Runette Kruger
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runettekruger.bsky.social
Runette Kruger
@runettekruger.bsky.social
120 followers 190 following 220 posts
Distopia.
the Undercommons.
Researching Liberatory SpaceTime.
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runettekruger.bsky.social
Ready when you are. 📝
The yellow cover of a book with black and red lettering. Pieter du Toit. The Stellenbosch Mafia: Inside the Billionaires' Club.
November 12, 2025 at 1:58 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
Meanwhile
Comment stating "We told him not to drink their water".
October 1, 2025 at 4:59 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
Howard French. The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide.
I can't wait to sink into this.
The book cover of Howard French, The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide, showing a colonial map of Africa.
September 17, 2025 at 3:06 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better." Anne Lamott AwritingRoom.com
September 12, 2025 at 1:57 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
In June 2025, I returned. This time there was no house. Not damaged, not wounded - gone. Scraped from the earth as if it had never stood there. I stood where the living room had been, staring at dirt and scattered stone. I thought my chest would collapse. It didn't. In place of tears, a strange stillness.
September 9, 2025 at 1:31 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
At yesterday's heartbreaking as well as moving seminar, Prof Anthony Bogues made the following closing comment in the face of the crude extermination of Palestinians we are witnessing daily, hailing Stuart Hall: "Once there is life, there is history and once there is history, there is hope".
Poster for hybrid seminar The New Imagined: Confronting Violence and Catastrophe - Power, Grief and Hope. Theme: Radical hope, or how we make joy in defiance. Conversation with Jumana Manna and TJ Demos. Project hosted by Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD), University of Johannesburg and Ruth Simmons Centre for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
September 4, 2025 at 6:10 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
The invisible hand of the market.
A man holding the shrouded body of a small child.
August 13, 2025 at 6:39 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
www.science.org/content/arti...
To break that record, Richardson turned to his grandmother's cat Larry. In about an hour he created 12 fake papers authored by Larry and 12 others that cited each of Larry's works. That would amount to 12 papers with 12 citations each, for a total citation count of 144 and an h-index of 12.
August 10, 2025 at 5:30 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
This volume captures outputs from the EVC AI conference held in Nairobi at the end of last year. The journal is open source - my analysis may of interest to humanities and arts educators.
journals.unesco.go.ke/index.php/jk...
Vol. 5 (2) 2025. The Use of AI In Arts Education: A Didactic Tool for Sensitising Students and for the Detection of Technology Assisted Writing in the Humanities. https://doi.org/10.62049/jkncu.v5i2.297 Abstract The disruption caused by the launch of generative AI such as ChatGPT in 2022 has impacted strategies for effective knowledge transfer and assessment across the higher education sector. This essay presents a model or rubric that can be used by educators in the humanities to detect the probable use of AI and to sensitise students to the unoriginality and generic nature of the generated output. The rubric was compiled by coding the artist's statements of ninety-three art students and graduates from five countries and two continents, participating in the same exhibition. Coding of the data revealed the presence of five defining characteristics that point to the probable use of AI. These are the prevalence and repetition of identified terms as well as phrases; the excessive use of flattering adjectives; hyperbolic statements; and, lastly, tortured phrases. Findings include the widespread reliance on technology in samples from all institutions in the study, across five countries on different continents. Recommendations include a focus on the development of adequate writing skills at school as well as university level combined with centring the importance of ethical conduct in research (and more broadly) as a guiding principle that goes beyond compliance. The source of the data is in the public domain. However, no students or institutions are identified in the presentation, analysis or discussion of the data. Keywords: Al In Higher Education, Arts Education, AI Detection Rubric
July 31, 2025 at 7:38 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
I'm very pleased to have a hard copy of my chapter Stories of Flowers and Homesickness - Loss and Militant Melancholia at documenta 15.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing this, meaning I said what I said.

