Hilton Arts Festival Hilton College: 14 - 16 September As always, the annual Hilton Arts Festival is completely accessible if you are on a budget with tons of free stuff to do over the weekend of 14 - 16 September. A number of venues will host free music throughout the three days of the festival, [...]
By Illa Thompson ISEA2018 / Digifest05 / IF Durban INTERSECTIONS Durban Last few days.... 23 – 30 June 2018 Intersections is an overwhelmingly enormous programme of various forms of electronic art which has been consuming the city over the past week. The main players are ISEA2018: the 24th International Symposium on Electronic Art; Digifest05 and [...]
Illa Thompson Mercury Column 113 March 2018 Have we become a nation of Madame Defarges ? The bloodthirsty Tricoteuse who sat alongside the guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution, eagerly watching the public executions while simultaneously knitting; encrypting the names of the dead in her hand-knitted goods. Has our lust for the macabre and [...]
Illa Thompson Mercury Column 112 February 2018 The joy of art, in whatever form, is for the viewer / reader to become immersed into an alternative narrative; to visit another reality for a while and to experience, through artistic engagement; another world view. Much like Lewis Carroll's Alice who ventured into another world down the [...]
Illa Thompson Mercury Column 111 November 2017 Halloween as an excuse to dress up and have a party, is a fairly new thing to South Africa. Already it has captured the imagination of costume hires, party shops and supermarkets – all selling faux pumpkins, scary sweets and witches hats. I live in Glenwood - in [...]
Illa Thompson Mercury Column 110 August 2017 The creative industries provide platforms for sharing, engaging and grappling with issues whether social, personal or political. The stories shed light on what takes place in our hearts and heads, individually and collectively. It is so exciting that in our creative spaces currently there are a multitude of [...]
Illa Thompson Mercury Column 109 August 2017 Working mostly with professional creatives (men and women who create work for a living) it is always affirming to be among people for whom the thrill and passion of making art, rather than the hope of financial rewards, is what drives them. Not that the professional practioners aren’t [...]
Illa Thompson Mercury Column 106 May 2017 I suppose everyone has a special place: a place where you feel safe, happy, welcome and calm. A place where the very walls seems to enfold you, where on entering you feel your soul exhale, where time slows down and allows you be still. For surfers, this place [...]
Illa Thompson Mercury Column 105 April 2017 It’s a red letter day this weekend for lovers of jazz - with hundreds of concerts, gigs, programmes and gatherings taking place simultaneously around the world bringing people together through a shared love of music in celebration of the seventh annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO has declared April [...]
Illa Thompson Column 103 February 2017 So today I think about people, strangers mostly, who have had their lives profoundly touched by the work of my colleagues. There has been an abundance of some astonishing interactions over the past few weeks causing the usually drowsy January to become uncharacteristically buoyant and optimistic. Today I think [...]
Illa Thompson Column 102 January 2017 So – it’s January. Intuitively I want to bang on about how New Years’ resolutions should include a commitment to engage with more original art this year: to catch regular theatre shows; sample some of the phenomenal live music which the region has on offer: from the sublime KZN [...]
2016: the year that was Illa Thompson Column 101 December 2016 2016 for me will be remembered for being a yo-yo year of polar opposites – moments of phenomenal joy side-by-side with moments of enormous sadness, anger and disappointment. Initiatives have come and gone this year: we sadly lost the Catalina and Barnyard theatres, and [...]
Illa Thompson Column 100 November 2016 My relationship with Durban – my home town – is much like having a tempestuous lover: she is simultaneously astonishing, frustrating, remarkable, stormy, passionate and intense. There are times of extreme joy and enchantment, side-by-side with moments of powerful anger, rage, irritation and frustration. Working in the creative industries [...]
An Open Letter to Dr. Survé By Illa Thompson Dear Dr. Survé, Change is inevitable and potentially exciting, although transition itself is often hard and unsettling. We all know that the mainstream media landscape is in the process of major transformation as globally consumers rely increasingly on electronic devices for information which compromises the future [...]