BONGANI TAU

“Domination must envelop the subjugated, the colonised, and maintain them in a more or less permanent state of trance, intoxication, and convulsion so that they are incapable of thinking lucidly for themselves.” Achille Mbembe

I recently watched Spirit Capital by Roland Gunst at the Market Theatre. The show was curated by @meritsworld.

The performance was about how domesticated black bodies like the Congolese people in the Tropical Bungalow, an old colonial housing structure installed by the Belgian white colonialists, transcended boundaries, the human cell and its conditioning and labels used to subdue them using clothes and performance. Un-identifying with categories and developing “strategies – through expressive, cultural and theatrical methods – to free themselves from the trauma of colonisation…”

This tradition later led to the rich ‘Sapologie’ or ‘Sape’ tradition. Which is fascinating to me for two reasons:

1. Our old past’s tendency to immortalise categories/lines in the sand through theory and design (how fragile).
2. The dynamism and fluidity of the mentally un-domesticated – who can transcend barriers through theory, performance and design.

This parallels Izikhothane culture, which takes place in the township’s existensminimum / ‘machine domesti-city’. It took place approximately 2,552 km away in a different era. Both were scrutinised using economics and dismissed as “conspicuous consumption.”

Beyond this, there’s a reflection on the importance of memory: is it beneficial to forget identities that don’t serve us?

What strategies can we learn from these societies about who we can be despite labels, zones, and “being Spacialized”?

What happens when we “forget” we’ve been “colonised”?

Concept and direction: @john_k_cobra
Performers: @lesmybales
Performance Images: Steff Stessel
See: johnkcobra.com