In this brown bag, Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk will introduce a working concept for new ways of understanding Cape Town.
Overview:
This concept presentation considers the mapping, naming, routing, disambiguations, planning, and compartmentalising of contemporary Cape Town. Using as a basis the idea of an atlas containing multiple maps of the city, this project considers expansions, degradings, mergings and rendings that have transformed the city over time not only from a spatial perspective, but also culturally. How are people ‘emplaced’ in the city? What does the city look like to people based upon their distinct cultural belongings? What lies beneath our feet and flies above our heads?
This concept is both multi- and trans-disciplinary, bringing together social scientists working in urban studies, activists, artists, and writers to re-think the way the city looks to those who live in it, to lift the map off the surface of the page and re-form it.
About the speaker:
Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Film and Media Studies, and director of the African Cinema Unit at the University of Cape Town. He has published widely on the filmmaker Terrence Malick (the subject of his PhD), as well as South African film, wildlife documentary and literary fiction. He is currently working on early South African cinema and film cultures in South Africa. As Director of the African Cinema Unit, he teaches in the MA in African Cinema and is also involved in developing postgraduate scholarship in African and South African screen studies. He is also a member of the Environmental Humanities South research program at the University of Cape Town. In 2013, he received a Distinguished Teacher’s Award from the University of Cape Town, and in 2014 a National Excellence in Teaching award from the Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association of South Africa. He is a fanatical birder and registered at lasser with the South African Bird Atlas project. One day he would like to see a Wandering Albatross.
