Experiments in Sound by Cavendish Arts Science Fellow Thulani Rachia, exploring our perception of time.
Thulani Rachia is a South African artist who works with performance, music composition, sculpture, and moving image, informed by his training in architecture and performance. Growing up within the spatial legacies of apartheid - an inherited architecture of segregation and control - shapes his understanding of how the built environment can structure social hierarchies.
His work is guided by a critical-speculative inquiry - a question in his mother tongue isiZulu - that holds both critique and possibility: “Siwaguba kanjani amaphupho ethu agqitjwe kulezindonga?” (“How do we excavate the dreams laid to rest in these walls?”). This inquiry enables his exploration of material legacies of violence and how spaces and materials marked by historical harm might be reimagined, opening possibilities for reparative futures.
Rachia’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including São Paulo-Arte; Artists’ Moving Image Festival (AMIF); Bluecoat, Liverpool; Subsolo Laboratório de Arte, São Paulo; Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art; and Edinburgh Art Festival. He has held residencies at Jerwood, National Theatre of Scotland, Hospitalfield, Take Me Somewhere and the Talbot Rice Residency Programme.
All Girtonians are warmly invited, and guests are very welcome. As places are limited, bookings will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have any questions about the event, please contact alumni@girton.cam.ac.uk.
The Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship
The annual Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship is delivered through a partnership between Girton College and Cavendish Arts Science, an initiative of the Cavendish Laboratory for Physics, thanks to the vision and generous support of Girton alumna Dr Una Ryan OBE (1963).
The Fellowship is designed to support artists to develop thought-provoking ideas through engagement with physicists and those in other fields, and experiment with new approaches to their practice that are transformative and push boundaries.
Thulani Rachia is the fifth Cavendish Arts Science Fellow. Previous Fellows have included Logan Dandridge, Ain Bailey, Robert Ssempijja and Akeelah Bertram.
The Fellowship offers opportunities for playful experimentation and the space to re-imagine beyond conventional artistic and scientific boundaries. It is conceived as a transformative artistic fellowship, designed for artists to explore new approaches and ways of thinking through engaging with scientists and beyond, and motivated by such explorations, to experiment with and develop new artistic work-in-progress.
The opportunity is open to artists internationally and is not confined to any single aesthetic, theme or medium. Artists with no previous experience of working with scientists or in a scientific environment are particularly encouraged to apply. The selected artist brings alternative ways of knowing the world, artistic practices immersed in communities that are not privileged in the mainstream, and an enthusiasm to collectively imagine new possibilities.
For more information about the Fellowship and Cavendish Arts Science programme please visit www.cavendish-artscience.org.uk