“How a Congo man became our Daddy !!! “
“We come 4rm SOWETO and our mother got married to a CONGO man. Then he became our dad. My baby sister and me are SOUTH AFRICANS by birth and he became the father we never had. He is the best thing 2 our mother and 2 us, and we love him very much. He is the best and that is how we ended up in YEOVILLE”.

A Map Submission/Hotel Yeoville Website/Yeoville Neighbourhood

Hotel Yeoville is a technology driven, multi-platform, participatory public art project. From February through December 2010, the project was housed inside the brand new public library in Yeoville, an old, neglected suburb on the Eastern edge of the inner city of Johannesburg. The majority of Yeoville’s estimated 40 000 inhabitants are migrants; micro communities from many parts of the African continent. Often isolated and excluded from the formal economy and mainstream South African society, their dominant engagement is with each other and with home in far away places. 

The project in the library aimed to key into the diversity of immigrant and South African experiences that make the legendary suburb such a hot melting pot, and comprised a website and an interactive exhibition installation which took the form of a series of 12 private booths in which members of the public were invited to document themselves through a range of digital interfaces, interactive media and online applications. Every actual, physical space in the exhibition in the library had a corresponding virtual space online. 

This short video made by filmmaker Brenda Goldblatt will give you an impression of the project in its Yeoville library context:

The virtual spaces of the Hotel Yeoville project’s website were transformed into a real-space and real-time exhibition experience and the exhibition manifested as an intuitive and inclusive user experience.Conceptually, the way the exhibition was arranged relied completely on the participation of visitors to of the space. In other words, the user shaped and produced both the exhibition and the website content.

The Hotel Yeoville web and exhibition projects set out to produce another way of seeing the city and its migrant population. The framing concept for the design and development of the project was the view of the political importance of the minutely observed details of personal everyday life. We also chose to work with and embrace technology and popular social media that are already being used by an incredibly ‘wired’ and entrepreneurial community as a means of survival against often quite difficult odds. The projects principle aim was to work with the inherently  performative nature of these familiar platforms,  in order to produce a social map of a largely invisible community. At the same time, to start new conversations that reveal very ordinary, everyday life narratives that speak of individual people, migration, love, loss, dreams, desire, loneliness and the idiosyncrasies of place.

The Hotel Yeoville project was directed by Johannesburg based artist Terry Kurgan, and was based within the Forced Migration Studies Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand. It was developed, over a three-year period, in close collaboration with a hybrid mix of professionals, from architects to multi-media artists, academic researchers, photographers, urban planners, social scientists, community activists, Internet café owners, Web developers and more. Hailing from across the African continent and the globe, each of them has shaped the project in different ways. Collaboration and the making of our relationship, with each other and with the stakeholders and public associated with the space and place within which our project has been key to our process and our product. (See below for a complete list of all of those who worked on the making of this project).

The Hotel Yeoville Project was generously supported by the Ford Foundation,  and partnered by Goethe-Institut Johannesburg. THANK YOU

We are currently working on a book that both documents and extends the processes and products of this first phase of the Hotel Yeoville project. It will be published by Fourthwall, Johannesburg in early 2012. Enquiries:   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The following people enabled the making of this project through its many different phases thus far:



Project Director/Curator : Terry Kurgan/ Artist


Research: John Spiropoulos/Urban Planner, George Lebone/Community Activist, Ginibel Forsuh Mabih/Researcher, Michael Onyeneto/Researcher,  Raphael Bope/Researcher, Caroline Kihato/ Urban Sociologist, Siphiwe Zwane/Photographer & Researcher, Jason Hobbs/Information Architect, Andre Graaf/Developer



Website Design/Development/Build: Jason Hobbs/Information Architect, Belinda Blignault/Artist, John Spiropoulos/Urban Planner, Andre Graaf/Developer/Programmer, Greg Ilchenko/Developer, Richard Stupart/Developer, Brittany Wheeler/Project Facilitator/FMSP MA student



Exhibition  Design and Production: Tegan Bristow/Digital Media Developer and Artist, Alexander Opper and Amir Livneh/Notion Architects, Guylain Melki/Artist/Sign-Writer


Exhibition Facilitators: Godfrey Tshis Talabulu, Brittany Wheeler, Raphael Bope, Sian Miranda Singh OFaolin