Hotel Yeoville Publication (2012)
The book Hotel Yeoville was the last product of a larger participatory public art project that I conceptualised and produced together with a large team of others. It was based online and in the public library of the old suburb of Yeoville in Johannesburg’s inner city. I developed the project in (active and grateful) collaboration with a diverse group of people working across a range of disciplines, many of whom have contributed to this publication.
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Publisher’s Blurb: Hotel Yeoville comprised a website, a photo wall and a series of booths in which members of the public were invited to offer stories about themselves through mapping, video, photography and text. Over the course of a year, it came to represent an intimate and multi-layered document of a segment of this diverse community, most of whom are immigrants from across the African continent. Its stories are a small but unusual record of the complexities of everyday life in a rapidly evolving city. The book presents new critical perspectives on contemporary artistic research and practice, and is a remarkable documentation of the complex negotiations—between artists, residents, consultants and audience—that brought the work into being.
Contributors include: Alexandra Dodd, Terry Kurgan, Alexander Opper, Jason Hobbs, Tegan Bristow, Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Godfrey Tshis Talabulu, John Spiropoulos, Justice Malala, Zen Marie.
