©Very Real Time. Atlantis, aerial view, apartheid housing, circa 1980
Very Real Time is an exchange program for contemporary artists founded in 2003 in Cape Town. The project’s aim is to create the right conditions under which artists can come together on a very personal level.
To that end, visiting artists are put up in the homes of local artists so that they can share their lives for a period of time and plunge into everyday Cape Town life. Very Real Time functions on both a micro and a macro level: on the one hand, artists develop close relationships with each other as they create works together that examine and reflect upon the psychological and emotional dimensions of everyday interactions within a particular urban space; on the other, there is an exchange of ideas on an international level, through publications and discussions on specially created Internet platforms. Very Real Time is also a laboratory for the study of everyday life and the role art plays in it, for artistic experiments, theoretical reflection, and the examination of artistic positions within a particular social context.
