Meghan Judge
Meghan Judge is an artist and curator working into tensions of movement and rest. Through a constantly reconfiguring body politic she locates temporal ruptures, sinkholes and disturbances that hiss a plurality of presence and ask questions about perception and orientation. Her process follows inquiry, opening through multiple mediums and media including elemental, sonic, filmic and text. She is a lecturer at the Origins Centre Association at the university of the Witwatersrand. and holds a PhD in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand where she was a fellow in the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER).
2023-present. Lecturer at the Origins Center Association at the University of the Witwatersrand.
2022 - 2023. Fellow at SARCHi Chair in Science Communication, School of Journalism, University of Stellenbosch.
2019 – 2022. PhD in Fine Arts. Awarded the PhD through Wits School of the Arts and WiSER
2016 – 2018. Master of Arts, by dissertation (cum laude) through the Wits School of the Arts.
Exhibitions
2021. Static Drift. Solo exhibition, Wits Art Museum.
Ongoing: Various group shows, projects and lectures. Multiple shows, community, collaborative and solo projects, pedagogical courses, talks and art or research residencies, predominantly across Southern Africa and Western Indian Ocean, but including an international focus.
Recently: IASPIS – International Artist Studio Programme resident at the Mirror Institution, Sweden (2023); Feon'ala collective exhibition at La Teinturerie, Antananarivo, Madagascar (2023); Fiber Space exhibition at SudNoord in Stockholm and associated residency and exhibition through the Gamleby Foto Grant and the Ninevites in Gamleby, Sweden (2022/3); Heterodyne Relations / Gaia Intrudes for SeNSA, Cape Town, South Africa (2023); Mosaic Interactive (2019), East Kentucky, West Virginia, East Tennessee and Big Ears Music Festival; Desert (2018), William Kentridge’s Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Festivals
2023 Smålands Triennalen, Sweden. Performance.
2021 Tunbridge Wells Puppetry Festival, United Kingdom and online. Film screening.
2020 Manipulate Festival, Scotland and online. Film screening.
2019/2020 Spier Light Art Festival: Harp Space, public arts interactive sound sculpture (2019); The Lonely Sailor Weather Report, outdoor film screening (2020). Cape Town, South Africa.
2019 National Arts Festival of South Africa. South Africa. Film screening.
2019 Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival Film screening. Johannesburg, South Africa.
2018 Porlwi festival of Light. Site-specific, socially engaged film projection. Port Louis, Mauritius.
2014 - 2019 Festival d’Art Urbain. Various art projects and workshops. Antananarivo (2014, 2015, 2016); Mahajanga (2017); Antsiranana (2018), Madagascar.
Curating
2023 Sensing Sonics is an ongoing curated gathering for sonic inquiry paired with a creative activity. The session works with the quantum phenomenon of radical pairs where seemingly unrelated parts flash in relation. They explore the material/immaterialities of sound itself. The programming is open ended, shaping around desires.
2023 Resting Waters. Curating an ongoing residency for oceanic practitioners to come into rest in each others waters, following that water contains transparent memory in resonance form. This residency understands rest as critical to creativity and looks to slime, ooze and amphibiousness as forms for releasing that retains connectivity, noticing what touches in difference. The home for the residency is nomadic.
2020/2019. Virtual Winds. Designed the Virtual Winds residency and curated the first iteration called Hetsika (thereafter taken up by other curators) that brings artists around the African islands and mainland together in contact with Malagasy artists and South African artists through La Teinturerie, a contemporary arts centre in Antananarivo. Thereafter managing other curators invited through the ANAE residency network. Virtual Winds lets each curator set up a game that allows artists to engage playfully yet critically with and through each other's work. It disrupts the language, border and cultural divides left by colonialism that inhibits greater arts connectivity.
2020. SIRA: Rust. Designed and curated a virtual residency during the initial lockdowns of the SARS-Co2 pandemic. It was designed to centre domestic set-ups that artist-parents find themselves in during this time so that they are not pushed further to the margins. This also worked for non-parent artists who were stuck at home.
2014. International Civil Society Week with CIVIUS, curating art for public engagements through art, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Publications in peer-reviewed journals/books
Judge, Meghan. Noisy Surfaces: the art of vulnerability in human-ocean relations. DeArte Journal, Tailor and Francis (2023).
