Framing Statement & Objectives of […]
[...] ellipses denotes a grammatical troubling, an opening or caesura in the linear flow of a sentence, marking intentional omission, absent content. Alternatively, the application of ellipses... as aposiopesis signals a certain trailing off, a sentence ending or not ending in the suspension of unresolved thought… It resists pronunciation or being easily saved as a file or turned into a URL. For these deviant, troubling and open-ended features, ellipses […] – applied without prefix or suffix – works as a conceptual space or marker hospitable to the contingent, collaborative and multi/cross-disciplinary work of creative research in the global south supported by this digital and online journal.
What discourses, paradigms, tropes or structures shape or censor different kinds of knowledge production, and how can alternative modes of meaning-making imagine and make possible a more just and livable world? ellipses asks these questions from an explicitly Global South perspective – rooted in the local, open to the diasporic and informed by a range of practices, processes and tactics that deviate from conventional, analytical and colonial modes of knowledge production. ellipses is a collaborative platform, drawing editors and contributors into creative dialogue with digital arts practitioners, and encouraging interactive and digitally published scholarship that extends beyond the rarefied space of the academy. It is an experiment with form, prioritising sonic, visual, oral, performative, visceral, embodied, spatial and temporal modalities of practice, invested in questions of why, how and for whom knowledge is produced, and by what criteria deemed ‘valid’. ellipses supports a growing community of scholars, artists, curators, creative practitioners and collectives, thinking and working in and from the Global South. In each issue ellipses is imagined as another opportunity to rethink the ways in which creative research and the ‘aesthetic’ is bound to the machinations of dominant knowledge economies, and to creatively explore more enabling, and culturally responsive modes of meaning-making.
ellipses was founded by a collective of artists in 2015 at the Wits School of Arts as a multi/cross-disciplinary, digital, online and interactive journal for creative research, by collective responsive to the urgent political demand for the decolonisation of knowledge and the university mobilised by #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall. The journal is supported by the Wits School of Art, steered by a local, regional and international appointed Editorial Board ellipses has published four issues to date, and one special edition. ellipses publishes annually, with issue V scheduled release in September 2025.
The first issue of ellipses was marked by a process both pragmatic and speculative and is product of grant money from WITS University’s SPARC fund, and as such was designed to function as an accredited journal located within the WITS School of Arts (WSOA). The second issue of ellipses and four that follow were supported by Art Research Africa, developing Creative and Artistic Research within the Wits School of Arts and supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
[...] ellipses is located within the WITS School of Arts, and owes much to the energy and commitment of its staff and students. ellipses prioritises partnerships and currently is working on special issues with SWOP (Society Work and Politics) at WITS, The Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL).
[...] ellipses is additionally funded by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
