Review: Immersive Uninhabitable Spaces at Live Art

Working Title, presented its 4^th Live Art Weekend for 2024 in the Baxter Masambe and Maambe precinct, last week Thursday and into the weekend (Thursday December 5 to Saturday December 7, 2024). The event was packed – with creatives and the general public in what turned out to be breathtakingly immersive experience – lots to ponder – and moments of sheer fun. I loved being there.

Carin Bester of Working Title put out an open call with a curatorial prompt, UNinhabitable SPACES which as she reflected was  an invitation “to reflect on environments that imperil the survival of fauna, flora and humans…. both physical and psychological limits of all living things”. It is how we as sentient beings are responding to our habitats in this strange word. So much feels uninhabitable – physically, mentally and emotionally and this reverberated in all the pieces at Live Art Weekend, UNinhabitable SPACES. As with other 2024 Live Art Weekends, there was a wonderful use of inside/outside space at the Masambe and the outside. The whole precinct was activated and the swarm of the crowd moving from inside to outside, back to foyer, back inside tapped into the jitteriness of the theme. Yes, this has been the format for all Live Art Weekend, but somehow the anxiety of the prompt seemed to heighten the tension – in a good way. There is no way, one could nod off in this programme. Rain threatened but luckily held off and the two outside performances could proceed.

On entering the Masambe foyer, I was captivated by the visual art installation, Plastic Blooms, by Bester- blue flower arrangements in picture frames, on white picture mounts. I found them beautiful and ugly and wanted to touch them. At the Q&A after the performances, Bester mused that she is obsessive about collecting plastic which is around us, everywhere. She invited us to think about how much plastic is discarded around us. If things continue like this, with our disregard for the environment, maybe it will come to a point when we longer have flowers and will have to make do with “plastic blooms”. Consider that. Bester’s Plastic Blooms have been sprayed with Deep Blue paint, using Rust-Oleum Spray.

Grief and loss was the leitmotif of Above: Below, presented by Mmatumisang Motsisi and Tiffani Kayler Dlamini in the theatre as they expressed their love for growing things and their rage of the dispossession of the plant kingdom by colonisation, property, war. There was a sobering scene looking a plants which grow in arid and dry environments, with no rain and yet they survive. This piece is part of Turning into Flowers, an ongoing research and performance project by Motsisi and Dlamini. I was very moved when they indicated an endangered flower which had been removed when the Baxter Theatre was built. Their piece was visually very beautiful and exquisitely staged – with regard to theatrical lighting and sound.

We then moved outside to Plastic Not So Fantastic, performed by Joy Oosthuizen and Lynette du Plessis. They are dancers who were part of the Figure of 8 Dance Theatre Performance Development Programme and were invited by Bester to perform in this piece under her  and under the development and mentorship of Sjaka Septembir. Bester conceptualised and created the piece and it was then workshopped as a team. Dancing, clowning and miming they presented a mesmerising tableaux of figures draped in plastic bags – beautiful and alluring but disturbing and dystopian. Within the despair, there was a spirited sense of play. A child in the audience got involved and picked up pieces of plastic, much to the delight of all. It was lovely to see how the performers were up on their improv skills and included the child as they cleaned up.  Bester says that Plastic Not So Fantastic is being developed for Suidoosterfees next year (2025) and that Live Art was a warm-up run.   

After Plastic Not So Fantastic, we moved inside to the theatre to watch the Art Film by Lungile Lallie and Liyema Speelman – I’m Trying to Not Kill Myself. In this interesting film the artists, explore emotional aspects of uninhabitable spaces. It is a rather bleak and thought provoking film – where do we place ourselves, on the edge of this mad world.

Back outside, we were pulled into Oupa Sibeko’s You can take the monkey out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of the monkey –You can take a horse to the river but you can’t force the horse to drink water. In this immersive performance, Sibeko has the audience form a conga line, holding onto a rope, as he called out instructions to make the circle bigger to come closer. It was war game, tug of war, battle ground and a lot of fun. I was distracted – pulling, holding onto the rope, filming and watching other people, that I missed much of Sibeko’s narrative and performance. He made reference to Zama Zamas (informal miners who work in abandoned mines).  He did a thing with a pillow (putting his head in a pillow). In the Q&A, he said that the rope is reference to pulling up and rescuing miners. Sibeko came in late to this Live Art Weekend and had limited time to get his performance together. He used rubble and remains of construction on the site to anchor his rope. This was one of the most exhilarating pieces of performance art that I have experienced. 

Back inside, we were treated to Karli Heine’s quirky and fun Die Potplant in which she transmogrifies into a pot plant. Fabulous props, sound effects and lighting. A lot of fun.

I thoroughly enjoyed UNinhabitable SPACES. Each piece was articulated with care and wasn’t too long. It was fabulous to be at the Q&A and hear “plant moms” enthusing about their love of plants and flowers and how they cherish growing and nurturing things and the resilience in all of that. Circling back to the theme of uninhabitable spaces, despite images of grief and disrepair, I found the programme to be uplifting and inspirational.  Congrats to Carin Bester for the vibrant Live Art Weekend series. I hope that the platform can continue in the future.

✳ Featured image – Plastic Not So Fantastic, performed by Joy Oosthuizen and Lynette du Plessis, Live Art Weekend – UNinhabitable SPACES, which took place December 5-7, 2024 in Cape Town at the Baxter Masambe Theatre and precinct. Photos by Stephanie Gericke. Supplied.