Reflecting notes

REFLECTING NOTES ON WALK THE LINE

22 July 2026

Since finishing the walk, I’ve been sitting with why I wanted to walk this line in the first place as more layers kept surfacing. This isn’t really about how I made the work. It’s about a theme that found me while walking, namely a history and trauma carried by a community. I am more convinced that as an artist I can become a cultural cartographer. I can help to identify where we are and guide us toward where we could be. In this way, the art gives a culture a shared identity, stories and values while expanding the horizons of what feels possible. Before we can build a better world, we need to visualise it – I would like to think we can create a collective imagination to turn hopeful ideals into reality. Those conversations aren’t finished. I want them to continue.

An artist friend just today on her social media posted an art exhibition which she visited and shared that the artist, Mawanda Ka Zensile, said that ‘by turning towards those who came before us’, she discovered that her search for wisdom and pathways may lead to other ways of knowing. M Ka Zensile linked this lost indigenous knowledge and alchemy to colonisation. The exhibition is currently at Stevenson Gallery, and is called “Indlea Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili”. (translating to: The path is asked from those who have gone before). I am again touched by the idea of myths and categories being imposed on people from outside

My relationship to marks and erasure seems to sit somewhere more unresolved, and I think that’s actually honest to the history I am working within. The Oukloof/Esterhof history I’ve been researching for Walk the Line — the Group Areas Act, the Separate Amenities Act, the erasures written into that landscape — isn’t a knowledge system that was continuously held and passed down the way isiXhosa cosmology has been for this artist. It’s a history that was made to be concealed, actively buried under lawns and new ownership, not just quietly encoded the way scarification is. So frottage and erasure as my working method might be the more truthful gesture for what I am dealing with: I am not translating an inherited visual language; I am excavating a suppressed one, mark by mark, guessing at what’s underneath rather than fluently speaking a script I was given.

Forgetting has its own texture, if you look for it

If loss leaves marks — scars, absence, the trace frottage pulls up from a surface — forgetting tends to leave a different kind of surface: smoothness, overwriting, things paved over or repurposed without a trace of what was there before. A lawn where a homestead stood. A name changed. A rail line that’s “the old line” to some and a site of removal to others.

If I were to rub surfaces along that route literally, I might start noticing where the ground itself performs this difference — where marks and texture accumulate (closer to where memory is still held, still spoken) versus where things have been smoothed into blankness (closer to where forgetting has done its work). That contrast could become almost a formal register in the work: rough, layered, insistent marks for what’s remembered and fought to survive, versus flatter, erased, harder-to-read passages for what’s been paved over by forgetting. Not illustrating the idea, but letting my hand register the actual difference in what each site gives me.

Practically, what “researching forgetting” could look like

• Notice what’s easy to find out and what isn’t — official records, farm histories, or museum archives about white ownership and use of the land along that line are probably well documented, tidy, available. That ease itself is data: whose history got archived, whose didn’t.
• Pay attention to euphemism — “resettlement,” “the old days,” “things were different then” — the vocabulary people reach for when they’re describing something without quite describing it. That vocabulary is the mist made audible.
• Look at what’s memorialised versus what isn’t — plaques, farm names, war memorials, versus the complete absence of anything marking the Group Areas Act displacements.
• That asymmetry in the landscape is itself part of the erasure mechanism, and I do not need permission to notice and respond to what’s already publicly visible (signage, place names, monuments) the way I would need permission for private oral testimony.

Where this could sit in “Fragments”

I might not need a new section that “presents” the white community’s amnesia directly at all. It might work better as texture underneath what’s already there — a line or two acknowledging that forgetting is also part of the terrain I walked through, without giving it equal page-space to the Oukloof material. A sentence like, the line is remembered by some and simply absent for others, could do the work without unbalancing the piece.

Out of this, an idea has taken shape: a year-long creative programme built around walking together, sharing stories of hope, and building relationships through conversation — using the stretch of the old rail line between Riebeek Kasteel and Riebeek West, roughly 5–6 km long. I still need to walk and measure the route properly to work out the practicalities — permissions, safety — but the shape of the idea is clear.

