Trackside Studios, Soweto: an artist space exchange in progress
Countercult’s collaboration with Trackside Studios in Soweto became a starting point for a bigger question: what could happen if artists could trade access to creative spaces, local knowledge, and cultural networks across borders?
Start by asking who is making things now
Countercult’s South Africa fieldwork began with a simple practice: arrive with attention, then ask local artists where the culture is actually happening. Not the polished version of a city. Not only the places already packaged for visitors. The rooms, studios, jams, organisers, and informal routes that people are building in real time.
In Soweto, that approach led to a collaboration with Trackside Studios. The relationship connected Countercult to artists and local creative infrastructure, and gave the project a place to think about how a culture map can become something more useful than a directory.
What Trackside made visible
A creative space is never only an address. It can be a place to make work, find people, learn a city, test an idea, share resources, and be welcomed into a scene without turning that scene into content.
Trackside helped make that proposition concrete. The collaboration was rooted in meeting people through a local space and paying attention to the relationships around it. It was not a tourist itinerary, and it was not an attempt to speak for Soweto. It was a shared point of contact between artists and organisers who already know how to build culture with what is available.
That distinction matters to Countercult. The work is not to extract a “hidden scene” and present it to outsiders. The work is to make it easier for people to find one another while keeping local knowledge, authorship, and agency with the people who hold it.
From Soweto to a wider network
The collaboration also gave shape to a future possibility for Countercult: artist-to-artist programs where people exchange access to creative spaces and local networks across cities.
An artist from Berlin might spend time with artists in Johannesburg, while an artist from Soweto could be hosted by a space in Berlin or New York. The exchange would not be a packaged tour or a marketplace. It would be built with local hosts, clear consent, fair terms, and enough time for something real to develop.
We are still developing this idea. There is no open application or launched international exchange program yet. Trackside is one of the collaborations helping Countercult understand what that future could look like, and what would need to be true for it to be useful to artists rather than simply exciting to talk about.
The point is not to move through culture faster. It is to make more meaningful movement possible between the people already building it.
Why this belongs in the Countercult archive
Countercult is a map, but the map is only the beginning. The longer-term work is cultural intelligence in practice: building relationships with artists and spaces, documenting context with care, and creating routes for exchange that do not flatten local scenes into a list of recommendations.
The South Africa work connects several parts of that practice. It is artist fieldwork, place-based research, public documentation, and an early step toward cultural programming. It also shows why the network needs to stay globally oriented while remaining specific about the people and spaces it encounters.
Are you building an artist space, residency, or cultural exchange?
Countercult Studios is developing partnerships around cultural mapping, local research, artist-led programs, creative direction, and responsible exchange.
External references
- Soweto through Sketchy Shona’s eyes, In Your Pocket.
- Sketchy Shona’s field notes, Substack.
- Trackside Studios, public Instagram.
This case study describes Countercult’s collaboration with Trackside Studios and the future artist-space exchange programs the relationship is helping us develop. Future programs are not currently open for applications.
This piece was informed by Shona Neary’s writing, conversations, and thinking around independent culture, artists, and place.
editorial process: Our Journals are pulled from our writings over the years to get information out as quickly and as widely as possible, and to get to what matters: finding each other and claiming our seat in the circular economy. Some ideas overlap between Shona Neary's work on cultural infrastructure and their artist practice as Sketchy Shona. AI is a tool for infrastructure, not for creating Journal writing or artists' work. We welcome original reporting and pitches from journalists and independent publishers.