(d)urban(a)

Amazwi Abesifazane Group on Facebook

If you are interested in the Amazwi Abesifazane / Voices of Women project, I created a group for it by the same name on Facebook today.  If you happen to have a Facebook account and would like to read about the group and join it, please do so.  My intention in this post is not to endorse Facebook, rather the group and I are exploring it as one of many options for the project to reach a wider audience (with Facebook, this means wider in terms of geographical and age demographic since the social networking site reaches a large amount of college/university students as the site initially restricted membership to individuals with a .edu email address).  We hope to post recent news and feature individual cloths with their accompanying narratives on the group page. 

J asked me today about setting a blog up for the project as well.  At some point in the future we may use a freeware blogging software and embed the blog within the Create Africa South website.  I've always felt that besides having considerate and interesting content, a blog should be consistent in posting in order to keep an audience.  For the blog then, besides news updates as they occur, it would likely feature a cloth each week from the project's archive.  The first cloths were created in 1999 in collaboration with the African Art Centre and the most recent cloths were produced in December 2007 in the Western Cape.  Over the past eight years the cloths have shifted from using applique techniques to incorporating more beading (a medium that has been used in art in this area far before British missionaries introduced lessons on cloth sewing and embroidery in certain areas).

A low-tech NGO without high-tech?

Technical frustrations abound recently for Create Africa South (CAS), the nongovernmental organization (NGO) I have been working with over the last year.  High technology has never been kind to CAS:  last year during intense rainstorms the roof of the office leaked, destroying one of the two remaining ancient PCs the organization ran there.  Several years ago their entire suite of new PCs were stolen in an armed robbery that, upon J’s description, was likely planned and based on observation of the delivery to the building.  Since that incident, CAS has taken a “no frills” approach to using high tech – in part to maintain a low profile but largely so that it doesn’t become dependent on items that can quickly vanish.

Upon arrival this year I was informed the other office computer finally ceased to function likely due to its age and the humid climate here.  It’s kind of humbling to be handed the electronic life of a decade-old organization on two burned DVDs.  Over this weekend CAS’s final desktop computer (housed at J’s home office) died – a victim of flooding due to this weekends heavy storms.  Over the last week in South Africa three days of heavy rain in different areas has led to the death of at least seven people (in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal provinces) and the displacement of over 200 families – especially in Soweto, one of Johannesburg’s historic townships.  Right now the only functioning high-tech item CAS owns is a digital camera.  R and I have been mediating quite a bit of work and relaying emails for J on our personal laptops because there isn’t much else CAS can do at the moment.

As much as I get frustrated, the situation reminds me of the beauty of low technologies.  Much of the work CAS performs – imparting basic sewing and economic skills and collecting embroidered cloths – is low tech.  In our workshop last year in Mahushu we worked with the women only during the day in a building that lacked electricity.  Besides our digital camera, the rest of our materials consisted of pads of paper, regular and colored pencils with sharpeners, cloth, cotton embroidery thread, sewing needles, scissors, and a few sewn samplers to demonstrate stitches.  Much can come from little.  What are some of the advantages of low technologies?  Generally they can be practiced or crafted with little capital investment and the know-how for the practice can be understood by a single individual (in distinction to trends toward specialization).  But I’m not interested in drawing a sharp distinction or valorizing one over the other ­– rather I'm more interested in how technologies can work together to create opportunities for access and communication.