What I imagine

• Walks — short walks, early morning or late afternoon, with time built in to talk and get to know each other: as individuals, as women, men, children, elders, people with disabilities, families.
• Safety — imagining a space where people can simply walk without fear.
• Memory made visible — planting trees along the way to commemorate specific stories, honouring them in a living, growing form. Trees could be gifted for this.
• A guide-walker — someone to walk with groups and share stories, photographs, and history, opening the route up through a light-touch tourism angle.

Throughout, an envisioned gallery installation, installation at Solo Studios 2026 and the walking programme in the valley are meant to feed each other — art as a living, community-driven process, not a finished object handed down.

The inaugural walk

The inaugural walk isn’t a single event — it’s a threshold. We gather at the site of the old station, a place defined by absence but dense with memory. Walking the tracks together for the first time isn’t just looking back; it’s the beginning of a shared rhythm. At the end of that first walk, we lay out the vision for the year ahead: an invitation to turn this 6 km corridor into a living archive and a space of reconnection. Each step taken together reclaims a line that once separated us, turning it into a path toward hope and genuine relationship.

The invitation is simple: to walk with us, to share a story, or to listen. Each step taken together reclaims a line that once separated us, turning it into a path toward hope and genuine relationship.”

Over twelve months, that first walk grows into four interconnected pillars:

1. Seasonal Community Walks — quarterly walks tracking the valley’s changes, from the dry Swartland summer to the green winter, bringing generations together side by side.
2. Oral History & Story Gathering — collecting the memories, names, and voices of those who remember the train, the displaced homes of Oukloof, and the daily journeys between the two villages.
3. Creative Writing & Frottage Workshops — using paper, charcoal, plants, and words to document the micro-details of the land, the sleepers, the ballast.
4. A Shared Vision for Conservation — exploring how this historic rail servitude could gradually become a community-led care node for the endangered Renosterveld.

The invitation stays simple and low-barrier:

• Walkers — people who want to walk, move slowly, and hold space.
• Storytellers & Elders — those who carry memories of the railway, Oukloof, or early village life, and want to contribute oral histories.
• Creators & Youth — young people and local artists who want to take part through writing, sound mapping, drawing, or land-care.

Walk One: Thresholds and Crossing the Divide

Route: Meet at Esterhof and walk to the old Riebeek Kasteel Station, marking it as a waypoint. Form a line of people walking together and photograph it — a drone shot, if possible.

Context: Under the Group Areas Act, these tracks became the line that separated the displaced community of Oukloof and Esterhof from the town centre. But long before it was a border, it was a trail built to bring people and trade together. Walking the foothills of Kasteelberg, this first walk begins where group-forming, shared vision, and memory meet. The buildings are gone, but the stories, the ground, and the people gathered here remain.

Process: Begin in silence, then re-group in a circle at a natural gathering point along the track. Pass a physical token — a piece of olive wood, a stone — and invite each person to share briefly: one hope or intention for the journey ahead, their connection to the valley or its history, or a memory of crossing to the other side of town, past or present. This first walk lays the foundation for future walks, creative writing, oral history gathering, and community workshops along the line.

Closing gesture: Every step taken together on this path is a quiet act of reconnecting what was once divided.

Walk Two: Displacement and Eradication

Walk from the ‘station’ meeting point to Oukloof. Find a high vantage point along the track, or leave the track to face the base of Kasteelberg mountain where Oukloof once stood.

Context: Standing where homes and community spaces were levelled and converted into agricultural land.

Storytelling Prompt: “Look at the landscape where houses once stood. What are the unspoken stories held in the soil, vines, and mountain slope?”

Walk Three: The Mid-Line Buffer Zone (3.0 km):

Theme: Labour, Land & Movement.

Location: The open agricultural corridor midway between the two villages, framed by olive groves, vinyards and wheat fields

.Context: This stretch represents the physical work of the valley—generations of farmworkers, railway maintenance, and daily foot travel between settlements.

Storytelling Prompt: “How has your family worked or moved through this valley? What trails or tracks did you walk as a child?”4.

Walk Four The Old Silos (4.5 km):

Theme: Connection & Disconnection.Location: Approaching the outer precinct of Riebeek West near old agricultural silos/sidings.

Context: Rail infrastructure brought trade and growth, but also facilitated structural segregation and industrial extraction.

