Acts of transgression : contemporary live art in South Africa /

Acts of transgression : contemporary live art in South Africa / edited by Jay Pather and Catherine Boulle. - Johannesburg, South Africa, WITS University Press, (c)2019. - 1 online resource (375 pages ): color illustrations.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction / Artistic citizenship, anatopism and the elusive public: live art in the city of Cape Town / Upsurge / "Madam, I can see your penis": disruption and dissonance in the work of Steven Cohen / The impossibility of curating live art / Corporeal HerStories: navigating meaning in Chuma Sopotela's Inkukhu Ibeke Iqanda through the artist's words / "A different kind of inhabitance": invocation and the politics of mourning in performance work by Tracey Rose and Donna Kukama / State of emergency: inkulumo-mpendulwano (dialogue) of emergent art when ukukhulama (talking) is not enough / Space is the place and place is time: refiguring the Black female body as a political site in performance / Don't get it twisted: queer performativity and the emptying out of gesture / Performing the queer archive: strategies of self-styling on Instagram / Effigy in the archive: ritualising performance and the dead in contemporary South African live art practice / To heal a nation: performance and memorialisation in the zone of non-being / Astronautus Afrikanus: performing African futurism / "Touched by an angel" (of history) in Athi-Patra Ruga's The future white women of Azania / Performance in biopolitical collectivism: a study of Gugulective and iQhiya / Jay Pather and Catherine Boulle -- Nomusa Makhubu -- Sarah Nuttall -- Catherine Boulle -- Jay Pather -- Kieketso Dee Mohoto-wa Thaluki -- Gabrielle Goliath -- Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga -- Same Mdluli -- Bettina Malcomess -- Katlego Disemelo -- Alan Parker -- Khwezi Gule -- Mwenya B. Kabwe -- Andrew J. Hennlich -- Massa Lemu.

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.



9781776142804 9781776142811


Performance art--South Africa.
Performance artists--South Africa.


Electronic Books.

NX589 / .A287 2019