The conversations we are shaping include how we might best address water, energy and food insecurity; systematic injustices and the uneven distribution of resources; and impacts of climate change on the availability of and access to sufficient, reliable and safe water, energy and food. The artwork on display – videos, sculptures, photography and drawing - will include contributions from community artists and other artists in Makhanda and Johannesburg; we will also include performances at the opening reception. The exhibition will also feature archaeological and ethnographic material from the Origins Centre collection.
Prior to the conference, artists will be working on a mural outside the Centre, and the opening session and reception will celebrate their work. While details will follow, the programme at this stage is as follows:
Click on date to expand
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First Floor Gallery
14:00: Opening session
Welcome address: Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand
15:00: Keynote Lecture: Professor Eileen Moyer, University of Amsterdam
- Ecologies of Imagination: Water, Energy, and Food in South Africa’s Transforming Landscapes
This keynote explores how social science can contribute to reimagining ecological futures in contexts marked by inequality, environmental degradation, and infrastructural neglect. In examining three case studies – a plastics-for-food initiative in Johannesburg’s inner city, emerging green hydrogen corridors inthe Northern Cape, and multispecies wine ecologies in the Western Cape – I show how ecological transition is not only a technical challenge but a deeply social and moral one, shaped by histories of extraction, racialized dispossession, and uneven development.
16:00: Roundtable: Art as intervention
Moderator: Dr Carine Zaayman, Research Centre for Material Culture, Wereldmuseum, Netherlands .
With Hannelie Warrington-Coetzee, Christine Dixie, Mook Lion, Vuyo Mayalo, Phila Phaliso, and the mural artists Edumisa Nangu, Arnold Sebola, and Kgothatso Takalo.
The Tapestry Room
17:00-18.30: Reception and Performance
MC: Cinga Dyala: artist, performer and author
Participants: Cinga Dyala, Mdantsane Community Arts Centre; Hector Dibakaone, Makers Valley; spoken word performances –readings from The Poetics of the Abyssal Zone.
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First Floor Gallery
8:00-11:00: Patchworking WEF Policy Futures: A Breakfast Workshop for Creative Exchange
`Facilitators: Eileen Moyer and Emily Ragus
Policy makers will join WEF researchers for a morning of reflection, creativity, and conversation as we bring together voices from South Africa’s water, energy, and food sectors to think creatively and collaboratively about the WEF challenges we encounter in our work and lives. This is not a typical policy meeting; it is a breakfast workshop where participants will stitch together insights and experiences into a Challenges Quilt.
Alexandra
09.30-12:30: The Litter Trap Walking Tour
The litter trap program along the Jukskei River in Alexandra. This includes a bus trip to Alexandra, and a guided 90 minute walk
12:00-13:30: Lunch
13:30-16:30: Research on community impacts of climate change, governance, and water, energy and food precarity
Chairs: Memory Reid and Blessings Kaunda-Khangamwa
13:30 – 13:40: Welcome & Framing
Theme introduction: “Learning from Small Interventions” highlights how small, community-based actions reveal lessons for tackling water, food, energy, poverty, and inequality.
Delivery: PowerPoint presentations, 5/7 mins each on individual studies, Q&A and breakout discussions.
13.40 – 14.30: Cluster 1: Urban Inequalities, Youth and Livelihoods
What do grassroots strategies teach us about building resilient, equitable urban food systems and youth livelihoods? We explore how youth, women, and communities tackle food insecurity and livelihood precarity in urban contexts, Emphasises growth, agency, and resilience in food gardens, youth livelihoods, and gendered responses to inequality.
o Lucy Khofi – Gender and food insecurity
o Zanele Nodongwe – Women-led urban food gardening
o Memory Reid – Circular food initiatives and care networks
o Blessings Kaunda-Khangamwa – Youth livelihoods, health & resilience
o Andisiwe Maxela– Food gardens & community-driven development
14:30 – 14.45: Q & A
14:45 – 14:55: Body Break
14.55 -15:25: Cluster 2: Resource Governance and Art Interventions
How can art, governance innovation, and community action strengthen resilience and reshape WEF governance? The session investigates how creative interventions and alternative governance approaches address WEF challenges and resilience. We highlight how artistic expression and governance innovation flow together to address water, energy, and disaster vulnerabilities.
o Emily Ragus – Floods disaster response & arts-based communication
o Amanda Mokoena – Water access & informal governance
o Arnold Relebogile Sebola – Mural Art as a tool for sustainability education
o Dineo Mtetwa – Coping with electricity inequalities
15:25-15:35: Q & A
15:35-16:05: Panel Discussion/Breakout Discussion
Breakout Discussion based on the two thematic clusters.