Judge, Meghan. Escaping Seascape at the Shoreline in Toamasina in Madagascar. South African Journal of Art History (2022).
Judge, Meghan. Sensing Ocean through Noise and Silence. Chapter for Routledge Handbook of Critical Ocean Studies. Book. Routledge press 2023 (forthcoming).
Judge, Meghan Between Spin and Drift. Closing chapter for the Hydrofeminist Thinking with Ocean/s: Political and pedagogical possibilities. Routledge press, 2023 (forthcoming).
Scholarly podcast
The Academic Citizen (2022). Blue. Season 6, episode 4. SARCHi SciCom.
The WiSER Podcast (2020). Episode 10, Oceanic Humanities Research Collective: Below the Waterline. Fellows included in this podcast are M Mohulatsi, M Judge, C Joseph, R Poinasamy.
Non-academic publishing
Judge, Meghan (2023). In this mucus you ponder seeds. Poetic story. TBA21 Ocean Archive commission.
Kalanoro (2023). Film. Antananarivo, Madagascar. Artist credits.
Matshikiza, Lindiwe (2021) One Take Grace. Animation credits. Award-winning documentary.
Judge, Meghan for The Long Minute, Centre for the Less Good Idea, Bronwyn Lace (2020). Behind the Scenes. Short film.
Khanyile, Sifiso (2020). A New Country. Artist credits. Award winning feature length documentary.
Is’Art/La Teinturerie (2018). Festival d’Art Urbain Antananarivo 2014- 2017. Art book. Artist mention.
Visual Art Network of South Africa (2012). 2010 Reasons To Live In A Small Town: Projects. Artbook (print). Artist feature.
de Bell, Fiona (2010). Cascoland Mafikeng 2010: Activation of an underused stadium, 2010. Artbook (print). Art feature.
Reviews:
Fisher, Mark (2021). The Guardian. Manipulate festival review. Theatre experiments on a different stage. Online. Artist mention and art review.
Wozniak, Lilith (2021). Exeunt Magazine. Review: Manipulate Festival. Online. Art review.
Solina Drnovšek, Klara (2021). EU Contemporary Puppetry Critical Platform. Floating Far and Wide on Imaginary Waves. Online. Artist mention, art review.
Morron, Nico (2021). The Wee Review. The Lonely Sailor Weather Report. Online. Artist mention, art review.
Gričiutė, Andrėja (2021). EU Contemporary Puppetry and Critical Platform. Maybe that’s Odysseus? Online. Artist mention and art review.
Msimanga, Nondumiso (2020). The Critter. Virtual Blackout is a reminder to Play Our Way into the Future. Online. Artist mention and art review.
Organised symposiums/special issues
2023. Editor with Prof Mehita Iquani for a special issue for a credited academic journal titled Affective Encounters: Storying in South African Ecological Communication
2023. Colloquium committee for Science Communication Colloquium Series organised with Prof Mehita Iquani, Dr CM Joubert, Dr FB Van Schalkwyk, and FM Mabogoane. Stellenbosch University.
2022. Eco-Comms symposium with Dr Corlia Meyer and Mr Fumani Mabogoane and prof. Mehita Iquani at the South African Research Chair in Science Communication, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Presentations for conferences/symposiums/colloquiums and panels
September 2023. Interlude of Intrusions, a affective sonic archive of mothering alongside scholarly and artistic practice for Woman's Work in Artistic Practice for the panel discussion Traces We Leave Upon the Earth, Origins Center, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
September 2023. Swaying in unknowability: submerged listening with haunted kelp forests, a sonic eco poetics clip for reorientation in the panel Thinking Back with the Ocean and Unlearning Marine Science Epistemes at the ASLE-UKI Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, UK and Ireland, Biennial Conference 2023 themed "Transitions", Liverpool, United Kingdom.
August 2023. Paper: Listening to the Spine of the Ahulhas Current at Waterways: an international conference on human relations with the sea, Gqeberha, South Africa.
April 2023. Chaired: Dr Charne Lavery’s presentation at the Science Communication Colloquium 08 titled Vertical Indian Ocean: Postcolonial Cultural Studies, Climate Change and Deep Sea Science. Stellenbosch University.
