Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa

Abstract

Acts of Transgression, edited by Jay Pather and Catherine Boulle, speaks to the aesthetics of crises observed in performance or “live art” in contemporary South Africa. The subversive nature of the performances discussed in this book is related to lingering emotions of anger, resentment, and dispossession, but also to a way of articulating the unsayable—the desire to know, to say, and to be (Braidotti 2011, 126). The authors contributing to this book question an understanding of art as mere representations of identities and humanist notions of self, rather positioning figurations as “embedded and embodied, social positions” (Braidotti 2011, 5), constantly in flux and operating as a process of teasing out new meanings of citizenship, agency, and relationality. Acts of Transgression is the product of Pather’s and Boulle’s longstanding interest in and engagement with performance practices in South Africa, supported by the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town, where they are based. The volume consists of 15 chapters, divided into four sections, each addressing a different aspect of the multidisciplinary field of performance or “live art”, as it is referred to in this book. The book contains engagements with a variety of artists’ work by a diverse collection of authors, critics, and artist-writers, who each contribute in a meaningful way to the debates offered in this book.