Storytelling Prompt: “Railways connect distant places while splitting local ones. Where in your life do you feel connected to your neighbours, and where do you feel disconnected?”

Walk Five: Riebeek West Station Precinct (6.0 km):

Theme: Gathering, Hope & Re-imagining.Location: The terminus point near Riebeek West.

Context: Arriving together at the end of the line shifts the mood from reflection on past trauma to co-creating shared community futures.

Storytelling Prompt: “We have walked this line together today. What is one hope or project you want to build along this shared ground for the next generation?”\

Considering a more immersive installation

What are the possibilities of making this work more immersive for the viewer?

I am thinking sound, video, but also more artefacts – such as the stories I collected

I have collected images from social media feedback on my posts regarding the walks. These started on 25 March 2026.

Facebook: The Lekker old days, Footplate memories

Amazing storie van Braam Laubscher – my father was in charge of the railway track (6 April post)

Fotos van stappe – soos die water tenders wat ek op Langvlei en Rietvlei gekry het. – volg hul stories op (fotos 31 Maart 2026)

Mapping: the walk- a physical journey, the internal record I now have, my memory of the walk, and the social context – the place where it happened.

REFLECTING NOTES ON WHERE I AM: Sunday, 15 March 2026

At this stage of my thinking, I have to mention that I have been looking at drawing courses advertised by the Berlin Art Institute where goal is to : expand drawing beyond the self, marks will arise through body, place, materials, and relations. This implies that drawing becomes a method of inquiry and it has a relationship with the world, drawing is a process rather than a product. From my reading on their site, it is clear that they encourage artists to work in ways that generate experiences rather than explanations.

I agree with many writers/artists that when you engage with a site, you are not entering a neutral space. Dagmara calls this a “forum for resistance”. To her, it is about the “thingness” of materials she describes. I can look at the charcoal, the pine needles, the steel circle and what is revealed when these objects stop working for the human subject or when they are stripped of their assumed functional value. Can I bring it to when the steel circle fell? (Response: Dagmara Genda – AKA artist-run, accessed on March 15, 2026, https://archives.akaartistrun.com/portfolio-item/les-choses-sont-contre-nous-exhibition-essay-by-dagmara-genda/. For her, this “materialism of relations” suggests that the artist does not impose form upon the world but enters into a negotiation with “quasi-objects”. A quasi-object can be the charcoal stick in a wind drawing, which mediates between subjects and objects, defining the practitioner’s position even as the practitioner attempts to define the work.

Other thoughts I read around her workshops and ideas are about “Where is art’s home? Is it a gallery, a museum? Is it a project space or a private collection? Maybe a living room? She states that the exhibition settings we know today are not as self-evident as they seem. The white cube gallery is only (recent) – a post-World-War-II development and the museum has gone through many phases since its first public appearance in the late 1700s—and it’s still changing. Though institutions have a certain authority in legitimising particular practices as art, it is the underlying, subversive currents in semi-private spaces that challenge the status quo in every generation. Domesticity has often been diminished for its assumedly “feminine” connotations, but it is perhaps the first place that art is made. These private spaces have been used as exhibition venues to evade censorship, as was the case in the U.S.S.R. Curators have launched careers out of their kitchens; others have made abandoned homes into giant sculptures or used them as venues, yet others have designed homes for their afterlives or used domestic objects as their medium. The private living space has been used, time and time again, to challenge institutional gatekeeping and to engender a different, more intimate way, of approaching and looking at art. The course, called “The Home of Art and Art in the Home”, was created to introduce participants to historical and contemporary examples of domestic spaces, both lived and abandoned, used as art and for art. Additionally, in a series of hands-on aesthetic challenges, they suggested that participants would use their own homes as stage sets, artworks, and exhibition venues.

Concerning the steel circle, which is already on the site, I am thinking it could be reimagined as a “stage set” or an “exhibition venue” in the spirit of the course I mentioned above. By placing my durational scrolls within this circle, I blur the line between “public and private”. The work becomes an “indirect invitation to visitors” who play, relax, and eat on the farm. I also think it important to look at storytelling, where myths and imagination come to play – as one could be at risk of losing touch with an essential part of our humanity and a way to connect to others. I agree that stories are vital to how we connect to some of the most influential artists of the past and present. The question then is not so much if, but how we want to tell stories.