Valuing the visual in the Mashishing Marking Memories heritage project methodologies (Mpumalanga, South Africa)

In this talk, Lauren Dyll will share the methodology followed in a heritage project that resulted in crosscultural interpretations of rock engraving heritage in Mashishing, Mpumalanga, South Africa. The collaborative project includes a multidisciplinary group of academics based at five South African universities working in the fields of architecture, archaeology, heritage, and communication. They are joined by community leaders and families linked to the Boomplaats rock engraving site as well as teachers and museum staff from Mashishing, ǂKhomani traditional healers and crafters from the Kalahari, a Nama specialist, and youth performing artists. It is conceptually framed within the principle of empathy, in a Freirean sense, in that different people work together to contribute to the writing of a “new inventory” where local people, academics, and practitioners alike can name and interpret aspects of history and heritage. Participatory Action Research was employed to generate an intangible or living heritage of the visual artefacts spanning from precolonial to contemporary times.

The presentation will share the adapted COVID-19 responsive methodology to account for the collaborative design and communication forms involved in the implementation of the project. It hones in on two specific sites and participant groups—a diverse group from Mashishing where the engravings are located which allowed interpersonal fieldwork, and Witdraai in the southern Kalahari where the Indigenous ǂKhomani participants engaged via remote image-driven reception study and feedback meetings on a digital platform. Project outputs include skills transference workshops, the creation of an educational booklet for schools, a tourism brochure, and a documentary video for the popular dissemination of research findings. 

About the Speaker:

Lauren Dyll, a National Research Foundation-rated researcher, is Associate Professor in the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). Research interests include topics on participatory communication, critical indigenous qualitative methodologies and issues around cultural heritage and tourism in terms of the relationship between social change, identity and knowledge production. She has been a key contributor to the long-standing Rethinking Indigeneity project that signals strategies that aim to facilitate the participatory and transformative aspects of the research (and/or development) encounter. The majority of her fieldwork has been conducted in the Kalahari area of southern Africa, and more recently in Mpumalanga (South Africa) where she is project leader for the South African National Heritage Council (NHC)-funded project, Mashishing Marking Memories. She is a member of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Clearinghouse. Dyll is co-editor for the journal, Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies (Taylor and Francis) and serves on the editorial boards for The Journal of Autoethnography (University of California Press) and Communication, Technology and Development Journal (published by UNESCO Chair at University Bordeaux Montaigne for Emerging Practices in Technology and Communication for Development). Her volunteer community engagement is primarily as Research Portfolio leader and finance officer for ARROWSA: Art, Culture and Heritage for Peace.  

Notes

Collaborators/co-authors: Roger Fisher (Department of Architecture, University of Pretoria, South Africa), Mary Elizabeth Lange (Centre for Communication, Media and Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; ARROWSA), Jean-Pierre Celliers (Lydenburg Museum, Mpumalanga, South Africa), Julie Grant (Department of Communication and Media, University of Johannesburg, South Africa), David Morris (School of Humanities, Sol Plaatje University, South Africa & McGregor Museum, Kimberley, South Africa), Izak Kruiper (ǂKhomani traditional healer specialising in intergenerational transfer of cultural knowledge, Northern Cape, South Africa)