On 2 and 3 March 2020, Lize Kriel joined colleagues from the UP School of the Arts for a visit to the Zurich University of the Arts (ZhdK) in Switzerland. The delegation was led by the Head of School, Professor Alexander Johnson, and also included coordinators of the Music programmes and the Tangible Heritage Conservation Programme in the UP School of the Arts. The visitors were given a tour of the Zurich University's inspiring facilities, and negotiations took place about future collaboration between UP and the ZhdK.    

In the week prior to the Zurich visit, Kriel spent a few very fruitful days in Basel as a guest of Prof Andreas Heuser, a specialist in African Indigenous Churches in southern Africa. They jointly presented a seminar in Professor Heuser's course on art as entry point into the study of religion in past and present societies. Kriel used images of Africans reading books as produced for Christian European audiences during the nineteenth century as examples, and enjoyed very perceptive observations and reflective interpretations by the students. Through the contextualisation of these visual images, the complexity, and yet also the pertinence, of transcultural translation was brought to the fore. 

While in Basel, Kriel was also hosted by Andrea Rhyn, archivist at the Basel Mission Archive, to peruse documents, objects and images from this missionary society's publishing house. As a prolific producer of images from Africa, Asia and the Americas for a European market during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Basel Mission played a significant role in the way knowledge was globalised during this period. The Basel Mission produced and disseminated a comprehensive, intermedial visual imprint through, amongst other things, woodblock engravings, tracts, books, almanacs, museum exhibitions, and magic lantern shows (the PowerPoint presentations of the pre-digital age). Studying these processes offers insight into the remainders of these visual regimes still prevalent in the ways we make sense of the world today.

Paint for magic lantern slides