The Future that Never Arrives: Understanding Recurrent Dispossession and Temporal Distortion through Social Justice Art

Towards the curation of Ukuzilanda, an exhibition of 20th-century photographic collections belonging to families residing in Evaton, South Africa, I facilitated dialogues with descendants of 20th-century Black landowners, most of whom were now elderly and have spent years in court battles trying to claim land and are facing evictions. During these dialogues, it became apparent that even under the watch of democratic liberation governance and amplified advocacy for decolonial praxis, there remains the deep scar of land injustice and the recurring dispossession, and what could be termed chrono-regression. The injustice is on repeat, and the pain is too familiar. Land signifies seemingly irreparable damage, which sustains the fundamental reality of racialized class struggle and the power manifest in the control of time and space. In settler colonial contexts, substantive land justice has proven to be unattainable and restitution policies have failed to “undo” racial and economic segregationist spatial planning and undertake land reform. Through the discussion of art interventions and ideas of narrative building in Evaton, I reflect on forms of recurrent dispossession in general. In this respect see important works by Sikhumbuzo Makandula, Inga Somdyala, etc.

Welcome by Mag. Angelina Kratschanova, in charge of the International Office, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Presentation and moderation Dr. Marina Grzinic