World Wider Lab Exhibition opens at Wits Art Museum in Johannesburg, SA

Kasia Molga who is co-founder of the World Wilder Lab project was invited to take up residency with digital artists Jepchumba, Ling Tan and Nathan Gates occupying the basement of the Wits Art Museum (WAM) as part of the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival, exploring the theme – “Futurist Visions of Johannesburg: uncovering place and space, physical and virtual responses to ‘now’ for socio-cultural technologies of the future”.

The artist-in-residents were required to critically engage with the citizens of Johannesburg and imagine (or re-imagine) the future of Braamfontein (central suburb of Johannesburg). Kasia ran workshops for locals, coming from the perspective that Johannesburg is the biggest manmade forest in the world and whether Jo’burg residents were aware of that and what was their relations to trees and plants in the cities. The results were quite interesting with the younger generation taking trees for granted and not giving it too much thought and with the older generation offering stories, experiences and legends about how people and animals from South Africa were connected to plants. The results from these workshops fed straight into Kasia’s Creativeworks London Creative Entrepreneur-In-Residence project with Chelsea College of Arts which examines ‘Can data from plants help us to increase our city resilience?’. The workshops also gave birth to a new artwork called “Plandscapes”.

The artist’s public engagements and creative technology explorations culminated in the Fak’ugesi Lab Exhibition which opened in Johannesburg on 12th September at the Wits Art Museum, the exhibition runs until Sunday 25th October.

Kasia Molga was awarded a Creativeworks London Creative Entrepreneur In Residence Award during Round 3 to work alongside Cyril Shing, Chelsea College of Arts, University of Arts London.