Panel Statement

A PROPOSAL FROM COLETTE GAITER

This panel includes the creators of three web sites that reveal the social, cultural, and artistic life of Southern Africa to the rest of the world. Colette Gaiter’s web site, The Natural Order of Things, ruminates on various aspects of life in South Africa and for African Americans in the U.S. Zayd Minty’s site, Blaconline is a growing living archive, marketing and information shar¬ing space, and source of communication between South Africa, Africa and the globe. Saki Mafundikwa brings an ancient and long lost visual commu¬nication tradition to light through his web site: Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Afrika’s Lost Alphabets.

MODERATOR :

• Colette Gaiter teaches in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Previously, she taught for 14 years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Starting her career in 1976 as a graphic designer, she has worked with computers since 1982, and in interactive multimedia since 1990. She is now an interactive multimedia artist whose work, about cultural and societal power systems, has been exhibited throughout the world.

PANELISTS:

• Saki Mafundikwa. Founder and director of ZIVA, the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, a new media design school. He is connecting students in Zimbabwe with the global possibilities of the internet. After studying Fine Arts and Telecommunications at Indiana University, graduating in 1983, he became the first African student ever to be accepted into Yale’s MFA program in graphic design. Since receiving his MFA in 1985, he has been working and teaching in graphic design in Africa and the U.S. http://www.ziva.org.zw
• Zayd Minty. Runs an arts production and services company, «One», in Cape Town, South Africa. «One» includes BLAC (the Black Arts Collective!— a dis¬course building project which has produced a web site, seminar series, and public art projects. He has been involved in various aspects of the arts and media since the mid 1980s. He has worked as the Living Culture and Arts Coordinator at Robben Island Museum. Currently he is the Director of the One City Festival 2000— a multi media arts festival in Cape Town.