Elegy forms part of an ongoing series of commemorative performance art pieces by artist Gabrielle Goliath. Performed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea in August 2018 as part of the For Once programme, the work is in commemoration of the life of Eunice Ntombifuthi Ndube.

In Goliath’s Elegy, a durational work performed by a group of women vocalists, the enduring power of a single note becomes a profound tool for remembrance, mourning, ritualisation and engagement. A long-term commemorative performance project, Elegy began in 2015 and has been staged in various locations. The single, durational note – a physically and psychologically taxing mode of performance – is sung in order to evoke the presence of an “absent individual”, a specific woman or LGBTQIA+ individual who has been murdered as a result of gender-based violence in South Africa.

In Goliath’s words: “Responding to the physical, ontological and structural outworkings of rape-culture in South Africa, Elegy performances recall the identity of individuals whose subjectivities have been fundamentally violated – and who are, as such, all too easily consigned to a generic, all-encompassing victimhood. With each performance commemorating a specific woman or LGBTQI+ individual raped and killed in South Africa, significant to the work is how loss becomes a site for community, and for empathic, cross-cultural, and cross-national encounters. Seeking to work around the kinds of symbolic violence through which traumatised black bodies are routinely objectified, Elegy performances open a distinctly decolonial and intersectional space, wherein mourning is presented as a social and productive work – not in the sense of healing or ‘closure’, but as a necessary and sustained irresolution.”

The performers stand in single-file, each one taking their turn to step onto a small plinth and sound out the single note. Individually, the performers do not hold the note for very long – about the length of a bell or a tuning fork being struck – but collectively, the note is held for the entirety of the performance.

It is through this refusal of silence, this relentless resonance, that Goliath’s Elegy opens up a space for continued remembrance, often staying with audiences long after the performance has reached its close.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | Gabrielle Goliath
PERFORMERS | Moloko Letsoalo, Khayakazi Madlala, Sibongile Mthiyane, Litho Nqai, Pretty Skhosana, Annemarie Steenkamp & Ernestine Stuurman
CINEMATOGRAPHER | Kutlwano Makgalemele
EDITOR | Noah Cohen
PROJECT MANAGER | Shruthi Nair