Final curtain call for UCT’s Prof Jay Pather

It was the final curtain call for Professor Jay Pather as he graciously took to the stage in the Hiddingh Hall to deliver his inaugural lecture – marking his ascent to full professor – a memorable moment in an illustrious career, and especially significant as he prepares for his retirement at the end of the year.

And his was a sold-out performance on Wednesday, 23 October, and marked the end of a long line of inaugural lectures for his academic home, the Faculty of Humanities. To celebrate the occasion, the hall, located on the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Hiddingh campus, was transformed into a theatre-like setting with dimmed lights and a spotlight for the man of the moment. Professor Pather received multiple standing ovations. Of course, the audience would have it no other way to honour this acclaimed scholar, artist and activist whose influence and body of work has made an enormous contribution to the field of creative arts over the past four decades.

Pather is the director of UCT’s Institute for Creative Arts. He’s also a choreographer who curates Infecting the City and the ICA Live Art Festivals in Cape Town and Afrovibes in several cities in the Netherlands.

Astute scholar

As she welcomed him to the podium, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Professor Shose Kessi, said Pather has made an indelible contribution to UCT and served his students and the university with distinction. Most notably, during his tenure as chair of the Works of Art Collection committee during the height of the #RhodesMustFall student movement, he worked tirelessly to transform art across the university, including the contentious sculpture of Sarah Baartman, which led to many debates among staff and students. And ultimately, he contributed to the renaming of Jameson Hall to Sarah Baartman Hall.

“This kind of commitment means that Professor Pather has worked diligently over the years to close the gap between UCT with its immediate Cape Town environment – a true commitment to social responsibility for us as a public institution,” Professor Kessi said.

“We are deeply indebted to Professor Pather as an activist and as a scholar who has seen this country through some of its darkest chapters.”

Shifting spaces

A visibly emotional Pather arrived at the podium to deliver his inaugural address and he had the daunting task of condensing years of research and work into a short presentation. And like a true creative, his presentation comprised very little words and long-winded sentences. Instead, they included videos, music and photographs of his work locally and abroad.

Titled “Shifting spaces, titling time: art and art education in a society that aches for transformation”, the lecture had the audience, which included family, colleagues, past and present students and followers of his work, brimming with pride.

“From an early age I recognised that shape shifting and titling is about what we need to do to get used to, in order to survive in response to being caught [and] taught [in] claustrophobic structures of race, class and gender in the 1960s and 1970s – the Group Areas Act, the Immorality Act, the Internal Security Act [were all] rigging of confinement,” he said.

Works of art  

Throughout his career, Pather has taken performance art to the people – into public spaces across the world. And the visual interpretation of his best work was just what his audience needed to refresh their memories.

The list of his contributions was endless, but what stood out was his brainchild – Infecting the City – South Africa’s largest public arts festival, which Pather curated in partnership with Brett Bailey. The idea was born in 2008 and stemmed from the Spier Performing Arts Festival. It aims to bring outstanding quality and enthralling performances to the city’s theatres, galleries and onto the streets and other public spaces like St George’s Mall and the Golden Acre in Cape Town’s CBD.  The idea is to make performances and art accessible to people from all walks of life.

In 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the event took a somewhat different turn. Dubbed (un)Infecting the City, for the first time, the programme comprised a digital component, while public installations and performances went ahead and adhered to the strict restrictions set by government at the time.

Undisciplined work

At the end of an enlightening evening and while delivering the vote of thanks, UCT’s Professor Mark Fleishman lauded Pather for the exceptional work he has produced over the decades. He said Pather’s choreography always pushed boundaries and sought to be as “undisciplined or as ill-disciplined as possible”.

“In his work he has brought the broader continent and, dare I say, the entire Global South into contact with a small Global South campus at the very tip of the African continent.”

“I think one can truly say that the work that Jay has done has been transformative to our ways of getting the arts into the landscape of Cape Town. In his work he has brought the broader continent and, dare I say, the entire Global South into contact with a small Global South campus at the very tip of the African continent,” Professor Fleishman said.

To roaring applause, Fleishman again thanked Pather for his body of work and for his unrelenting contribution to UCT, to the country, the continent and the world.

“A luta continua, comrade!”