This series of talks and discussions seeks to strengthen thinking and practice at the intersection of culture and public space, particularly in Cape Town. These sessions will take place at the Infecting the City Festival Centre (6 Spin Street) from 10:30 to Noon daily and are presented as part of the Africa Centre’s annual Infecting the City Public Art Festival.

Cape Town has a long history of public art and culture, and has more recently embraced the notion of a ‘creative city’. This is an exciting prospect for creative practitioners, yet the question of ‘creative city for whom?’ keeps bubbling to the surface of public debate, as different interest groups lay claim to the creative expression in, and of, public space. Thinking the City will contribute to the Infecting the City programme by unpacking a series of examples and contested territories related to cultural practice in the city, in order to foster a more critical dialogue about creative practice in public space. It will comprise four presentation and discussion sessions.

Led by Public Culture CityLab co-convenor, Rike Sitas, and Oddveig Nicole Sarmiento (Centre for African Studies); the opening session Public space, festivalisation and contested cultural expression will take place on Tuesday, 12 March. It aims to unpack questions of cultural expression in the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of public events and festivals. The Kaapse Klopse Minstrel Carnival in Cape Town is simultaneously the most popular and one of the most critiqued public space events in Cape Town. Discussing this case in the context of Infecting the City, the speakers raise questions about the problematic popular culture vs ‘high’ art binary, asking us to rethink cultural claims to expression and knowledge production in the city.

In Design and the creative city: the creative city for whom? on Wednesday, 13 March, the Africa Centre for Cities’ Jenny Fatou Mabaye and Ralph Borland lead the discussion. They consider how, in the run-up to World Design Capital 2014, quirky art and design projects that intervene creatively in urban space are presented as ways of changing our interaction with the city for the better, opening up public space to new uses. The speakers discuss how this local repurposing of city space borrows from movements around the world, and ask how this functions in our particular city: who are the audiences and participants in such projects - what do they include and what, or whom, is left out - highlighting how these reflect dual tensions between the global/local, planned/organic, official/civic, legal/illegal nexus.

On Thursday, 14 March, African Centre for Cities Director Professor Edgar Pieterse, and Public Culture CityLab co-convenor Ismail Farouk address Managing access: spatial challenges and the regulation of culture;delving into challenges related to achieving the design ambitions set out by the World Design Capital bid. Cape Town’s World Design Capital discourse speaks to the use of design for social transformation, yet the city continues to exhibit skewed social and spatial legacies characterised by inward facing disadvantaged township areas and a highly regulated and exclusive central city, along with highly restrictive regulatory frameworks around cultural access. This session explores how this discourse limits what is thinkable in cont emporary African cities, and touches on the Public Nuisance Abatement Bylaws and Graffiti Bylaw in order to raise questions around the regulation of cultural practices of art, skating, street trade and homelessness.

In the final session on Friday, 15 March, What makes art ‘public’?: publicness, participation and critical practice; Johannesburg-based Rangoato Hlasane (co-founder Keleketla! Library) and Kim Gurney (University of Johannesburg’s Research Centre: Visual Identities in Art and Design) respond to the notion of ‘infection’ in Infecting the City. In a context where the novelty of public art has worn off, and in the face of urban crisis; public art is beginning to take on a more critical approach to public space. Adressing the potential of truly infecting the city through cultural action, this session will draw on a range of examples and experiences from contemporary public art practice in South Africa in order to unpack the complex relationship between public(s), publicness and participation in public art practice.

Thinking the City is presented by the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA) and the Public Culture CityLab as part of the 2013 Infecting the City Festival. The sessions take place at the Infecting the City Festival Centre (6 Spin Street) from 10:30 to Noon daily, from Tuesday, 12 to Friday, 15 March, and are free. No booking is required. For more information, please visit www.gipca.uct.ac.za or contact the GIPCA office on 021 480 7156 and/or [email protected].