The private collector, often more so than the public institution, has played a vital role in supporting artists working in ideas. Kim Gurney finds out what motivates these collectors

Even the packaging of eKapa was problematic, reports Kim Gurney

eKapa launches in a year of numerous similarly-styled mass spectacles. By Kim Gurney

Instead of retreating into the binary space of violence, it might be time explore the interstices of marginality, says Noëleen Murray

The itinerant exhibition has the potential to activate a concept of the post-apartheid as a particular manifestation of the postcolonial, argues Premesh Lalu

On the edge of wrong I Labia I Cape Town

The recent Sessions eKapa might have comprised an elaborate plot of farcical denouement but it also offered incisive food for thought, writes Kim Gurney

Call it anything you want, says Rory Bester, but the fact is South Africa desperately needs a large-scale exhibition

Even when you're staging polemical debates hosts should respect basic party etiquette, writes Storm Janse van Rensburg

Siobhan McCusker I The Substation I Johannesburg

The happy days of post-independence are over, says N'Goné Fall, and culture in Africa is at a crossroads

Despite seeing his optimism thoroughly defeated by eKapa, Edgar Pieterse was nonetheless inspired by a Kenyan speaker's provocative suggestion

Aurality, as opposed to visuality, has largely been overlooked in recent narratives on South African contemporary art. In an overview of three young Cape Town practitioners variously utilising sound as physical signifier and immaterial presence, Julian Jonker considers how aurality offers a means of accessing history and memory

Contemporary Johannesburg has been the subject of numerous critical engagements of late. Johannesburg Circa Now, a recent book edited by Terry Kurgan and Jo Ractliffe, contributes to this growing literature. But, wonders Colin Richards, is this tome merely another example of criticality reconfigured as commodity. In weighing the exigencies of provocation against the professional packaging of artistic careers, he moots ideas relevant beyond the specific ambit of the book under discussion

In the first of a series of artist-to-artist exchanges, Johan Thom interviews Willem Boshoff. The pairing is appropriate. Boshoff, with his long-term insight and perspective, not to mention his knack for verbal tomfoolery, is the perfect foil to Thom, a young performance artist still working in relative obscurity. The central issue of their discussion: ferreting out the nuances of talk around cutting-edge art practice

The concept of an aesthetic avant-garde is semantically bankrupt, lacking reference to any real epistemological or aesthetic potency or agenda. Despite this, argues James Sey, the founding spirit of the avant-garde movement does suggest strategies for negotiating South Africa's rapidly concretising ghetto of aesthetic identity politics

South African photographers are making significant inroads into the art world, both here and abroad. But, asks Thuthu Lesuthu, accolades and media praise aside, to what extent do these photographers simply perpetuate colonial tropes?

The concept of the avant-garde has exerted a hegemonic play on the imagination. Commenting on this, art theorist and curator Okwui Enwezor once warned against its limited use – " beyond the trace of its constantly reinvented heroic and mythologised past". He added that the stakes are much higher today and the object of attack quite different. Just how high is revealed in this series of articles gathered by Khwezi Gule. The articles, written by Sharlene Khan, Thuthu Lesuthu and Gabi Ngcobo, while clearly mapping out the object of attack also plainly reveal the limitations of using an imported vocabulary to articulate sustainable truths about recent South African artistic practice. In an extended preface, Gule outlines the theoretical underpinnings of his collaborative method.

Formal language has its limits, write Sean O'Toole in an explanatory overview prefacing a series of articles on artistic modernity. This tends to explain why this issue is less about art practice than it is about the language we use to construct, define and record its bearing on our lives

The ongoing privilege of white artists is supported by an elaborate industry founded on the seemingly unshakable hegemony of whiteness, argues Sharlene Khan. The outcome is the perpetuation of a warped system that continues to disadvantage the majority of this country's citizens

There is no fixed point of entry into the subject of the Avant-Gare, and a invitation to engage with its "Ghostly Persistence" in contemporary discourse, to borrow an expression from Hal Foster, prompted two spirited essays - complemented here by an epilogue on language and media.

In 2004, choreographer Robyn Orlin staged a site-specific performance at the Johannesburg Art Gallery as part of the annual Dance Umbrella showcase. The performance included the gallery's security staff. Photographer Neo Ntsoma collaborated with Orlin in producing this visual record of the performance.

The contribution of black woman artists to this country's art history is largely unwritten and for the most part remains critically ignored, writes Gabi Ngcobo, whose contribution highlights the work of Zanele Muholi and Nandipha Mntambo