Art Joburg expands to include performance art

Joburg’s oldest art fair, now called Art Joburg, is, like most art fairs, known for object-based artworks, mostly paintings. This is what people primarily want to buy; a hanging work for their home or office. However, over the fair’s 13-year history, performance or live art has punctuated this static format, as it has been perceived to add to the art factor. In other words, an air of provocation, unpredictability, or the downright strange.

Think of the 2014 edition in which the late Barend de Wet moved around the fair underneath a multicoloured crotcheted blanket. In 2012 the wryly titled Trade Rerouted by Nontobeko Ntombela saw performers Anthea Moys, Donna Kukama, Jamie Gowrie and Shannon Ferguson make and sell rough copies of expensive artworks. Live works add an edge but can often fall flat or go unnoticed, especially on opening night.

“Live art doesn’t always work at art fairs,” observes Neliswe Xaba, the choreographer, artist and dancer. She should know, after staging a live work she dubbed Urban Mermaid at this annual event in 2015. 

“Live art needs more budget and sensitive curating. It is not like picking up objects and plonking them somewhere where they will be frozen in time. There is a starting time and a time to end and you require an attentive audience, not just people passing you who are more excited to see their friends than you,” says Xaba.

For this and other reasons, such as the lack of platforms in Joburg for live performance that doesn’t fit a theatre format, Xaba is staging a site-specific rendition of her new collaborative work with Swiss artist Marie-Caroline Hominal, titled Hominal / Xaba, during Art Joburg as part of their Open City programme at a venue outside the fair.

It will take place at one of the city’s most renowned evening entertainment venues, Carfax. This cavernous venue with multiple spaces inspired Xaba to conceive an evening programme titled What’s the Point? Artists — Kwanele Finch Thusi, Monica Khangale, Alex Dale & Jordan Green and Joao Renato Orecchia Zuniga — from different disciplines have been invited to present live works that are difficult to accommodate at a conventional art or theatre event. 

“It’s a happening. I have invited several artists and if it’s happening for them they will join. There is a real need to create these platforms  because there’s hardly any platform for live art in Johannesburg. There is no longer a Dance Umbrella. This could be the start of something that I would like to do every year,” says Xaba. 

Hominal / Xaba debuted in Geneva at La Bâtie festival in 2019 and has since toured in Switzerland and France. Its South African tour will include performances at the JOMBA! dance festival in Durban and the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town. 

Hominal / Xaba is part of a trilogy of works by Hominal in which she collaborates with different artists to question authorship. In this work, the idea is challenged via the use of choreography entirely drawn from YouTube clips. As such Xaba and Hominal attempt to replicate the moves in these diverse posts which are drawn from different cultures — Korean pop dance, American hip-hop and South African dances. A laptop playing the clips is placed on the stage in front of the artists, but fortunately for the artists only the music can be heard. In this way, the audience can’t detect when the artists have ad libbed, or are out of step. In other words, when their mimicry fails. 

“We don’t want the audience to start enjoying the video and not watch us. The idea is to question the ownership of choreography. Whose is it when so many routines are copies of those that come before them?” says Xaba. 

Layers of printed African cloths assumed to be traditional form a backdrop to the extended version of Hominal / Xaba.

“Most of these cloths have been claimed by Africans as being part of their culture, but many have European origins. So this is another question of ownership and authorship,” says Xaba. 

The climax of the work sees the performers negotiate a complex web of coloured threads perhaps representing the network of cultural and geographical influences that impact identity and art. Where does appropriation begin or end? they seem to ask. 

Other live works will include vignettes from Fake News, a work pivoting on the role digital and social media play in shaping and distorting events. A projection of “dancing” eyes will be complemented by song, performed by young opera singer Alanda Ntsizi.

• What's the Point? takes place at Carfax at 7.30pm on September 2. The ticket fee is determined by the audience member upon entrance.