In this ground-breaking collection of critical essays, 15 writers explore the experimental, interdisciplinary and radically transgressive field of contemporary live art in South Africa. Set against a contemporary South African society that is chronologically ‘post’ apartheid, but one that continues to grapple with material redress, land redistribution and systemic racism, Acts of Transgression finds a representation of the complexity of this moment within the rich potential of a performative art form that transcends disciplinary boundaries and aesthetic conventions. The collection probes live art’s intersection with crisis and socio-political turbulence, shifting notions of identity and belonging, embodied trauma and loss, questions of archive, memory and the troubling of colonial systems of knowing, an interrogation of narratives of the past and visions for the future. These diverse essays, analysing the work of more than 25 contemporary South African artists and accompanied by a striking visual record of more than 50 photographs, represent the first major critical study of contemporary live art in South Africa; a study that is as timeous as it is imperative.
Spis treści
Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction – Jay Pather and Catherine Boulle Part One: Live Art in a Time Of Crisis Chapter 1 Artistic Citizenship, Anatopism and the Elusive Public: Live Art in the City of Cape Town – Nomusa Makhubu Chapter 2 Upsurge – Sarah Nuttall Chapter 3 ‘Madam, I Can See Your Penis’: Disruption and Dissonance in the Work of Steven Cohen – Catherine Boulle Chapter 4 The Impossibility of Curating Live Art – Jay Pather Part Two: Loss, Language and Embodiment Chapter 5 Corporeal Her Stories: Navigating Meaning in Chuma Sopotela’s Inkukhu Ibeke Iqanda through the Artist’s Words – Lieketso Dee Mohoto-Wa Thaluki Chapter 6 A Different Kind of Inhabitance: Invocation and the Politics of Mourning in Performance Work by Tracey Rose and Donna Kukama – Gabrielle Goliath Chapter 7 State of Emergency: Inkulumo-Mpendulwano (Dialogue) of Emergent Art When Ukukhuluma (Talking) is Not Enough – Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga Chapter 8 Space is the Place and Place is Time: Refiguring the Black Female Body as a Political Site in Performance – Same Mdluli Part Three: Rethinking the Archive, Reinterpreting Gesture Chapter 9 don’t get it twisted: queer performativity and the emptying out of gesture – Bettina Malcomess Chapter 10 Performing the Queer Archive: Strategies of Self-Styling on Instagram – Katlego Disemelo Chapter 11 Effigy in the Archive: Ritualising Performance and the Dead in Contemporary South African Live Art Practice – Alan Parker Part Four: Suppressed Histories and Speculative Futures Chapter 12 To Heal a Nation: Performance and Memorialisation in the Zone of Nonbeing – Khwezi Gule Chapter 13 Astronautus Afrikanus: Performing African Futurism – Mwenya B. Kabwe Chapter 14 ‘Touched by an Angel’ (of History) in Athi-Patra Ruga’s The Future White Women of Azania – Andrew J. Hennlich Chapter 15: Performance in Biopolitical Collectivism: A Study of Gugulective and i Qhiya – Massa Lemu Contributors Index
O autorze
Alan Parker is a Cape Town-born critically respected choreographer, seasoned performer and collaborator and a writer and lecturer currently based in the Drama Department at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. At the moment, he is also engaged in doctoral research at the University of Cape Town. His research focus considers the complex relationship between live arts and the archive, with a specific reflection on choreographic strategies aimed at performing the archive.