The Live Art Arcade was established in 2018 as a nomadic production and exhibition platform for early to mid-career artists working in live art performance with interests in durational and site-responsive work.
Dwelling in sites, spaces and places, our aim is to produce immersive assemblages of experimental body-based live art performances: an arcade of durational, itinerant and cyclical live art, where all encounters happen simultaneously, and audience-participants can engage with the performances at their own discretion and structure their journeys as they wish.
Through the works selected for Arcade2025, an organic theme emerged: the performativity of placemaking through installation, play and ritual. Here, placemaking is about actively inscribing spaces with meaning through performative action. Similarly, installation shapes atmospheres of presence and absence, while play invites improvisation and audience agency, as ritual transforms space through repetition and resonance.
These works do not only inhabit sites/sights; they reimagine them, interrogating how bodies negotiate, disrupt and generate meaning within space. Nine artists from across South Africa have come together to offer eight performances, installations and activations, all warranting multiple means of engagement. These artists and artworks strive to question, provoke, reflect, subvert and archive our current realities in order to postulate and consider alternatives.
At the Live Art Arcade our approach to creating, producing, facilitating and curating live art is one of collaboratively and communally worlding a pluriverse in a speculative manner in the midst of unpredictability.
Open from 6pm - 10pm on 21 March. FREE ENTRY.
Many thanks to the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, the National Arts Council, the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme, the Network for Embodied Research in Africa and POPArt Performing Arts Centre for supporting Arcade2025.
Artists and artworks include:
Life Under the Matrix by Brian Montshiwa
Life Under the Matrix is a durational performance that confronts the spaces in which we are confined, both physically and mentally. As a black and queer artist based in Johannesburg, Brian’s work interrogates the boundaries between self-writing, resistanceand transformation. Through the seemingly simple act of playing hopscotch, an embodied meditation on identity, autonomy and the complex dynamics of power that govern space is created. Brian is an athlete, visual artist, performer and a choreographer living and working in Johannesburg. In their artistic practice they are interested in self- writing as a form of space making in connection to ideas of emancipation.
A stormcloud balanced on the chin, glistening like a raspberry mid-licking by Huge Sillytoe
Much like how the ice particles within stormclouds collide to generate electrical charges, a flailing skateboarding cumulonimbus holding two cymbals in constant tension engages those they collide with in free-flowing storm-interactions of howls, grunts, whistles and growls. An anti-racist, anti-fascist happening wherein the stormcloud, simultaneously tangible and intangible, might reflect the notion of ‘freedom’ itself whilst the tension of the cymbals might represent the omnipresent weight of intersecting past and present oppressions as well as the inevitable lightning strikes to come. Huge Sillytoe is a large, daft toe and a socially-engaged transdisciplinary artist working internationally across live
art, performance, video, installation, sound, masks/puppetry and relational art.
Grain and Fibre: An Archive of Holding by Nokuthula Mabuza
Grain and Fibre: An Archive of Holding is a durational installation-performance that unravels and reweaves memory through maize bag fibres. A tactile exploration of materiality, labour and identity, this evolving archive invites reflection on the ways we carry and remake history. Nokuthula is a theatre-maker and researcher exploring embodied archives, materiality and performance as a space for memory and transformation.
Choruscore by Andi Colombo and Naledi Majola
A (dis)unified chorus formed in a virtual space, Choruscore is a collaborative performance between two artists, continents apart, composing and performing a choral text over the internet. Andi and Naledi are interdisciplinary artists who work alone and together in an artistic partnership called Grouping and Ungrouping Forever, which was formed in 2019.
Inherited Fatherhood by Nqoba Boyi
Inherited Fatherhood embodies the struggle of adjusting to fatherhood; of suddenly being handed such a role rather than growing into it. The performance presents the artist building a structure within a structure – building a house inside of a house. Nqoba is a performance and digital artist interested in the use of textile and ordinary bodily movements as his primary materials. He is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts degree at Rhodes University.
Red Architecture by Thabile “Terry” Rala-rala
This performance installation explores menstruation as a life-giving force and a subject of social stigma. Red Architecture highlights the beauty, vulnerability and resilience of the body and menstruation, while confronting cultural shame and the silence surrounding it. Terry is a multidisciplinary artist who explores personal and collective narratives, offering bold reflections on feminism, sexuality and womanhood. She is currently completing a Master of Arts degree in Drama at Rhodes University.
Run 359 by Toby iMpendulo kaNgomane
The head begins to shoot up and slightly forward. Knee straightens and the leg straightens, launching off the toes. The hamstring contracts and pulls the heel up to the glute and releases the knee into the beginning motion. Again. Toby is a mover. They think through movement. They ask about space. They ask about form. They are a mover.
ROU by Marlon Pokpas
ROU explores grief, mourning, decay and the celebration of life. A conversation between live performance and video, documenting the artist’s self-burial over a number of weeks. Marlon’s performance work is inspired by his dreams and hallucinations. As an artist he is driven by a desire to explore and depict homoeroticism, sensuality, religious and political statements in his practice.