Available here ✨️
www.waxmann.com/buecher/Expl... ✨️
Stories of flowers and homesickness Loss and militant melancholia at documenta fifteen Runette Kruger Introduction documenta 15 can be described as an assemblage of painstakingly documented chaos. In this chapter, I attempt to draw together two threads of contemporary socio-cultural contestation from this anarchic iteration of documenta to focus on strident socio-cultural otherness on the one hand and poetic engagement with loss, alienation and displacement, on the other. Olu Oguibe's Monument for Strangers and Refugees (2017), created for documenta 14, anchors one thread of the current exploration. The monolith inscribed with the Biblical verse "I was a stranger and you took me in" in Turkish, Arabic, German, and English, uncannily emphasises that nothing has transpired to positively alter the fate of migrants, refugees and strangers in the interim, although much has been brought to bear on the world between now and then. Contextualised against a discernible trend of escalating deadly othering, the RomaMoMa Manifesto for Documenta Fifteen reads "RESISTANCE IS SURVIVAL/SURVIVAL IS RESISTANCE", a defiant ode to endurance in the face of dispersion and persecution of the Roma community throughout Europe and elsewhere. In contrast, the documentary Darên Bi Tenê (The Lonely Trees) by the Rojava Film Commune, poetically documents the heritage of Rojava through haunting song, while flowers made their presence known throughout Kassel. These threads of resistance by/through haunting beauty and as strident insistence on survival are interpreted as manifestations of Benjaminian militant melancholia that incites action as it reminds us of our object/s of mourning. Militant melancholia ... Fig. 1: Olu Oguibe. Das Fremdlinge und Flüchtlinge Monument (Monument for Strangers. and Refugees). 2017. Concrete. 3×3× 16.3 m. Königsplatz/Treppenstraße, Kassel (image by author). Dating further back to documenta 10 (1997), Lois Weinberger's Das über Pflanzen ist eins mit ihnen (What is beyond plants is at one with them), comprises a mixture of local vegetation and 'invader' weeds from southern and south-eastern Europe. Having established themselves (at least, again, since 2015 when the work was restored), they abide, bearing fruit on Platform 1 of the now abandoned KulturBahnhof (KuBa). They tarried and took root, unlike waves of refugees previously disembarking here before being dispersed to an elsewhere. Vogel (1999) notes that Weinberger's theme "is not botany but the activation of events in marginalized areas". As such, the work simultaneously foregrounds the arbitrary nature of designations signifying insider/outsider status (what is a weed in one place is a sustaining root/fruit elsewhere), and the way in which, in the Anthropocene, everywhere is a marginalised area for vegetation, and for nature in general. Against this backdrop of our current collective (yet uneven- ly distributed) precarity, weeds have the edge - ontologically always already 'home' and in fact better off when 'roaming. Weeds need not feel homesick.
July 26, 2025 at 7:21 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
In the archives. 📝 🩶
Archival gloves and prints in soft paper. 🩶
July 21, 2025 at 11:33 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
Looking forward to the 2025 SAJAH conference. It's been a while!
And also mingling with my peeps at the TUT. 🩵
2025 Conference of the South African Journal of Art History, hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Design, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa under the Creative Industries and Cultural Discourses of the South research niche, 18 to 19 July 2025. Theme: Creative intersections, art and architecture Theme Overview: The South African Journal of Art History is pleased to announce the call for submissions of abstracts for a conference on the theme of "Creative intersections, art and architecture". In this conference, we seek to explore and open dialogue on the multifaceted aspects of the intersection between notions of art, architecture and space, and how these domains are perceived, performed, and practiced. We invite scholars, researchers, artists and architects to contribute their insights and engage in constructive dialogue about the past, present, and future of these creative intersections. Selected papers from the conference will be developed into a special issue of the journal.
July 16, 2025 at 3:58 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
viad.co.za

GALA and RADICAL | OTHERS continue to dialogue on the significance of queer thought in the intersectional questions of Africa’s futures; how making Africa’s future possible is part of the same landscape of making life in Africa possible for queer people.
Please join us for the online roundtable: To be Queer and African: "Making Africa Possible" Monday 14 July 2025 18h00 - 19h30 SAST 19h00 - 20h30 EAT 16h00 - 17h30 GMT 17h00 - 18h30 WAT Online via ZOOM GALA and RADICAL | OTHERS continue to dialogue on the significance of queer thought in the intersectional questions of Africa’s futures; how making Africa’s future possible is part of the same landscape of making life in Africa possible for queer people. Panelists are Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone, Jen Shinta Ayebazibwe, Neo Musangi, Angelo C. Louw and Unoma Azuah. With moderation by The Other Foundation’s Caio de Araújo.
July 8, 2025 at 6:00 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
Artist Talk & Performance with Lefifi Tladi - celebrated visual artist, poet and jazz musician.
Gallery MOMO.
Artist Talk & Performance with pioneering artist Lefifi Tladi - celebrated visual artist, poet and jazz musician. PANEL DISCUSSION: LEFIFI TLADI - REFLECTING ON THE LIFE & TIMES OF VISUAL ARTIST, POET. Join us for an unforgettable Artist Talk & Performance with pioneering artist Lefifi Tladi - celebrated visual artist, poet and jazz musician. A key figure in South Africa's avant-garde art movement, Tladi will share insights from his decades of radical creativity that fused visual art with poetry and jazz improvisation. The evening will begin with opening remarks by Mr. Tshepo Koka - Writer, Researcher and a PhD candidate in econometrics, followed by a discussion featuring Lefifi Tladi, in conversation with Dr. Refiloe Lepere - Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand and co-lead of the Creative Research Lab and Lerato Kuzwayo - Artist and Lefifi's mentee, who has worked closely with Tladi's collection. The conversation will be moderated by Lekgetho Makola, a renowned cultural preservation practitioner.
June 26, 2025 at 5:37 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
peoplesdispatch.org/2020/06/16/1...
