Joe Blog

Tsodio o tshwerwe ke eng…eintlek!?

A fugitive flees from both a ghost and the police (as written by harepa player Johannes Mokgwadi in 1974). Tsodio runs to ‘Gauteng ma phutha ditšhaba’. Before we ask why, what if Tsodio is fleeing from neither the ghost nor the police?

This duo-suite of essayistic videos - ahead of a trilogy - is a take on a kwaito classic, ‘Tsodio’, as a song-being that narrates movements and biographies; conquests and re/namings; defeats and reclamations; returns and ancestries…

What if banners could sound? If gusheshe could see? If street names could chorus? Mountains could witness? Dams could heal? Static and strategic – as situated optic performances – could banners sound out narratives of conquest and naming, defeat and reclamation, defiance and ancestry, colliding in ante/hedonistic polyphonetics …? From the street to the song, from the song back to the streets, this video essay borrows from the Tsodio narrative to manifest visual musicking objects of mmino wa setšo – music of botho, music of the people, cultural music, black music, world-making sound.

‘Sesasedi Sa Tsodio ke Sa Koša Kerole’ is an interdiscursive mix between an essayistic video, a documentary, an appendix and an audio play/radio drama with elements of the music video, driven by oralities, auralities and the sonic et al…

Two parts of an ongoing trilogy, the first part of the film speculates on the character of Tsodio as lyrical fiction/mythology that travels through orature and storytelling in black musical and sonic histories of the past, present and future. Traveling banners in the film, thinking and sounding with three locations – Meadowlands, Mamelodi and Mahikeng – serve as backdrops for oral histories with “people as libraries”, on site. The second part of the film is a selection of responses from ‘Sesasedi sa Tsodio’ screening tours that took place at the very sites of filming ‘Sesasedi sa Tsodio’ namely: Mamelodi, Mahikeng and Meadowlands, carried by original live music. The third part, to be developed over the next three years, will bring the trilogy into an de- resolution in this lyric-ficto-mythology that recuperates, recalibrates, disediments and re-celebrates the musicality of leleme la MaAfrika – sonic and phonetic aesthetics of black world making.

The first in the trilogy, Sesasedi Sa Tsodio, was the first to tour as part of ‘Techno Worlds’, a traveling exhibition organized by Germany’s Goethe-Institut that began in 2022 at art quarter budapest (aka “aqb”), the PHI Centre in Montreal, SITE Gallery in the Silos at Sawyer Yards in Houston, Knockdown Center in New York City, SPACE in Portland, Maine, followed by host galleries in Los Angeles, Mexico City, Montevideo, São Paulo and Warsaw. It also screened at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, South Africa (26 February 2022). During this globe-trotting go tsamaya ke go di bona, Sesasedi sa Tsodio took on a community tour at the very places and sites in which I borrowed the image and the stories that gave precedence to one of my PhD methods and framework of “from the ground to the screen and back again”:- Ndofaya White House, Soweto, South Africa (19 March 2022)- Bra T’s Place, Mahikeng, South Africa (21 May 2022)- Mothong African Heritage, Mamelodi, South Africa (29 May 2022)

Following these, the work, Sesasedi sa Tsodio, received fitting invitations to screen at the following platforms in curated group exhibitions and community screenings:

Sohlangana emlanjeni nna?, Association for Visual Arts Long Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, Curated by Amogelang Maledu. 09 May 2024 – 07June 2024https://www.ava.co.za/current- exhibitions/2024/5/7/og13961uwxls7r4le7t9b17da0mhta

7 Winds, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, Curated by Kabelo Malatsie, with Camilla Paolino and Julia Künzi. 4 March 2022 – 28 May 2023https://kunsthalle- bern.ch/en/-exhibitions/2022/7-winds/

Motlamogadi Bioscope Screening (Dinonwane) at various public high schools in Limpopo priovince, organised by Chepape Makgato: https://chepapemakgato.blogspot.com/2023/01/motlamogadi-bioscope- screening.html?m=1

Jiki-jiki, for the first time, ‘Sesasedi sa Tsodio’ was screened back to back with the second in the trilogy, ‘Sa Koša ke Lerole’ at Chimurenga Factory, Cape Town, South Africa. Friday 15th March 2024: https://panafricanspacestation.org.za/tag/rangoato-hlasane/

This was followed by a special closed screening at the Bioscope Independent Cinema on 14 August 2024 as part of the Other Universals: Theorizing from Postcolonial Locations on Politics and Aesthetics Summer Institute hosted by the Race, Gender and Class with the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg.

And now, this is the first time we open the space to celebrate this offering with crew and participants of the story-circle, with a few extra seats for the general public and invited guests!