Part I: Cape Town, South Africa
Ways of Reading After the Fire is a collaborative project with Julia Rensing and Sindi-Leigh McBride, both PhD candidates at the University of Basel. The first part of the project entailed a workshop in Cape Town in April 2022, where scholars, artists and writers were invited to visit and engage with the exhibition Of Smoke and Ash at Michaelis Galleries in Cape Town. Co-curators, Jade Nair and Dr Duane Jethro led the group on a walkabout of the exhibition and engaged in a group discussion responding to the loss of the Jagger Library archives and the possibilities for an African Studies library of the future.
Part II: Basel, Switzerland
On Friday afternoon 3 June, Duane and Jade delivered a presentation on curating the Jagger Library Memorial exhibition at the Eikones Centre for Theory and History of the Image in Basel, Switzerland.
Jade and Duane were invited to present on their curatorial process and the public reception of the exhibition. The hybrid presentation saw audience members tuning in from the US, South Africa and the Netherlands, and a physical audience of around 20 people, sit in to learn about the curatorial processes and choices deployed to commemorate the Jagger Library disaster and the salvage operations that followed.
This event took place in-person, at the Forum eikones, Rheinsprung 11, Basel.
