Radiant Walls (Un-learn Re-Learn)
WHAT:
Radiant Walls (Learn-Unlearn) was an installation plus live performance event created for the Vrystaat Kunstefees/Tsa-Botjhaba Festival 2025, created in Southern Africa working closely with the local Sesotho community. A mudbrick wall, filled with poetry floats high above Sekeole Holistic Artspace – broadcasting the ‘radiant voice’ of South African poet/activist Pheello Rasello into the night sky. This ethereal installation transformed traditional African cob wall materials – by incorporating hundreds of glass bottles that together made up a giant ‘lo-fi’ digital text display – projecting radiant voices and visions of ‘unlearning’ & ‘relearning’ far and wide. The artwork is now a permanent installation and a context for future performances at the site.
Radiant Walls acknowledges and respects the Khoe-San of the Free State and the deep spiritual attachment to their ancestors and relationships they have to this country and its people.
OUTCOMES:
1: Sekeole Artspace, Westdene for the Vrystaat Kunstefees/Tsa-Botjhaba Festival 2025, 11-19th July 6-9pm, with focal performance night Wed 16th July, 6-9pm
WHO: Collaborating with Dr. Anita Venter, Lenosa Mohopong leading the Sekeole creative team, Pheello Rasello, Sonya Radermeyer, Jemima Kola (My Malaika Photography), Mary Sebabatso Mofama.
PARTNERS: Vrystaat Kunstefees/Tsa-Botjhaba Festival 2025, Sekeole Holistic Arts Centre, University Free State, South Africa, Centre For Development Support, Faculty Economic and Management Sciences & QUT School of CreativeArts.
FURTHER DETAILS:
Sonja Rademeyer writes,
Imagine seeing a dialogue of light as a poetry projection, birthed from a vision of healing and connectivity, blending light, sound and spirit both as a metaphorical and physical experience...
Radiant Wall Exhibition is a cross-cultural, multi-artform experiment in embedding ‘un-learning & re-learning’ voices. Collaborating with local African “post-natural builders” a wall has been constructed at Sekoele Holistic Living Arts Centre (Bloemfontein / Mangaung) using local materials such as clay, soil, animal dung, and discarded waste.
Puncturing the wall with hundreds of glass bottles, a dramatic stained-glass effect has been created. Digitally processed and animated texts is projected through the ends of each bottle, becoming individual pixels of a giant 'lo-fi' digital text display. This display animates the multilingual voice of local activist, poet & artist Pheello Rasello – allowing his ‘radiant voice’ and visions of ‘unlearning’ & ‘relearning’– to shine powerfully through seemingly impenetrable walls. Embedded vocal audio further enhances this effect. This integration of form, idea, and intergenerational technologies (with multiple visual, auditory, and tactile layers) creates an exceptionally powerful experience.
The metaphor of shining radiant voices of oppressed communities through seemingly impenetrable walls, and replacing waste with powerful words, will not be lost on audiences in light of South Africa’s recent history.