Creative Disturbance

Nathan Gates is an artist currently based in Johannesburg. He holds a Master’s degree in Digital Arts from The University of The Witwatersrand where he also lectures part-time. His work focuses on the domestication of knowledge brought in part by the growing ubiquity of digital technologies and its accompanying technological modes of thinking. In his practice he explores the relationship between “Agency” and “Structure” as this tension operates in everyday life, critically examining the nature of one’s capacity to act in a highly organized environments, both politically and socially. Though various modes of physical interrogation he examines to what degree agency (the ability to choose to act and be), is indebted to its fabricated physical and social environment and to what extent it can be considered autonomy vs. adaptation or making the most of circumstance. In a process based practice often incorporating found objects, ideas and gestures all as equal counterparts, he aims at opening up modes of mindful exp