16.05-16:15: Feedback from discussions
16:15-16:30: Synthesis and Closing
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First Floor Gallery
8:30-10.30: From Knowledge to Action and Justice: What are we doing?
Chair: Nithaya Chetty
Panelists: Vishwas Satgar, University of the Witwatersrand; Alexander Kagaha, Makerere University; Jonathan West, Section 27; Mafoko Phomane, groundwork; Coleen Vogel, Global Change Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.
10:30-11:00: Coffee and tea
11:00 -13:00: Climate change, resources and responses: How does the WEF Nexus help us think?
Chair: Tracy-Lynn Field, University of the Witwatersrand
Panelists: Bertha Chiroro, Gender CC: Steve Collins, SADCTFCA Network Coordinator; Hector Dibakaone, Makers Valley; Thato Gaffane, SECTION27; Samkelisiwe Khanyile; Gauteng City-Region Observatory; Walter Musakwa, University of Johannesburg
13:00 -15:00 Lunch and closing session
Chair: Lenore Manderson
Presentation: Emily Ragus and Eileen Moyer: Work so far on the The Challenges Quilt
Closing remarks
Bertho Bosscha, Education & Science Council, Embassy of the Netherlands to South Africa; Nokuthula Mchunu, Research and Innovation Support and Advancement (RISA), National Research Foundation.
Venue Info
Origins Centre, University of Witwatersrand
Coming by car:
You will need to get through Wits security, please bring ID and let them know you are coming to Origins Centre. The closest entrance to us is on Yale Rd, cnr Enoch Sontonga, but you can also enter on Yale Rd off Empire Rd. There is a parking lot in front of Origins Centre for visitors to park. Contact us for more information on parking.
Coming by Uber
Please bring your ID. The best entrance to come through is Sutton Close (opposite Eendraght Str) on Jorissen Rd, about 100 m down from Origins Centre. Uber address: Jorissen St & Eendracht Str.
Agitation
is a conference and exhibition, convened and curated by members of Eco-Imagining, a collaborative research project, and the Origins Centre, University of the Witwatersrand.
Agitation as a conference opens at 14:00 on Wednesday 1 October and closes with lunch on Friday 3 October. Over these days, we will consider food, water and energy insecurities, NGO interventions and their successes, limits and challenges, rights to food, water and energy, and ways to address difficulties in realising these rights.
Climate change is a major systems-level agitation, disrupting everyday life at multiple levels. The conference title Agitation was selected to highlight dramatic environmental changes which we are experiencing, and their impact on the availability of and access to key resources, particularly of water, energy, and food. At the same time, Agitation is a call for responsive and responsible action. The uncertainty of climate, basic services and resources, lives and livelihoods all ask us to take seriously our moral responsibility to the planet and each other. The ways in which unpredictability impacts unevenly, widening inequality, places an even heavier obligation on scientists and civil actors alike.
The conference is paired with an exhibition, also Agitation, on full display until 10 October. A mural guides participants to the exhibition and conference venue. Within the Origins Centre, we include drawings, prints, sculptures, videos, banners, and posters developed by researchers, community artists and others in Durban, Mdantsane (Eastern Cape), Mankweng (Limpopo) and Johannesburg. These works are displayed along with artworks from Hannelie Warrington-Coetzee and Christine Dixie, both of whom have collaborated with the researchers. All these works converse with and sometimes contradict archaeological, material culture and ethnographic objects. These objects enhance our engagement with questions of resource scarcity, complexity, deep history, and loss.
Eco-Imagining, formally entitled Ecological Community Engagements: Imagining Sustainability and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Urban South African Environments, is led by Lenore Manderson at University of the Witwatersrand and Eileen Moyer at University of Amsterdam, was funded by the NRF and the Dutch Research Foundation (NWO) as part of a special initiative on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. The project also includes colleagues from the University of Fort Hare, University of Limpopo, and Rhodes University, together with non-government organisations RULIV, Gender CC, The People’s Pantry, and Maker’s Valley, and for Agitation, with the Origins Centre. Participants include stakeholders from various government departments and specific entities, from non-profit organisations, and other civil society actors, whose policies and program interests extend across the fields of interest of water, energy and food, and around poverty, its alleviation, inequality, and resistance.
We look forward to your participation!