April 2023. Paper: A Spectral Encounter with Vastness and Self Noise along the Weathering Spine of the Agulhas Current. British Science and Literature and Science 17th Annual Conference, Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland (hybrid).
March 2023. The Weight of Vastness in the Agulhas Current. Haunted Shores 2023: Aquatic Surfaces and Depths (Scotland, hybrid).
February 2023. Southampton University, United Kingdom. Presented talk Static Ocean.
November 2022. Eco_Media Symposium, RMIT Melbourne, Australia. Presenting creative research Silence, silencing and noisy perceptions while listening through apparatuses for knowing the ocean.
October 2022. Presented paper Drifting in an Underground Hole Below the Higher Institution: lessons from unmastering an art exhibition for Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CriSTaL) symposium, toward a special issue titled Thinking with Ocean/s for Reconceptualising Scholarship in Higher Education. Simonstown, South Africa.
2022. South African Journal in Art History. Presented Pitted Holes: human-ocean relations at the shoreline in Toamasina, Madagascar. University of the Freestate, Bloemfontein (paper presented digitally).
2022. Eco-Comms. Elemental media and sensing data. CREST, Stellenbosch University.
2022. Presented oceanic Sonic Interlude for the United Nations Environment Programme: Winter/Summer school on Oceans, Art and Defenders.. Online (presented virtually).
2022. Adventures in Posthumanism doctoral research conference. Presented Under the Waterline. Presented artworks. Plymouth University (paper presented digitally).
2021. Hydro Feminisms and Wild Engagements with Ocean/s: towards a justice-to-come in South African contexts. Presented a creative conference overview titled What bubbles Up. University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, August 2021.
2021. Virtual Hugs. Presented Re-turning to Compositions that Together Apart. Internal Conference in the Wits School of the Arts. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, October 2020 [paper presented digitally due to the Covid 10 Pandemic].
2021 Art Research Africa Colloquium. Compositions that Together Apart. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, September 2020 [paper presented digitally due to the Covid 10 Pandemic].
2019 Collaborations, panel at CHR Factory of the Arts. Collaboratively presented on The Lonely Sailor Weather Report. Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape
2018 Presented A Praxis that Rusts for holding Water: Johannesburg Oceans. Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
2017 presented Artists as organisers and back again: Keleketla! for Mobility of Artists in Times of Growing Barriers. Subramania Bharati Lecture Theatre of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauritius, April 2017.
Grants and awards
2023 Mirror Institution IASPIS (international Artist Studio Programme in Sweden) artist in Residence, Oland, Sweden.
2022/3. Awarded a South African Research Chair in Science Communication postdoctoral fellowship, at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Awarded based on scholarly interest, artistic publication and creative project proposed working with marine scientists and sound art.
2022. Gamleby Foto Grant awarded for residency in Gamleby, Sweden.
2021. PhD Mid Cycle Publication Grant. Grant awarded toward the production of a peer-reviewed article to be submitted before the completion of the PhD cycle. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
2019. PhD Mellon Fellow at WiSER. Oceanic Humanities for the Global South fellow award, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Grant awarded based on the quality of my academic record and interest in developing a project in arts and the Southern Ocean.
2018. Pro Helvetia ANT Mobility Grant. I worked through ANAE to bring two artists from Madagascar to collaborate in William Kentridge’s Less Good Idea Season 3. Madagascar and Johannesburg, South Africa.
2018. Oppenheimer Memorial Trust award for Postgraduate Study. Awarded towards the completion of my MA Dissertation titled Gong Fu and the Art of Duplication: toward social repositories in subaltern history
2017. Pro Helvetia ANT Mobility Grant. A research grant for artists to pursue their creative practice within Southern Africa. I was researching the development of a film that looked into social history, which spanned from China through trade systems to Madagascar via conversations with a woman in Antananarivo. Antananarivo, Madagascar.
2011. Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA). Awarded to develop an artist-as-researcher position for Naledi Rural within VANSA’s socially engaged project titled Twenty Ten Reasons to live in a Small Town in the Naledi Rural region of the Freestate, South Africa.
2010. Cascoland funding. Socially engaged participatory art project titled Hi Tonkana during the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Mabato Stadium and Operation Blanket, Mahikeng, South Africa.
