Cynthia Kros

South Africa (residence) °1955
en

Cynthia Kros is an historian, heritage specialist and creative writer. She was the editor of the South African Historical Journal between 2006 and 2011 and is the author of a book based on her PhD thesis entitled: The Seeds of Separate Development: Origins of Bantu Education (2010). She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals in the areas of: autobiography/memoir, memorialisation, monuments, museum exhibitions, secular ideology, truth commissions and education (most recently on history and arts education). She is also a very experienced educator in the fields of history, heritage and teacher education, having spent almost 25 years employed at the University of the Witwatersrand, initially in the History Department and then latterly in the Wits School of Arts. Before that she was employed as a History lecturer at the Johannesburg College of Education and, for a brief spell, as a journalist at The Star newspaper.

 

research

research expositions

  • A consideration of projects from the FUNDBÜRO art research initiative (2015) author(s): Cynthia Kros, Georges Pfruender published in: Journal for Artistic Research
    FUNDBÜRO: a collective art research laboratory conducted between members of the postgraduate research institute Datdata associated with the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Lyon and Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg that explores notions of the meaning of loss and recovery for objects and subjects in transit. The exposition describes the progress of three selected projects within FUNDBÜRO, discussing the working methods and the interim outcomes. They are: 1. Field Notes: Cynthia Kros presents a selection of her field notes and contextualises the taking of field notes within theorising of the arts. The format allows playful interaction with thought processes in FUNDBÜRO as a theorising space. 2. 'Chop Shop': this project creatively engages with disassemblage/reassemblage in both regulated and unregulated ways. It replays the vernacular practice of chop shopping in the field of art. 3. 'I had a dream': this project builds on the principles of 'chop shopping' and explores the possibilities of extraction, retelling, and reperforming. As a further sequence of chop shop actions, we interrogate how dreams can become source material for a collective art/theory project. Our collaborative work allows us to create/produce at and with distance. As we examine our projects in the making and the ways in which they interact with each other, we gain an understanding of generative processes which are at the heart of modern 'urban life'.
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