Creative arts enthusiasts are in for a treat this spring.
The University of Cape Town’s Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) boasts a jam-packed four days of immersive and provocative culture in the Live Arts Festival (LAF) from September 4 to 7.
Director of the ICA and festival curator Jay Pather said the festival this year will focus on programming a ‘South-South axis’ with significant emphasis on creating conversations and relationships that galvanize the emergence of a new geo-cultural programme of collaboration, exchange and networking.
“’Pressing against and through form is characteristic of artists who own live art (or ‘performance art’) as a practice. Emerging from a range of disciplines from dance to painting, artists break rank with disciplinary silos to create new variations of form and a visceral immediacy to art making,” said Pather.
“The immediacy is informed by contemporary political contexts, a need to cut through apathy and go beyond political clichés. Bourgeois containment and access give way to a freedom to leverage form to specific intention and an opacity in the work that disavows the need to ‘explain oneself’.
“In South Africa, this has meant revisiting ancient African practices, ritual, gathering and ceremony within contemporary live art practice as part of a decolonial proposition to consider live art that existed from pre-colonial times, and which continues to vividly live in the contemporary moment.”
“I am passionate about the programme for this milestone edition of the LAF truly reflecting 2024 as a year of seismic shifts in geopolitical alliances.”
Hosted at the UCT Hiddingh Campus in Gardens, this annual festival has uniquely allowed its audiences to experience and participate in a vibrant live art experience in a non-commercial environment since 2012.
Historically, the festival has created access to works by artists who are pushing the boundaries of form, flouting aesthetic conventions, engaging controversy, confronting audiences, and experimenting with perceptions.
The line-up includes live art performances by Nigerian dancer Jelili Atiku, choreographer Pak Ndjamena from Mozambique, SA’s John Nankin, Nelisiwe Xaba, Donna Kukama and Sello Pesa.
Speaking to the Weekend Argus ahead of the festival, Xaba, who will perform ‘vRot’, describes the story behind her performance.
The Johannesburg-based dancer uses mould and decay as a metaphor for the levels of corruption in South Africa, and the impact this has had on the country; specifically highlighting the ‘processes of deterioration: mould and corruption that take place slowly and over time’.
Xaba describes her body of work as ‘politically driven’ and challenges stereotypes of the black female body and cultural notions of gender mainstreams.
Xaba embraces deprecating humour as a coping mechanism.
“Through this work, I embrace deprecating humour as my coping mechanism. I’ve experienced how corruption extends beyond the South African government. I contemplate whether my work effectively reaches a broad public audience or is it confined to academic and art spheres?
“My aspiration is for this art to resonate with a wider audience and for it to provoke and stimulate discussion so that it transcends being mere entertainment.”
Tickets for the Live Art Festival 2024 have gone on sale this week and are available from R20 via Quicket.