‘Talking Doors’ concept introduced at MTN BUSHFIRE

Khulekani Msweli pictured with children and other artists inside his JeremPaul Fabric Room.

MBABANE - For this year’s MTN Bushfire Festival of the Arts, Yebo! ArtReach planned, designed and constructed a four-room interactive art installation called Talking Doors.

This was a collaborative initiative between MTN BUSHFIRE, Yebo ArtReach and Canadian visual artist Indigo.
 It was designed to facilitate audience engagement with the festival theme ‘Bring Your Fire’ – igniting a collective response for positive change’.
Festival-goers were invited to move between the rooms of the installation, interacting with the different artists and art mediums, and exploring the many angles of their creative selves.

The walls of each individual room were made entirely of doors.
ArtReach and MTN Bushfire wanted to explore the idea of the door as a symbol of transition and possibility.
 “The Door is an entrance, a finality, a promise, a mystery, an obstacle, an opportunity – doors contain or release, invite or impede. If doors had voices, what tales would they tell?”

One room, led by Annabel Morgan (Creative Beans and Clowns Without Borders) and Musa Zikalala was called ‘Out The Box’.
Designed as a giant dress-up box of sorts, ‘Out The Box’ allowed people to discover their inner clown. Photographer Edward Morgan took photos of the newly inducted clowns in a homemade photo booth. In line with the festival’s social media platform, photos were then streamed to the live festival media feed, displayed on the main stage screen.

Another room was entitled the ‘Question Sound Room’. Lead by Ralph Smit and Fundi Maphanga, groups were encouraged to experiment with drums, shakers, tambourines, bells, and their voices, to create a collaborative musical track.
Ralph is a musician and master of a loop station, which he used to take the musical experience to the next level in quality and professionalism.

Instructions

Visual Artist and ArtReach director Dane Armstrong conceptualised the idea for the ‘Color-Me Room’, a fully furnished and entirely white room.
“In this room, festival-goers were given no clear instructions – just a bucket of markers and pens, and a load of stickers. The end result was a intricately decorated and doodled room, where every surface had a scribble, a quote, a name, a country, a picture,” Armstrong said.

The fourth room was entitled ‘Patchwork Stories’ designed by Khulekani Msweli (JeremPaul) and Marthe Lopez-Fesser.
People were invited to sew, stitch, paint, or decorate their own personal fabric square, which would be added to a larger collective quilt. The room sported a large banner that read ‘One Flag, One World, One Fire’.

Visual artists Indigo and Breeze painted the exterior walls of the installation.
“This collaboration, and their artwork, added an invaluable element of aesthetic professionalism to the installation as a whole. The paint and materials were generously sponsored by Star Paint Swaziland.

Talking Doors was an absolute success. Every hour that the installation was open, there were people queuing up to enter. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, as people were invited to create, have fun, dress up, try something new, and ‘bring their fire’,” Armstrong said.

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