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iKapa Dance Theatre’s Mine! : This work explored the sharing of space, be it in intimate relationships, the government’s controlling of spaces or the ownership of public space by a society. It was evocatively danced in a crumbling cube structure. -
Mhlanguli George’s Fourth Person in the Yard. : When we walk in the street we only see the front view of the yards we pass, especially those with fences and big walls. This work came about as a result of the artist’s curiosity about the backyards. -
Tebogo Munyai’s Right Inside : The performance area of this dance was surrounded by a corrugated iron fence with holes drilled into it through which audience members could peep. If they did not move closer, they saw nothing but the corrugated fence -
Jason Potgieter's Flown : School kids spray each other with water in the heat of the day, during Jason Potgieter's performance, in which 1 000 paper planes were thrown from a building rooftop for people to catch below, adorned with messages and drawings. -
Adriana Roos’s The Commuter : A passerby explains Adriana Roos’s artwork to a gathering crowd in the Cape Town Train Station. The work looked at the movement of train commuters as they flow in and out of Cape Town, and created a visual map based on information about them. -
Inyanda Youth’s Shadows in Colour : Featuring a 30-strong cast, the work used the idea of shadows to bring to life the spaces of Adderley Street, Cape Town Station, Golden Acre Shopping Mall and Shortmarket Street as they empty out of people with the approach of dusk. -
iKapa Dance Theatre’s Power : Ikapa presented a challenging work choreographed by Celeste Botha that uses space as mirror of the (business) environment the dancers perform in. Through movement the dancers display the natural human need for control. -
In the moment : A passerby chances upon the free public performances during Infecting the City, 2013, Cape Town CBD. -
Nkule Mabaso’s The Black Threat : At the centre of the project is Maninzi Kwatshube, a black Rapunzel who fashions The Black Threat, a mass of artificial dreadlocks, into a dress. The project refocuses our attention on the traditional ideas of beauty and its construction. -
Ben Winfield’s Please Be My Witness : Child trafficking in SA is silent and goes by unnoticed. Ben’s evocative sculptures, placed throughout Cape Town, were designed to slowly and quietly disappear from sight, so reflecting on the silent, unnoticed nature of child trafficking in SA. -
Mamela Nyamza’s Okuya Phantsi Kwempumlo : A work about love and courage, the ballet celebrates the creative capacity of young South Africans to subvert and transform instruments of oppression and denigration into expressions of ecstasy and beauty. -
József Trefelli’s Jinx 103 : In many languages, when people say the same thing simultaneously, they quickly say a word to ward off bad luck. The French say “chips”, the English say “jinx” and the Hungarians say “103”. This is a dance choreographed to adapt to any space. -
Aeneas Wilder’s Under Construction : This collaborative project involved the meticulous construction and spectacular public destruction of a complex wooden structure in the District Six Museum to ask poignant questions around what it means to be a resident in the city. -
UNIMA Puppetry’s Proto-Bomb : A series of puppet-heads of animals and fish that lived in the Cape Town CBD area before urbanisation took place were made. These “talking heads” walked among the crowds, precipitating conversations and promoting awareness of the city as a shifting space. -
Marcus Neustetter’s Erosion : 20 000 glow-sticks were spilled onto a paved surface to create a drawing. Then people in red overalls wielding brooms swept away the drawing. Their action alluded to local cultural landscapes that are eroded by global economic trends.
PHOTOS Sydelle Willow Smith
The Cape Town city centre came alive last week, from 11 to 16 March 2013, during the Africa Centre Infecting the City festival of interactive public art and performance in unlikely urban spaces.
From the Iziko Whale Well and Company Gardens to the Cape Town Station and Church Square, genres ranged from ballet to skateboarding and from crystal rainbows to hidden Kewpie dolls.
Sydelle Willow Smith poked her camera everywhere, being the official photographer for the Africa Centre and Cape Town Partnership’s Creative Cape Town. Here she has selected some of her favourite moments and photos from the festival.
29 APRIL 2013 UPDATE This new video by Creative Cape Town captures the spirit of this extraordinary event.
For more information and coverage, visit www.infectingthecity.com
