The Centre for the Less Good Idea
For its first large-scale artist residency, Valdemars Slots Arts Foundation invited The Centre for the Less Good Idea to relocate from Johannesburg for two periods of creative research and rehearsal across 2026. Their residency unfolds through a programme of installation and performance in close dialogue with the heritage site, with films nestled in the palace attic and transforming the Corn Barn, and interactive shadow theatre in the old Carriage Barn.
Founded in 2016 by artists William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, the Centre is shaped by Kentridge’s experimental methodology, with cross-disciplinary collaboration at its core. Rather than working towards a predetermined concept, the Centre embraces the “less good idea”, allowing unexpected turns and even failure to become part of the work. At Valdemars Slot, this approach takes shape through the work of the Centre’s Director, Lace and Impresario Neo Muyanga, together with performers Anathi Conjwa, Thulani Chauke, and Micca Manganye, who transform the site in collaboration with Danish artists.
In the palace attic, the ongoing film series The Long Minute, distils the Centre’s ethos. Curated by Lace, the project brings together international and Danish artists, each presenting fragments of sound, performance, and text. Originating in pandemic-era efforts to connect across time and space, the series employs a tight duration as a framework to explore the relationship between artist and audience. Presented alongside Kentridge’s 2ndary Revisions, 2022, the screening reveals the Centre’s origins in his free-spirited and process-driven visual language.
The grounds host two central environments for live performance and installation. The Carriage Barn presents shadow theatre and film, where Thulani Chauke’s The Shadow of Space, 2025 draws on the symbolic history of the shadow and its associations with memory and the psyche. Responding collectively over the course of the season, artists explore how embodied forms of understanding emerge through this mediated space. Elsewhere, in the Corn Barn, Lace’s installation Feast or Famine, 2026 shows Southern African carrion beetles feeding on the body of a European Barn Owl, while songs of mourning animate the church-like vaults. Rooted in the legacy of apartheid, the work’s themes of transformation and renewal carry a universal resonance that echoes throughout the season.
Photo: Performances opening Season Two by The Centre for the Less Good Idea and Denmark-based collaborators, May 2026. © Davy Denke
“My communal practice involves co-founding, with William Kentridge, The Centre for the less Good Idea in Johannesburg in 2016. Today, I am its director and lead its international projects. The Centre is a physical and immaterial space to pursue incidental discoveries made in the process of producing work. We take our impulse from the Setswana proverb ‘E a re ngaka kgolo go retelelwa, go alafe ngakana/ If the good doctor can’t cure you, find the less good doctor’.”
— Bronwyn Lace
Photo: Davy Denke
About
The Centre for the Less Good Idea (est. 2016 Johannesburg, South Africa)
Co-founded by William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, The Centre for the Less Good Idea is both a physical space based in Johannesburg, and a conceptual incubator for new ideas. The Centre’s programme is led by Neo Muyanga, working alongside Athena Mazarakis, and Bronwyn Lace. Recent projects include those at The Royal Academy and The Barbican in London, Komische Opera, Berlin, and RedCat Theatre, Los Angeles.
Photo: Davy Denke