After the focus on Angola we are continuing our collaboration with Another Africa with the second article from their Tracing Emerging Artistic Practice series dedicated to the artistic scene of South Africa.  Enjoy.   lettera27 Versione italiana         Houghton Kinsman     With planning underway for the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art and on the back of the announcement of Johannesburg as one of Phaidon’s 12 Future Art Cities, there is an air of creative enthusiasm around South Africa. As one of the most established art markets on the continent, events like these, in addition to Cape Town’s role as the 2014 World Design Capital, have meant increased attention on and discussion around the countries creative exploits.   Daniella Mooney. Fool’s Gold, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Whatiftheworld, Cape Town   One of the most exciting aspects to emerge from this discussion has been the continued growth of contributions from young creative practitioners to the cultural and artistic climate of South Africa.   As young artists/curators, presenting critical thoughts on and notions of...

italian version     There seems to have been a slow but steady shift during the last two years from the fear that the economic crisis would lead to widespread war to the very real sensation that the world is now involved in an ongoing conflict fought on so many fronts as to be comparable to the Cold War, if not to the events leading up to the early part of the Second World War, when the reality of global conflict really dawned. Yet although Internet reporting brings us ever closer to the imagery of conflict – in the Ukraine, IS, Syria, Libya and Gaza – what is effectively the twentyfirst-century ‘home front’, the UK, US and most of Europe, has never felt further removed from the realities of war itself.   How might the artworld respond to this? This is a question that inevitably evokes German philosopher Theodor Adorno’s injunction on ‘making art after Auschwitz’, set out in his 1962 essay ‘Commitment’ (and echoing a line from ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’, 1949). What is often overlooked is that later in the same essay Adorno writes that art must continue even in spite of its impossibility,...