Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART ONE LIVE ART IN A TIME OF CRISIS
- PART TWO LOSS, LANGUAGE AND EMBODIMENT
- PART THREE RETHINKING THE ARCHIVE, REINTERPRETING GESTURE
- PART FOUR SUPPRESSED HISTORIES AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES
- 12 To Heal a Nation: Performance and Memorialisation in the Zone of Non-Being
- 13 Astronautus Afrikanus: Performing African Futurism
- 14 ‘Touched by an Angel’ (of History) in Athi-Patra Ruga's The Future White Women of Azania
- 15 Performance in Biopolitical Collectivism: A Study of Gugulective and iQhiya
- Contributors
- List of Illustrations
- Index
13 - Astronautus Afrikanus: Performing African Futurism
from PART FOUR - SUPPRESSED HISTORIES AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 May 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART ONE LIVE ART IN A TIME OF CRISIS
- PART TWO LOSS, LANGUAGE AND EMBODIMENT
- PART THREE RETHINKING THE ARCHIVE, REINTERPRETING GESTURE
- PART FOUR SUPPRESSED HISTORIES AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES
- 12 To Heal a Nation: Performance and Memorialisation in the Zone of Non-Being
- 13 Astronautus Afrikanus: Performing African Futurism
- 14 ‘Touched by an Angel’ (of History) in Athi-Patra Ruga's The Future White Women of Azania
- 15 Performance in Biopolitical Collectivism: A Study of Gugulective and iQhiya
- Contributors
- List of Illustrations
- Index
Summary
The audience enter the lobby of the Rhodes (the University Currently Known as Rhodes) Main Theatre, the bright and functional overhead lights giving nothing away. They have come to see Astronautus Afrikanus. A small desk marks the makeshift box-office station outside the glass double doors at which they receive nametags. They might rightly suspect at this point that the performance will not take the usual form accommodated by this theatre. Each audience member is renamed with the prefix Afro, such as Afroholic, Afrobeat, Afromystic. Yet, unknown to them, these names serve to make easier work of a head count in the event of an emergency evacuation. It is May 2015 in Grahamstown, and Eskom has taken to regular unplanned electricity outages, in addition to its regular planned blackouts. The Rhodes Must Fall student protests are also gaining momentum. Fela Kuti plays in the lobby, perhaps only noticeable to those not engaged in conversation about their nametags, wondering out loud what form the invitation to join the characters listed in the programme will take. These characters are similarly named – AfroMogolo, AfroCyann, AfroTiptap, AfroGeo, and so on. The music of Kuti ensures that the ambience is upbeat but suggests, too, that the events to come are cognisant of the rising temperatures of the student movement.
The doors close and some members of the audience register that the music has stopped and that characters in grey overalls with individualised chitenge detail have assembled at the top of each set of stairs leading from the ground floor of the large lobby to the upper entrance of the Rhodes Main Theatre. The following automated security briefing is announced:
Welcome to the Pan-African Space Station Shuttle Launch of Craft number PASSLC201513126. Our aircraft is under the collective command of Astronautus Afrikanus, descendants of the great Edward Nkoloso's first flight crew and members of the Zambian National Academy of Science, Space, Research and Philosophy. You will conduct your launch observation visit independently and without guidance, and with that in mind, we ask you to pay particular attention to the following safety information.
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- Acts of TransgressionContemporary Live Art in South Africa, pp. 286 - 308Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2019