Talking Heads at Infecting the City

Talking Heads is an annual highlight of Infecting the City: the Spier Public Arts Festival and offers a precious opportunity for Capetonians to try out “speed-dating for the brain” - the event gives attendees the rare opportunity to engage in 20-minute conversations with four of the 60 leading experts from a range of fields and backgrounds that are participating in Talking Heads this year.

The event takes place on Thursday, 18 February at the Iziko South African Museum.

Brett Bailey, Infecting the City (ITC) curator, described the event as one of the most anticipated of the festival and a “one of a kind” evening designed to change people's lives by exposing them to information and knowledge outside of their normal frames of reference.

Archive of knowledge

Said Bailey: “There is such a vast and valuable archive of knowledge out there - right here in our city - which we don't often get access to. Talking Heads offers people an opportunity to challenge what they know, and what think they know, by giving them time to talk to diverse and interesting people in an intimate, one-on-one setting.

“Four experts are randomly assigned to each attendee as they arrive, so people can expect to speak to anyone from a city sex worker to a quantum physicist - the diversity of information held by our experts is just mind-blowing,” said Bailey.

Full-colour thinking

Elaine Rumboll, director of executive education at the UCT GSB, said the decision to bring the GSB on board as chief sponsor this year reflected the school's ambition to promote what it calls “full-colour thinking”.

“Full-colour thinking essentially requires that people expose themselves to multiple and diverse disciplines in order to form a full and rounded picture of the world we live in. Too often, people focus on knowing what they already know instead of trying to discover what they don't. This event gives people a chance to challenge their own thinking with new and sometimes inaccessible knowledge that exists within isolated pockets within our city.

“As the leading business school in the country, we see a definite synergy between what this event is doing and what we are trying to promote within the classroom every day, and we are proud to be a part of it,” said Rumboll, who was herself a “talking head” at last year's event - speaking on ecologically innovative capitalism.

A fresh concept

“I keep saying to leaders: “If there is one event worth going to this year, it is this one.” This is such a fresh concept and we think it will prick people's curiosity as they learn new things that they don't normally get exposed to during their daily routines,” she added.

This year, the third time the event has been held during the festival's three-year history, the theme is “This Information could change your Life”, inviting experts from a wide array of diverse fields to reveal mind-altering opinions, ideas and experiences.

Catalyst for social change

Infecting the City runs from 13 to 20 February, 2010 and is presented by the Africa Centre - a non-profit organisation that explores contemporary Pan-African artistic practice as a catalyst for social change. The full programme of provocative and ground-breaking performances, installations and interventions is available at www.infectingthecity.com.

Talking Heads is the only evening event of the festival, and the only one for which a ticket is required. Tickets cost R100 and are limited to 100 people. Call Felicia on +27 (0)21 422 0468 to book your place.