Nelson Mandela University’s Horizon 2055 exhibition at the Bird Street Gallery recently painted a picture that was both urgent and uplifting for the region’s future which is pinned on sustainability.
Horizon 2055 is a year-long research and engagement project of the SARChI Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa (ISCIA), led by Prof Andrea Hurst.
It combined academic inquiry with creative exploration through online seminars and three immersive “City (E)scape” journeys across Gqeberha, culminating in the current multimedia exhibition.
Hurst said the blend of song, spoken word, dance and live music set the tone for a showcase that brought together artists, researchers and philosophers to reimagine what the city might look like in 2055.
“At its heart, Horizon 2055 asks what it means to think sustainably — not only in environmental terms, but also in cultural, social and imaginative ones.
“What kind of future are we consciously or unconsciously creating together?”
The exhibition featured painting, sculpture, photography, installation, dance and poetry, alongside academic reflections presented in an accompanying discussion.
Each work was a response to experiences from the City (E)scapes — guided tours through the metro, designed by postdoctoral fellow Dr Gary Koekemoer that were designed to provoke fresh ways of seeing.
Dr Jacqui Lück, speaking on behalf of the dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the opening, described Horizon 2055 as “philosophically exploring the present and creatively imagining the future”.
She said the project showed how humanities could respond to the intertwined crises of inequality, social fragmentation and ecological collapse.
“It demonstrates transdisciplinarity — the critical, reflective strength of philosophy married with the imaginative, expressive power of the arts,” she said.
Representing the deputy vice-chancellor for research, innovation and internationalisation, Prof Pamela Maseko praised the project’s egalitarian design, in which participant-researchers produced knowledge with one another and the communities they met along the way.
“It reminds us that our crises of our age — climate collapse or fluctuation, inequality, cultural fragmentation — cannot be solved in disciplinary silos.
“They require us to think collaboratively across fields of knowledge,” she said.
The Herald
