MICHAELIS 3RD YEAR ENVIRONMENTAL ELECTIVE
In May 2022, a third year ‘environmental elective’ teaching module, led by Associate Professor Virginia Mackenny, focussed on the UCT campus as a site of concern. Four groups of students produced interventions and installations on Hiddingh and Upper Campus that drew attention to issues of waste, recycling and the campus’s carbon footprint. One group, Kayleigh Cornish, Shahir Singh and Daniella du Plooy, produced a 90 metre ‘intestine’ of university waste that wound down the plaza stairs. It was featured on UCT news: https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2022-05-13-giant-fabric-intestine-promotes-culture-of-recycling-on-campus
Erin Grice, Jo Truscott, Kayla Howie and Megan Mills formed the art collective “Waste of Space” and their project aimed to foster awareness of individual plastic consumption and waste plastic waste in students’ immediate environment. Recyclable plastic waste was collected from 15 students in residence over the course of a month, and was entwined with meters of plastic braids made from plastic shopping bags. The braiding was an analogy for the entanglement of plastic pollution with the earth’s geology, and to engender care, the audience was encouraged to spend time braiding as they considered their own complicity in plastic pollution.
Kyle Strydom, Zainab Davids and Katherine Joubert created a public intervention titled. An object reminiscent of an enlarged vase of flowers with suggested ‘paper ears’ posed the question “IF THIS WAS THE LAST WATER ON EARTH, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO IT?”. Viewers were invited to respond to the personified jug of water, and in so doing, they hoped to encourage empathy and sensitivity to the weight of human actions.
Georgina Clark, Mitchell Engel and Helen Engelke’s “Two Trees” installation on Hiddingh Campus invited viewers to sit at a desk and read a book imagined through the voice of two trees of the area. They were interested in the complexities of settlement and indigeneity in relation to local trees and codexes of colony. Indigenous seeds were offered as souvenirs of the engagement.
