48 min
Episode 4: Khanyisile Mbongwa The ICA Podcast
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- Performing Arts
“I feel and think and know and have encountered that, for as long as I can remember, we've been negotiating ways of dying. We have been told that like, you know, you're here, you're born to work so that you can die. You can't leave anything behind. Colonialism, apartheid robbed us of all our legacies…And when somebody does that, it’s them saying to you, you're not allowed to be alive. And so what does it mean when a black person says: I want to live?”
In an alleyway alongside her mother’s home in Gugulethu, curator Khanyisile Mbongwa talks through her work on irhanga (township alleyways) as a public space for black self-realisation and self-love. We also unpack Mbongwa’s 2017 demonstration kuDanger! and her 2016 collaboration with Urban Village in Soweto. In between, Mbongwa reflects on her transition from artist to curator, and why she resists the term ‘performance’.
For more music by Urban Village see www.urbanvillage.live or follow the band on Instagram.
To watch Marco Casino’s film Staff Riding about train surfing see www.vimeo.com/83486021. For more works by Marco Casino, follow him on Instagram.
The ICA Podcast is a creation of the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) at the University of Cape Town. Produced and edited by Catherine Boulle.
Read more about the ICA and the vision for the podcast: http://www.ica.uct.ac.za/ica/podcast/abouttheicapodcast.
“I feel and think and know and have encountered that, for as long as I can remember, we've been negotiating ways of dying. We have been told that like, you know, you're here, you're born to work so that you can die. You can't leave anything behind. Colonialism, apartheid robbed us of all our legacies…And when somebody does that, it’s them saying to you, you're not allowed to be alive. And so what does it mean when a black person says: I want to live?”
In an alleyway alongside her mother’s home in Gugulethu, curator Khanyisile Mbongwa talks through her work on irhanga (township alleyways) as a public space for black self-realisation and self-love. We also unpack Mbongwa’s 2017 demonstration kuDanger! and her 2016 collaboration with Urban Village in Soweto. In between, Mbongwa reflects on her transition from artist to curator, and why she resists the term ‘performance’.
For more music by Urban Village see www.urbanvillage.live or follow the band on Instagram.
To watch Marco Casino’s film Staff Riding about train surfing see www.vimeo.com/83486021. For more works by Marco Casino, follow him on Instagram.
The ICA Podcast is a creation of the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) at the University of Cape Town. Produced and edited by Catherine Boulle.
Read more about the ICA and the vision for the podcast: http://www.ica.uct.ac.za/ica/podcast/abouttheicapodcast.
48 min