Soweto Uprising, June 16 1976. "Kruger, release the detainees or else". School learners rejecting the imposition of Afrikaans as medium of instruction at school and the inferior Buntu Education policy.
June 16, 2025 at 5:14 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
Jun Kaneko.
Untitled, Wall Slab, 2013
Hand glazed raku ceramics
30.5 x 24.5 x 1.5 inches.
Photo: Colin Conces
junkaneko.com/artwork/raku/
Jun Kaneko. Untitled, Wall Slab, 2013 Hand glazed raku ceramics 30.5 x 24.5 x 1.5 inches. Photo: Colin Conces. A ceramic slab in slate / midnight blue with a dark grid of lines and a powder blue line running horizontally from the left and the down.
June 13, 2025 at 6:07 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
This was the legacy of apartheid legality. In the decades before 1994, state prosecutors could rely upon brutal police methods, forced confessions by suspects, and rigged 'state security trials'. Officials such as McNally did not have the disposition to develop the prosecuting skills necessary under a democratic legal order. The rapid and effective prosecution of police officers in the new political dispensation has also been hampered by repeated accusations that some attorneys-general failed to prosecute for political reasons. In September 1995 McNally was closely questioned by the parliamentary select committee on justice for his reticence to prosecute political cases. During his seven-year stewardship of the justice system in KwaZulu-Natal, he had not followed through on a single prosecution of those responsible for the 12,000 political killings in the province since 1984.
June 12, 2025 at 8:40 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
South Africa.
SOUTH AFRICA 203 Many of the unverified allegations of the human rights movement during the early 1990s were confirmed in the de Kock trial. The defendant confirmed that security forces trained IFP hit squads in Natal and Namibia, in order to destabilize the position of the ANC. He also claimed that high-ranking cabinet ministers, including Minister of Law and Order, Adriaan Vlok, Minister Louis Le Grange, Foreign Minister Pik Botha, and Defence Minister Magnus Malan, all had knowledge of dirty tricks operations (The Star, 16 and 18 September 1996). A month later, Attorney- General McNally of KwaZulu-Natal issued arrest warrants against former defence minister General Magnus Malan and ten other high ranking officials in connection with a massacre of thirteen people in KwaZulu-Natal in 1987. The judge accepted that IFP agents had committed the killings after training with the South African Defence Force (SADF), but found no evidence to connect the perpetrators of the killings to the military top brass. As the verdict was read out, an anguished relative of one victim cried out 'they must have committed suicide!' (Sunday Independent, 27 October 1996).
June 12, 2025 at 7:42 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
University of Johannesburg FADA Gallery - 2 solo shows: Waiting and Remembering by Senzeni Marasela and Xenopolis by Heinrich Neuman.
7 June, 11am.
University of Johannesburg FADA Gallery - 2 solo shows: Waiting and Remembering by Senzeni Marasela and Xenopolis by Heinrich Neuman. 7 June, 11am.
June 2, 2025 at 2:48 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
I used to call it chaos capitalism but murder capitalism is just more accurate.
The world in two headlines.
Morning.
BBC Headline 11h ago: US proposes dropping Boeing criminal charge. CNN Headline 2 days ago: Boeing secures 'largest-ever' order from Qatar during Trump visit.
May 17, 2025 at 6:04 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
I will be guest editing a themed edition of 3rd Text Africa.
Please submit an abstract (!) or send this to writers and artists who might be interested. 🌱
CFP - 'Worlding: Time, space and newness. CFP - 'Worlding: Time, space and newness. CFP - 'Worlding: Time, space and newness. CFP - 'Worlding: Time, space and newness.
May 14, 2025 at 8:13 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
Image & Text Biomatters CFP extended.
www.viad.co.za/call-for-pap...
Image & Text Biomatters CFP extended to 15 May.
May 3, 2025 at 11:46 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
"... moral entreaties do not enter into the ... calculus".
When the warfare state calculates massive profits for the military-industrial complex and geopolitical advantages for the US government, moral entreaties do not enter into the policy calculus. It's not difficult to deceive the public, he added: "You're often telling them what they would like to believe - that we're better than other people, we are superior in our morality and our perceptions of the world."
May 1, 2025 at 4:49 AM
runettekruger.bsky.social
Still some time...
Image & Text CFP:
The impact of AI on Art and Design.
Image & Text CFP The Impact of AI on Art & Design. Image & Text CFP The Impact of AI on Art & Design. Image & Text CFP The Impact of AI on Art & Design. Image & Text CFP The Impact of AI on Art & Design.
April 29, 2025 at 2:44 PM
runettekruger.bsky.social
International Indentured History Conference, August 2025.
International Indentured History Conference, August 2025. International Indentured History Conference, August 2025. International Indentured History Conference, August 2025. International Indentured History Conference, August 2025.
April 24, 2025 at 5:54 AM