Acts of Transgression

201 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 2h31min.
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.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