Acts of Transgression

Fifteen writers explore the experimental, interdisciplinary and radically transgressive field of contemporary live art in South Africa, focusing on a wide range of perspectives, personalities and theoretical concerns

Contemporary South African society is chronologically 'post' apartheid, but it continues to grapple with material redress, land redistribution and systemic racism. Acts of Transgression represents the complexity of this moment in the rich potential of a performative art form that transcends disciplinary boundaries and aesthetic conventions. The contributors, who are all significantly involved in the discipline of performance art, probe its intersection with crisis and socio-political turbulence, shifting notions of identity and belonging, embodied trauma and loss. Narratives of the past and visions for the future are interrogated through memory and the archive, thus destabilising entrenched colonial systems.

Collectively analysing the work of more than 25 contemporary South African artists, including Athi-Patra Ruga, Mohau Modisakeng, Steven Cohen, Dean Hutton, Mikhael Subotzsky, Tracey Rose and Donna Kukama, among others, the analysis is accompanied by a visual record of more than 50 photographs. For those working in the fields of theatre, performance studies and art, this is a must-have collection of critical essays on a burgeoning and exciting field of contemporary South African research.

Autorentext

Jay Pather and Catherine Boulle

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt

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 HerStories: 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 iQhiya - Massa Lemu
Contributors
Index