Priyan Moodley

The story of Johannesburg South is one that begun with the city itself, a by-product of the scar of the mining belt. Through an influx of diasporic communities, it grew and morphed into a place of diverse cultural editing. One that created a youth which was born into landscapes of sacred and cultural juxtapositions and multiplicities. The result is a diasporic melting pot of existential redefinitions and liminal identities, all in flux in this ever-changing landscape, requiring anchorage and rootedness in all the shifting. Through understandings of transliminality, diasporic theory, sacredness and phenomenological existentialism, this thesis aims to give form, materiality and atmosphere to spaces in which temporal meanings of ritual and event can be held and the layering of sacred and secular multiplicities can be evoked. To answer the question of how anchorage can be created for the sacred redefinitions and temporal meanings of the liminal diaspora of Johannesburg South.