The theme, Open the Gates suggests an actual and metaphorical opening of new possibilities, new assemblages and relations within sites of knowledge production. The call asked for projects that re-imagine and re-think the manifestation of creative research within the framework of an online journal. Ellipses foregrounds questions of the creative act and the modes of representation and remediation necessary and possible in the spaces of contemporary knowledge production online. Tangential to this thematic are questions of how creative research is measured, conceived and produced within the academy. An opening of the institutional gates and the boundaries of disciplines opens possibilities for the emergence of new and multiple languages, forms and modes of presentation.
Full Editorial
Editors
Issue […2]
2017-18 Open the Gates
Pervaiz Khan, Issue Editor
Pervaiz Khan was brought up in Birmingham (Britain) and now lives in Johannesburg. He is a writer, filmmaker, visual arts curator, theatre director and artist who has made documentaries, short fictions, music videos, new media installations, plays and worked on feature films. He is an award-winning film curator. As curator of the Third Cinema Focus (1987-93), Birmingham International Film & TV Festival, he programmed over 300 films and brought together 60 international filmmakers and cultural figures. He has curated for the National Film Theatre (London). He was a co-founder of Duende Performance Company. For almost a decade he was a contributing editor of ‘Sight & Sound’ film magazine. He co-edited, with John Akomfrah, ‘Framework 36 – Third Scenario: Theory & Politics of Location’. He has a Masters of Arts in screenwriting and is also a PhD candidate. Pervaiz lectures in screenwriting in the Film & TV Division, Wits School of Arts.
Andrea Hayes, Digital Editor
Andrea Hayes, Digital Editor Andrea is an award-winning video game developer and game studies academic. She is currently finishing her Masters Degree, through Wits University, which looks at the representation of women in video games. Andrea has a passion for creative coding, experimenting with digital art and making video games. Andrea is a freelance website and video game developer and is currently working on multiple projects for The Ellipses Journal of Creative Research, which is run through Wits University. Andrea is passionate about diversifying the tech industry and empowering women in development.Alana Blignaut, Digital Editor
Alana Blignaut is an interdisciplinary visual artist and research candidate for the degree MA in Fine Arts by coursework and research report at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests includes Forensic Aesthetics, critical historiography and understandings of citizenship. Her MAFA research, Desire for the Public: Facial Averaging and the Index, features Average Faces of ‘known and suspected activists’ produced from the albums of the apartheid-era Security Branch. As such, it explores Facial Averaging as a method that embodies a desire to make archival facial imagery relating to traumatic historical events open to public consideration without revealing personal information of those imaged; and the Interface as a historiographic intervention into the archive. She has also contributed work, research and writing (under Rian Blignaut) to the travelling exhibition Poisoned Pasts: Legacies of the South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (2016-present) curated by Kathryn Smith, Chandré Gould and Brian Rappert and hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Tegan Bristow, Editor in Chief & Digital Editor
Tegan Bristow, Editor in Chief & Digital Editor Tegan Bristow is an interactive media artist and Senior Lecturer in Interactive Digital Media at the Digital Arts Division of the University of Witwatersrand. Bristow is co-founder and 2016 – 2020 Director of the Fak’ugesi African Digital Arts Festival. Bristow has an MA from Wits University in Interactive Digital Media and she has recently completed her PhD titled Post African Futures with the Planetary Collegium at Plymouth University in the U. K. Bristow’s research explores Technology Arts and Culture Practice in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on decolonising methodologies and actional criticism. As an artist Bristow has exhibited widely. Bristow promotes local technology arts development.Bettina Malcomess, Issue Editor
Bettina Malcomess is a writer, academic and artist. Her work exists in a diverse set of media and forms, ranging from long duration performance to the staging of shorter interventions, and installation projects to the book as site of practice. She produces performances under the name Anne Historical. Malcomess’ writing traverses art, film, history, urbanism, as well as fiction. She co-authored the book Not No Place. Johannesburg, Fragments of Spaces and Times (Jacana, 2013). She was the visual editor of the book Routes and Rites to the City: Mobility, Diversity and Religious Space in Johannesburg (Palgrave, 2017). She has recently formed an interdisciplinary project called the joining room, a non|space for intermedial intimacies. Historical/Malcomess’ work has shown at various national and international exhibitions and spaces. She is a lecturer in Visual Arts at Wits School of Arts and is currently doing a PhD in Film Studies at Kings College, London.