Doing it for Daddy (2006), Gugulective (2006), Centre for Historical Enactments (2010), Burning Museum (2013) and iQhiya (2015), Guerilla Girls (1985), Laboratoire Agit’Art (1975), Raqs Media Collective (1992), Ubulungiswa/Justice and Karoo Disclosure (2014). The idea of shared authorship is the central tenet around which all collective practice revolves. This thesis looks at the collective authorial voice as a strategic artistic practice in contemporary art that enables reappraisals of artistic production. Furthermore it interrogates the decentralization of authorship, as an artistic strategy to shift paradigms of thinking in relation to power structures, be it institutional, political or ideological.

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The core difference between machines and humans is that humans have consciousness and life, albeit some machines designed and created by humanity are able to make decisions, facilitate intellectual enhancements and even develop physically. Humanity is dependent on a network of machines and technologies that transfer power to and engage with residences, industries and day-to-day activities, and as much as it is humanity that advances technology, they equally evolve with and through technology. This ever-evolving technology has become so integrated with human bodies and minds that it has a disturbing range of control over critical aspects of their lifestyles, to the point that humanity may be functionally impaired without it. Humanity has mechanised the simple act of being human but continues to build machines and develop technologies that act, look and respond in an increasingly human way. It is no longer possible for humanity to simply switch the machines off, because if they do, they may switch themselves off as well. The artworks and associated written dissertation of In the Flesh, set out to explore the sensitive symbiotic relationship between humans and the machines.

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The sudden and drastic impacts the recent global health crisis had on my life, and on society more broadly, triggered intuitive processes of creation, whereby its context was difficult to grasp in the beginning. Thus, my motivation for conducting this research stemmed from a personal worry about the dystopian situation outside of my private sphere. The many social upheavals caused by the pandemic would ultimately shape my thinking through creative production. This allowed me to grasp the many intangible aspects of my life and my conception of the world in a productive way; and connect many disparate aspects through a process of corporeal engagement that, literally and figuratively, stitched emotional and conceptual ruptures together as can be observed in the art objects displayed in the exhibition. This body of work thus explores the complexity of the act of repairing as a frame for art-making: as a means to articulate strategies of care in times of isolation, with the full knowledge of an indefinite outcome that does not sully the endeavour. My former profession as a surgical nurse, a profession of collective care-taking, and profiled as an ‘essential worker' during this pandemic, has had a substantial impact on this project. My specific interest is the transition from an act of care-taking for a stranger into artistic processes in isolation, that nevertheless involves a manner of care despite important differences. The times of social separation made me realise how interconnected we are. Thus, RePair is an attempt to emphasise the importance of relational perspectives wrought from the two subject positions I inhabited as a nurse and as an artist. I consider this document in conjunction with the body of artworks displayed as a means to explore the transformative potential of a relational and affective set of aesthetic considerations in a time of a shared crisis.

Includes bibliographical references. / Writing about redress 1 -un-dressed, giving my voice to the work, is probably the hardest part for me. It was my voice which was silenced when, as an eleven year old, I stepped into the witness box of the Cape Town Magistrates' Court. In the end my only defence was silence, as each consecutive question of the defence distorted my personal story until my position of victim turned into that of perpetrator. That is to say, the perpetrator was released and I went to jail. Not literally. But the effect of the trauma shaped who I am today. This experience triggered my ongoing investigation of systems of control, positions of power and causes of trauma which I explored in my undergraduate year in 2007. Comfort Room - ukhuselekile - Speak out 1 was a psychologically charged installation which explored aspects of secondary trauma experienced by children in the judicial process. The current body of work moves beyond the trauma as it investigates processes of redress. For that reason the details of the initial events are no longer the primary concern; strategies of transformation are at the heart of this investigation. This brief detour outlines my personal motivation and interest in these strategies, or forms of redress, which lead me to juxtapose processes of what I have termed aesthetic redress against processes of judicial redress. I therefore stage the fictional case of R v Judicial Redress 2010 (R v JR 2010) 2 in this document and my practical body of work.

The exhibition is comprised of a collection of objects that I have gathered over the course of this project. The objects have been tinkered with, cobbled, and transformed in order to generate new outlooks on function, materiality and studio- based processes. Through these objects and in partnership with them, I am a tinker, a cobbler, and a transformer. Objects have come apart and been reassembled to suggest new modes of use, and in doing so pays homage to the object often ignored and discarded.

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