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The Essentials: The Arts, Music and the Food of life

Artists are by nature innovators. They make visible and audible the world around us through visual media, music, film, and theatre, and in so doing, they often seek to shift our perspective on the world as we experience it, even if, and perhaps especially because, we are challenged by what we see, feel, or hear. Both art and music are experiential and temporal, two aspects of the creative and performative act that have been challenged by recent circumstances. And in many ways, we can also see the art of medicine is equally experiential, temporal and performative, if in different ways. As art and music have always been part of the human experience and infused into many healing practices, this forum is an opportunity to reflect on the experience of artistic and creative innovators during the pandemic.

Gavin Krastin

Gavin Krastin is an artist working predominantly in live art performance, but whose practice also straddles theatre, dance, visual arts, education and curatorship. He holds a Master of Arts Degree in choreography and performance, from Rhodes University Department of Drama, and is immersed in the professional performance art scene in South Africa and abroad. From 2013 he lectured (part-time) at UCT’s Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, but in 2018 he joined his alma mater, Rhodes University (or the University Currently Known as Rhodes), as a lecturer. Gavin is interested in the body’s representation in alternative conditions and how this can inspire a questioning and mythologising of behaviours, exchanges, revolts and transgressions in his work. In 2021 he was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Performance Art. He works across South Africa and has shown in the USA, Canada, England, Wales, Scotland, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Brazil and Switzerland. In 2018 Gavin established the Live Art Arcade, a nomadic platform-come-festival for early career interdisciplinary artists with interests in experimental, durational and site-based performance. 

 

Kutlwano Masote

Born into a musical family in Soweto, Kutlwano Masote had his love for music encouraged from an early age by his parents and grandparents. His father Michael is a celebrated music teacher who founded the Soweto Youth Orchestra, and later the Soweto Symphony Orchestra in the mid-1960s. Kutlwano grew up in a vibrant classical music environment and eventually took up the cello at the age of eleven. He took up the cello at the age of eleven. After studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, he was awarded a scholarship by Yehudi Menuhin to study cello and chamber music at the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland. Upon his return to South Africa in 1998, Masote joined the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO). After the closure of the NSO, Masote became involved in various music NGOs like the Johannesburg Music Initiative (co-founder in 2001), Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra (board director in 2001), the MIAGI Festival (2005-2007), the Arts and Culture Trust (chairman in 2007 and 2008). He currently serves on SAMRO Foundation’s Artistic Committee and also enjoyed a thirteen-year career is radio both at Classic fm and SAfm. Masote made his conducting debut in 2006 in a concert of the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Todd Matshikiza. In 2007 he conducted the Todd Matshikiza Retrospective Concert at the State Theatre. Some of the soloists he has conducted include Sibongile Mngoma, Lira, Samson Diamond, Pretty Yende and Simphiwe Dana. His international collaborations include conducting Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil (2011) and the Philharmonia Moments Musicaux from Taiwan (2010). One of Masote’s passions is contributing to the development of young musicians.

Sara Halllat

Sara has more than 10 years in project management in below the line large scale events. In 2011 she moved to the position of Director of the Bag Factory Artists' Studios which she departed in 2017. Since then she has produced 2 short films and started working at the Morris Isaacson Centre for Music. In 2014 she completed her Post Graduate diploma in business management. In 2015 Sara was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship where she studied business and entrepreneurial studies at Northwestern University.

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