INVISIBLE EXHIBITION

The Invisible Exhibition, a core component of Season 5 was made in collaboration with TMWR and featured 5 new Virtual Reality films and 10 new Augmented Reality artworks.

UNGASABI

It begins in darkness, followed by an empty room which you alone occupy. You are not sure where you are, exactly. A figure appears – he is a healer of some kind, and shortly after he appears, the space begins to populate itself with more figures. These figures, you come to understand, are your people.

Conceptualised by Siyabonga Mthembu and directed by Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Mthembu, Ungasabi draws on Mthembu’s own experience of seeking consultation with a traditional healer some years back. Through the use of performance, sound and space, the piece utilises the pre-existing conditions of 360 Virtual Reality – disorientation, temporary isolation, the act of stepping in and out of time – and crafts a narrative journey into which the viewer is placed as the central character.

Beyond its performance-based merits, Ungasabi stands out as a brilliant work of art largely due to its use of storytelling across the realities presented through interactive technology. Dancers move all around you, never staying in one fixed position and, in this way, you are both a viewer and an active participant in the work. You can choose to follow the movements of one character, or you can traverse your full scope of vision and try and take in the performance as it plays out around you.

Music, here, is crucial. As the performers weave their way throughout the space, so does the choral work of the collective. It is a soothing song, almost dream-like, and adds a texture to the space that almost makes it seem as if you are home, or perhaps in that transitory space between this reality and the next.

Finally, you are left only with the healer again, before he leaves, too. It ends as it began: You are alone, and then there is darkness. Although this time, you do not feel quite as alone.

DAY WILL BREAK MORE THAN ONCE

A room full of papers and not much else. As you orientate yourself and begin the futile process of trying to make sense of these pages, they begin to leave you. They do this in a manner that is at once unsettling and mystifying – floating, as if in reverse, towards the sky and up into the hands of a group of individuals a floor above. Have they been there the whole time? From the corner of your eye, a figure emerges. She is dancing her way through the space in long, languid movements of the body. Another figure emerges and begins to follow her, the two of them circling you as they move.

Day Will Break More Than Once, conceptualised by William Kentridge and composed and choreographed by Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd, is a meditation on mortality, hope, purpose, and those heavy, burdensome things that may plague our minds when we begin to consider our place in the world around us. Through the use of arresting choral work, razor sharp video editing, Kentridge’s text-based works, and Masilo’s evocative movements, viewers are placed in a reality in which thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams are rendered tangible.

You can listen to the choir and you can watch these two characters move around you, yes, but the heart of this work rests in its text-based narrative:

‘Wait again for new gods’

‘It is not enough’

‘But it is not nothing’

So read the short, affective texts, dispersed one at a time by Masilo, and snatched out of mid-air by Kentridge as they move around you. Experienced in such a way, Day Will Break More Than Once positions its viewer as a passive observer – an individual sitting back and watching their life being narrated (or prophesied) before them. Those above you, then, become gods, diviners, bringers or death or of life. They are singing, harmonising throughout, and the effect is wonderfully soothing. Depending on how you hear it, it could be the backtrack to a life well-lived, or a swan-song sounding out in those last, desperate moments.

Like all great works of art, Day Will Break More Than Once is an enduring performance that is felt long after it ends. Because once you remove the headset and begin the slow, groggy process of acclimatising yourself to the world around you, there are two ways of proceeding: Will you continue along the same course, or will you begin anew?

THE DINNER TABLE

Viewing The Dinner Table can feel a lot like attending a dinner party in real life. In fact, it’s a work that’s closer to our lived realities than one might expect.

Conceptualised by Sue Pam-Grant and directed by Sylvaine Strike, The Dinner Table situates its audience smack bang in the centre of a formal dinner party. In the centre of the table, to be exact. In this way, the work can feel somewhat overwhelming, or it can make one feel like a fly on the wall, bearing witness to a private function, hidden in plain sight.

