Live Art: Working Title Live Art Weekend at Masambe, Art as Resilience, August 2024

Following on the success of the 1^st and 2^nd Live Art Weekends in the Masambe at the Baxter, Working Title is presenting the 3^nd iteration from Thursday to Saturday – August 29 – 31, 2024 at 7pm. The theme is: Art as Resilience. One ticket provides access to the whole programme which is about 90 minutes. Dress warm as two of the performances take place outside, in the Masambe precinct.  There will be short bathroom and refreshment breaks between performances. The programme on Thursday, Aug 29 will include a Q&A with the artists. Live Art Weekend is curated by Carin Bester, a multi-disciplinary creative, working in performance, theatre and visual art. Live Art Weekend has been made possible by the National Arts Council. Read on for more:

Featuring artists:

Oupa Sibeko (Video Performance) & Sinenhlanhla Millicent Sihlangu (Live Performance) – Highway of Tears: Jou Mase Lost Cow

Post-memory is a capacious concept – one that not only relates to the children of victims of trauma, but also those who feel an affinity with them, despite any geographical or temporal distance. Hirsch classifies these distinct experiences as ‘familial’ and ‘affiliative’ post-memory. What is at stake, according to Hirsch, is the ‘“guardianship” of traumatic personal and generational past with which some of us have a “living connection”, and that past’s passing into history or myth’ it is not only, she continues, a ‘generational sense of ownership and protectiveness, but an evolving ethical and theoretical discussion about the workings of trauma, memory and intergenerational acts of transfer’.

The relationship the generation after those who witnessed cultural or collective trauma bears to the experiences of those who came before, experiences that they ‘remember’ only by means of the stories, images, and behaviours among which they grew up. This is a story, an image and behaviour of a lost cow and mother who bears a block of ice.

Conceptualized & Choreographed by Oupa Sibeko in collaboration with Sinenhlanhla Milicent Sihlangu

Oupa Sibeko is an interdisciplinary artist whose work moves between theatrical, gallery, scholarly and other public contexts, overtly dealing with matter and politics of the body as a site of contested works. It is through African indigenous knowledge that he comes to understand and unpack his artistic practice. It is also from the same source that he borrows key elements of his performances, especially in relation to ritual and communal performances, theatre in the round, site-specific performances and the exchange of cultural Knowledge in a shared communal space.

Sinenhlanhla Millicent Sihlangu is a young upcoming performing artist and choreographer from KwaMashu, Durban. She was hand-picked to be a part of the Jazzart Dance Theatre training programme in Cape Town in 2019 and graduated in 2022. She has worked with many different choreographers and directors, performing annually to critical acclaim. She continues to grow herself choreographically, performatively as well as a facilitator as she constantly challenges herself and grows her practice.

Kaulana Williams – Decent

Decent is a performance project that critiques the modesty and respectability politics, often weaponised by conservative christian communities to groom girls and cover up for their abusers. It further explores, from the perspective of a girl-child who grew up in one of these communities, how devastating this rhetoric is to a woman’s sense of self-worth and bodily autonomy. The focus of the extract is on how shame is used in these communities to train women and girls to disassociate from their own bodies and ‘give up’ their agency over their sexual desires and pleasure, highlighting the predatory motivations behind these cultural practices.

The performance explores the notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and how girls are set up with impossible standards to attain ‘goodness’.

‘Are you decent?’

Kaulana Williams is a coloured performing artist and theatre maker from Cape Town. Her practice has always been concerned with coloured identity within the specific historical and social context of the Cape, particularly from the lens of the woman. She uses her writing and performance to explore her own ancestry and the impact that history has had on her life and art.

Eddie Newman & Siphenathi Mayekiso – Blinkers

Eddie Newman’s journey in the equestrian industry serves as the catalyst for this compelling performing arts piece. Initially performed with Darion Adams, this reworked performance now featuring Siphenathi Mayekiso. Inspired by Eddies firsthand experiences, the performance delves into the delicate yet potent dynamics of power and balance inherent in the relationship between employer and employee. A poignant figure embodies the weight of oppression and restriction of class inequality.

Eddie Newman is a versatile freelance performer, stage manager, and skilled horse rider from Cape Town. His dedication to the craft and his ability to seamlessly navigate between roles exemplify his versatility and commitment to the performing arts.

Siphenathi Mayekiso is a storyteller and poetic mover who draws inspiration from different aspects of life. As an artist he is in a place where he uses his body as a catalyst in negotiating dialogue around inclusivity and body politics which circles the notion of being differently- able.

Iman Zanele Omar – The Voice of Resistance

Art has always been a powerful tool of representing historical narratives and creating an alternate perspective of history and culture. This collection of poems speaks to the effects of colonialism, imperialism and inequality in our society today by reflecting the resistance and hope of our ancestors while capturing the resilience and courage of future generations in re-imagining the world.                                                                                              The vision for this work is to reflect the lived realities of those who are not given the opportunity to be heard through challenging and resisting biased portrayals by mainstream media and reclaiming the narrative. Its aim is to amplify the voices of those who resist injustice and to highlight the power of community in solidarity.

Imān Zanele Omar is a poet, writer and community activist from Salt River, Cape Town who specializes in storytelling poetry. Her goal is to use her art as a means of inspiring transformative change, communal empathy and solidarity with all oppressed and marginalised communities.

Gavin Krastin – Rehabilitation (Video Performance)

Rehabilitation is a deeply personal performancence-for-camera meditation on the performer’s reality of living with a degenerative disease (particularly the degeneration of the cartilage in his spine and hips), which at one point resulted in cauda equina syndrome. The work considers the performer’s brief encounter with paralysis, the surgery and prosthetics that saved him, and the renegotiation to walk and dance again.

Using camera, splicing, editing and sonic art interplaying with site-based performance, Rehabilitation offers a video-choreography on stillness, movement and the reliance and interface of the body as it dances a duet with machine; surgically, mechanically and artistically.Gavin Krastin is a South African creator, curator and educator of live art performance. The queering of space intrigues him and inspires a questioning of behaviours and transgressions in his work. Rather than using performance to escape the politics and mess of the body, Gavin uses his body to occupy and subvert aspects of presentation and representation. Permeating multiple spaces, Gavin nurtures and inspires an inventive and imaginative ethos in the realisation of artistic production, education and curation in the performance industry and related communities.

Carin Bester – Abasindile (Visual Art)

A three-part plaster panty installation which deals with multi-generational trauma and the capacity for healing and the resilience of victims of sexual violence. Challenging the notion of sexual violence victims being responsible in some way “Asking for it” an idea created by a patriarchal society. No one asks for it, not the 2-year-old child, not the young woman and not the 80-year-old granny. Using white plaster and medical gauze as medium. The white contrasts with the darkness of sexual violence. The plaster as the chosen material represents healing, from its’ use in setting broken bone. On each of the panties one can see tears that’s been sewn up: the act of sewing/repair is used to promote healing. Victims of sexual violence will live with scars visible or not for the rest of their lives, but they continue. They find the strength inside themselves to heal in the best way they can, and they survive, they are resilient.  

Carin Bester is a Cape Town based, artist and activist. She is most known for her performance, multimedia installations and more recently her curatorial work. Bester’s multi-media practice ranges from body installations, site specific interventions, video art and space activations to performances staged in more conventional theatre spaces. Her work often incorporates projection, sculptural installation, and poetry. As an activist her focus has been mainly around oppression of womxn, children and the Queer community and she uses her art to raise awareness around these issues.