THE ICA PODCAST SEASON 4

The Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) is proud to announce Season 4 of The ICA Podcast – featuring interviews with African artists and curators who perform or curate live art. 

Season 4 begins with two ground breaking artists  Kenza Berrada from Morocco and Gabrielle Goliath from South Africa. The artists speak about processes of care, memory and personal histories  in their work, which deal with challenging themes of sexual and domestic violence.

                                                           
EPISODE 1: KENZA BERRADA ON 'BOUJLOUD' (Man of Skins)

Artist Kenza Berrada speaks about her work 'Boujloud' Man of Skins which was performed at the Live Art Network Africa Gathering  at the ICA in 2023. Berrada discovered theatre at the age of ten. More than twenty years later, she covers her body with sheepskins in her first work as a playwright. Boujloud in Darija is a character who is half man, half beast.  In Morocco, he gives his name to the festival celebrated the day after Aid el Kebir (the sacrifice of the sheep) in the Rif and Atlas regions .

The work addresses the subject of abuse and incest, through the concrete questions that arise for those who decide to break the silence and speak out. Berrada questions; how do we make ourselves heard? Is there an appropriate time to share experiences of abuse, to be heard and listened to?

Scenes from Boujloud by Kenza Berrada (2023).

EPISODE 2: GABRIELLE GOLIATH ON 'ELEGY'

Artist Gabrielle Goliath provides compelling insight into the research and creation of her monumental work Elegy, performed at the ICA Live Art Festival in 2017 . 

Elegy is a long-term commemorative performance initiated by Goliath in 2015. Staged in various locations, each performance calls together a group of female vocal performers who collectively enact a ritual of mourning, sustaining a single haunting tone over the course of an hour.

Responding to the physical, ontological and structural outworking(s) of rape-culture in South Africa, Elegy performances invoke the absent presence of individuals whose subjectivities have been fundamentally violated, and who are all too easily consigned to a generic, all-encompassing victimhood. Each performance commemorates a named, loved and missed woman or LGBTIQ+ individual subjected to fatal acts of gendered and sexualised violence.

Significant to the work is how loss becomes a site for community, and for empathetic encounters with and across difference. Refusing the symbolic violence through which traumatised black, brown, femme and queer bodies are routinely objectified, Elegy performances open an alternative, relational space, wherein mourning is presented as a social and politically productive work, not in the sense of healing or closure but as a necessary and sustained irresolution.

Scenes from Elegy by Gabrielle Goliath.

ICA Podcast Background

The Podcast – launched in July 2020 – emerged out of the ICA's 2019 publication Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa and extends the work begun by the book through conversations with the creators and curators of Live Art. Before 2019, there was no comprehensive text dedicated to Live Art in South Africa, and  there was limited discourse to speak about the politically resonant form that it takes in our country. Acts of Transgression sought to begin filling this critical gap.  The study of Live Art has tended to rely disproportionately on Euro-American texts and discussions. The ICA Podcast makes a critical intervention into this status quo: a platform for African artists to speak to their work, in their own words.

Season 1 featured 8 site-specific and in-studio interviews with a diverse range of artists: fashion designer and artists, Lesiba Mabitsela, performance artist and activist Chuma Sopotela, visual artist and academic Meghna Singh, curator Khanyisile Mbongwa, performance artist and photographer Dean Hutton, visual and performance artist Sikhumbuzo Makandula, and curator Nkule Mabaso with a bonus episode featuring writer Bongani Kona.

Season 2 focused on a single performance, and the creative processes that brought them into being, featuring We the Not-Not People! -Things done, not told. Inscribed, not written by Donna Kukama; Jesus Thesis and Other Critical Fabulations by Kopano Maroga; Qash-Qash by Nomcebisi Moyikwa; Yet to be Determined by Gavin Krastin; Things We Lost in the Rainbow by Athi-Patra Ruga; Fragments of Encounters by nomi blum, and Body of Evidence by Jay Pather.

Season 3 explores performances featured at the 2022 ICA Live Art Festival including, I AM by Tandile Mbatsha, Between my finger and thumb by Asemahle Ntlonti, We are everywhere by Qondiswa James, Ifu Elimnyama: The Dark Cloud by Russel Hlongwane, Ingoduko yamaNkazana (The Return of the Home of Harlots) by Lukhanyiso Skosana, UkuNqula kukuThandaza by Nkosenathi Koela and Reclaiming the Poetics of Indigenous Horn by Kolawole Gbolahan.

Season 4 of the ICA Podcast comprise interviews conducted by Nkgopoleng Moloi and  produced by Atiyyah Khan. Upcoming episodes for Season 4 will include conversations with Aika Swai, Bernard Akoi Jackson, Mbongeni Mtshali and Nelisiwe Xaba.


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~ 28 February 2024 ~