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Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions: Ismail Farouk – los angeles

by Ismail Faroukright to the city, social art practice August 12, 2025August 12, 2025Comments are Disabled

Continuing the Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions series, Ismail Farouk, a Fellow in the MAK Urban Future Initiative, presented a survey of his activities and strategies for activating change, including video, photography and performance. Farouk’s focus on the urban spaces of Johannesburg, South Africa point the Western viewer to places, vocabulary and politics that might …

Urban Future Manifestos

by Ismail Faroukright to the city, social art practice August 12, 2025August 12, 2025Comments are Disabled

Urban Future Manifestos (edited by Peter Noever and Kimberli Meyer with texts by Saskia Sassen, Zvi Hecker, Ai Weiwei) is a compelling anthology of interdisciplinary responses to urgent global urban challenges — including migration, economic shifts, political tensions, and ecological concerns. It was inspired by the MAK Center’s Urban Future Initiative (UFI) Fellowship program, which …

Venice Architecture Biennale – Cities: Architecture and Society

by Ismail Faroukright to the city, uncategorised August 12, 2025August 12, 2025Comments are Disabled

As part of the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, themed Cities: Architecture and Society, curated by Cassim Shepard, I was invited to produce a short film profiling Johannesburg. The film, titled JHB626GP, combines digital photographs, archival film, video, and kinetic flash animations to capture the unique urban rhythms of Johannesburg. It explores the city’s historical legacy …

Land and Erasure I and II

by Ismail Faroukright to the city, social art practice, uncategorised July 27, 2025August 10, 2025Comments are Disabled

Photos: Ashley Walters, Poem: Toni Steward This collaborative walk and spatial intervention through performance, sound, poetry and alternative forms of collective mapping took place under the rubric of a public art festival put together to commemorate the centenary of the 1913 Land Act. The LAND festival, put together by the Gordon Institute of Performing …

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Land and Erasure in Contemporary Cape Town

by Ismail Faroukright to the city February 11, 2025August 10, 2025Comments are Disabled

A Short talk presented as part of the commemoration of the 1913 Natives Land Act, for the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA), hosted at the District Six Museum. 22 November 2013 Good Evening to all! Thank you to GIPCA for creating this platform for creative practitioners, and for allowing an exploration of …

Land and Erasure curated film screenings

by Ismail Faroukright to the city, social art practice August 10, 2025August 10, 2025Comments are Disabled

As part of the public program of the LAND public art festival and symposium, Farouk and Nicole Sarmiento curated a set of site-sensitive film screenings of films by Kim Munsamy, Sebástian Porras, Heidi Grunebaum and Mark Kaplan. The films were screened in historic buildings in Cape Town’s Central Business District, which carry within them histories of …

Smaaklik

by Ismail Faroukuncategorised February 12, 2025July 28, 2025Comments are Disabled

Smaaklik is a public artwork created for the City of Gent and Africalia between 2010 and 2016. It is more than an artwork, more than a bench, more than a place to sit. It is a site for gathering, an invitation to linger, and a social strategy disguised as urban furniture. The work unfolded over …