TIES

During the SPIELART scholarship 2022 Angelinah Maponya was working on TIES, a new research project which opens discourse and critically assesses the invisible and visible powerlessness of workers and residents in the mining town Bapong, North West, South Africa. The departure for this research stems from personal ties to the local mining industry. As the work foregrounds the polarities that exist in this industry; million-dollar mining companies/ corporations versus the precarity of jobs, living conditions and other contributing factors to the state of Bapong. In this time they were conducting rigorous research on ground, documentation through footages, interviews and collecting information from archives. The results of the research will be presented at this year’s SPIELART Theatre Festival in Munich.

Born and bred in Johannesburg, Angelinah Maponya now lives in Cape Town where they are completing a MA in International Dual Dramaturgy with University of Amsterdam and University of Cape Town. As a visual storyteller and dramaturgically trained performer, Angelinah Maponya’s practice engages with interdisciplinarity in live performance. They are now interested in the dramaturgical process of theatre-making through research.

Due to the large number and diversity of the extraordinary applications for the residency program in cooperation with Artist in Residence Munich: Villa Waldberta, City of Munich, we decided to award further working scholarships in the context of SPIELART. These remote scholarships were accompanied and mentored by us. One of these fellows, along with the artists Rajesh Nirmal and Pankaj Tiwari, is the artist Angelinah Maponya (them/they).