nico's notes

tom and i left for kwa thema after our routine wednesday lectures in order to conduct interviews for our weekly newspaper. tom had had a car accident this morning, so we stopped at the braamfontein satellite police station. the lieutenant was surprisingly helpful but slow to write.

we headed for kwa thema after 3pm, the light was already changing.

we waited for gift at the library. his brother wanted to advertise in our newspaper. we waited and waited. tom got despondent about the project – the waste of time had sparked a negativity in him that i couldn’t repair. we left the parking lot for nico’s phooko’s house.

nico unpacked all of his artwork, his brochures, his music cds, his paints, and his history. tom interviewed; i recorded. nico’s story was rich and deeply layered – his enthusiasm and passion for change eminated. he oozed flair, style and attitude.

we left for johannesburg at dusk after collecting advertisements and an interview with artist, wilson, and after a sneak preview of the new clean beerhall – mr cindy had contacted catherine to tell her that it was finally clean and that we should come soon. so we did and it was fabulous. i called the whole group to tell them the news.

the sky was musty and muddy. smoke hung in the cool air. the sun blazed through the windscreen all the way home.

07.05.2007

O.K, this afternoon we met Gugu and had lunch at a local restaurant, beef stew! After this hearty meal we were ready to start working. Our first task was setting out the chess board it took us a bit longer than scheduled because none of us had done it before, but we managed to work it out eventually! We were also joined by two new volunteers today, Sifiso and Cileus, who helped with the setting out. They tell us that they have had previous work experience on site, which will surely come in handy later on… Overall we had a slow start today but we managed to accomplish what we set out to do, so for now we are still on schedule...
Oh yeah good news… it seems like Union Tiles is willing to charge us half price for the Tiles!

work in progress

We're on site! Illegal and unsure. But still ready to build with all sorts of interest and energy to keep us going.

There's wors and pap (buy your own drinks) organised at Stan's Place on Thursday at 4, so if you're in Masimini round then, come join in. If it's cold, we'll be in here....

Se siya cqala

Mood: Excited
Song in mind: Zola-Shine like a Star
Site: Chess Park
Mission: Peg out chess board

We had to first go and buy equipment that we would need to carry out this task and actually start digging from the local Cashbuild. In the previous week, we hads also gone to the Wits Maintenance to request for some equipment to abed us in this project and were still awaiting their response.

We laid out the pegs on site using the triangulation method. A few quarrels arose amongst the Wits students concerning the final position of the chess board. It took so much time to locate it that one is led to believe that the positioning is to the millimeter in terms of accuracy. I was anxiuos to carry out the first pick-strike on the site, however, Tom beat me to it. I think one of the things that I have learnt from this project is to have patience with people.

As if quarrelling with my classmates was not enough, the contractor then gave us hassles when it came to the final contractual agreements. we decided to take his proposal and discuss in detail with reference to the budget. We also saw today as an opportunity to get to know the volunteers "a little bit better".

Council presentation

Mood: Unsettled
Song in mind: Boys 2 Men-4 seasons of loneliness

Site: Civic Centre
Mission: Present Concepts to Council

I felt unease and unsettled because my group mates and I had not completed our work, yet. We had to present our final concept and design of the Chess Park project and the Paired Project, which I began to put together in Powerpoint format at the council during the preparations, somehow I managed to finish.

The presentation ultimately went well and our intentions in Kwa-Thema were made clear to councillors from different departments that we are not to trying to change the entire Kwa-Thema, but to have small intervention throughout Kwa-Thema to bring about an awareness and motivation of how the residents can improve their immediate surroundings and environment; maybe even create interventions that are sustainable and may bring about certain levels of employment.
This is what makes me passionate about the project and the idea of working and interacting with the community, not as an architect, but as one of the "resident" fascinates me. We presented our scheme as the Chess Park group and this group consisted of Sifiso Hadebe, Tom Chapman, Ahaka Tseki and Kasia Kwiecinska and myself, Karabo Masia. Our intentions are to build a giant chessboard, a hawker stand, putt-putt course, Kgotla (gathering space), sandpit and a jungle gym, create seating out of old tyres and pave the pedestrian path. It is to be mentioned that some of these interventions will be done at a later stage. Our focus will be on the chessboard and hawker stand.

We would like to see the space become a community gathering space, where both young and old, male and female unite not only to discuss critical issues facing society today, but also to play.

d-day deliria

after two long days of never-ending presentation work and no sleep the night before, deliria set in. my return home for a 5:30am shower gave me another few hours of sanity. our group left for kwa thema at 8am.

after problems with the council chambers venue and the annoying delay caused by the late arrival of the chess parkers and hannah, the crowd that had so attentively and timeously gathered was finally welcomed just after 10am. the wait had brought on another lapse of deliria – red bull psychosis!

the presentation was successful. the anc youth league made fair and reasonable comments. many suggestions arose and we felt positive and thankful that we had stayed up all night.
in a trance, we took nico to our beerhall briefly to discuss historical graphics. i didn’t partake but rather tried to gather my tired mind.

our journey back was… well… short… as i slept… head hanging and tired eyes resting.

Imagine

It was a crazy week, working towards the presentations that happened this morning in KwaThema. Somehow, with very little sleep, we managed to complete all the work required by the brief, despite its coming to us only on Sunday afternoon. Ironically, the postponement of the presentation of our individual research which we proposed when we got the brief actually happened because we were running late. Our group managed to get to KwaThema at the stipulated time of 8.30am despite most of us having worked in the CAD labs until 3 and 4am. We then negotiated a new venue – because the seminar room which had been booked would not have worked. Hannah, Tseleng and Jennifer Beningfield arrived well after 9am and the other group even later. And then the proceedings were held up further by the projector cord not being long enough to use with the white board which we’d obtained and set up for projection. For our zombified group, all this chaos represented precious stolen sleep time. We finally got under way with our beerhall presentation first and our frustrations were swept away by an extremely positive reception. Not only was Hannah very complimentary and supportive, but more importantly the debate which followed among us, community members and council representatives was extremely constructive. The notion of our project awakening a consciousness of the potential value of the beerhall structure became clear; in fact, as ambitions and ideas developed, people had to be reminded of our small budget and the community’s ultimate ownership and ability to drive the project. The project, despite its lack of weighty, permanant programme, seemed to be working on a level that was beginning to fire people’s imaginations and evoke possibilities. One of the powerful ideas that emerged was the notion of transforming the angry, destructive energy of children and youth of the 1976 era into a more positive, balanced and normalised dynamic in which play and recreation took the foreground. A representative from the arts and culture department, Eddie Coetzee, became quite enthusiastic about council involvement and future funding, if we were to include a formal performance space. We have set up a meeting for early next week to try to take him up on his suggestions and offers in terms of possibly supplying bollards and similar help. The presence of the ANC Youth League was intriguing and there is some indication that they may assist with a clean up as that now appears to be necessary – a quick drive-past the site before the presentations shattered our illusions that Elmah was going to solve our solid waste problems... Kasia and my paired project also seems to be taking shape. The basic philosophy behind it has to do with the notion of people taking ownership of public spaces. Nico, the artist, was at the presentations and we went afterwards to show him the site and discuss his involvement, before the ritual of pasting up newspapers and then heading home. On getting back to Wits we met up with Kasia and Tom at the Origins Centre restaurant for a late (celebratory) lunch.