Everyone is dressed well, and an attentive waiter is topping up champagne flutes as he goes along. The meal has yet to commence and it is in these small, telling moments filled with the clearing of throats, sideways glances, and awkward silences that you begin to measure up those in attendance.

Some are coupled off, while others have come alone. An old white man is somewhat taken aback by a same-sex relationship while his own wife, the host, seems to be flirting on-and-off with another man. Further tensions announce themselves through class and language – private conversations and heated debates about cutlery start up all around you, but are never finished. Someone at the table is pregnant and this, possibly, is the only thing that seems to bring everyone together. A baby is on the way – there is hope or, at the very least, something to look forward to.

Amidst the outbursts, the venomous looks, the snickering and muffled laughter, the waiter (who we find out is named Nelson) is trying his absolute best to get a table filled with people of different races, classes, ideologies, and languages to get along. If only until the night is through.

EMPTY NOTE

There’s something to be said about an audience’s seemingly insatiable appetite for performance. Theatre’s and gallery spaces are where we’ll typically go to get our fill, but we wouldn’t, for example, show up at an artist’s house and demand a performance from them right there in the living room, would we?

In Empty Note, the collaborative 360 VR film by Janus Fouché and Nhlanhla Mahlangu, the audience is situated inside the very mind of the artist and, by virtue of being there, demands a story. The artist is Mahlangu and although he doesn’t seem very pleased by the intrusion, he does what is expected of him as a storyteller. He begins to tell stories – using the voice and body – of history, struggle, identity and more. With each story, Mahlangu multiplies. Ghostly, ethereal versions of him move around the space, lingering long after they have finished telling their story. Items of clothing also begin to occupy the room around you until the space is full, almost overwhelmingly so, with language, movement, and presence.

Ultimately, Empty Note is a work that is as much about the nature of performance and narrative as it is about the enduring power of stories and their way of helping us live on, throughout it all. Finally, it is a work that could serve as a gentle reminder: Stories – those rich and complex things we build up and leave behind – do not begin and end in books, on stages, or even in the outside world, whether we want them to or not.

INHUMAN THEATRE

What will the world look like once the very last of us has departed from it? What will remain, and how will it be documented? Inhuman Theatre, Jonah Sack’s 360 VR film, explores all of this and more in a striking display of immersive art.

Viewing Inhuman Theatre allows you, for a few fleeting minutes, to become the last person on earth and to glimpse upon what remains there. Through the use of virtual reality technologies and Sack’s own penchant for considered and affective animation and drawing, a world inhabited by the presence of dust, burning, falling, and rain is put forward.

Rather than taking the form of a burned-out and dystopic landscape, what remains is a thing of beauty. Light streams down in magnificent columns, highlighting motes of dust, or the soft plumes of smoke from a fire smouldering nearby. Somewhere, it is raining, while elsewhere great, concrete structures are collapsing – their slow rumble the last echoes of our existence – with only the surrounding landscape (and you, the silent viewer) bearing witness to their fall.

Throughout it all, new things are being drawn and etched into the surrounding landscape before fading away and being drawn anew. Finally, a curious process of stepping in and out of time and reality begins to play itself out once you set the headset down and venture through Sack’s installation, Four Movements To Outlast Us: Dust, Rain, Falling, Fire, situated a floor above. Comprised of projections, drawings, and small sculptural works, the installation serves as another version of the world you just inhabited, only far more populated with humans. Still, there is dust and rain, and things continue to burn and fall just as they always have, and likely always will.

FOUR MOVEMENTS TO OUTLAST US: DUST, RAIN, FALLING, FIRE

CONCEPT AND INSTALLATION BY | Jonah Sack
wood, hardboard, cardboard, ink, acrylic, paper, found slides, digital animation, slide projectors, digital projectors.
Special thanks to: Janus Fouché, Josh Ginsburg and the A4 Arts Foundation

AUGMENTED REALITY ARTWORKS
William Kentridge, Mbongeni Fakudze Artist, Fatima Tayob Moosa, Lady Skollie, Marcus Neustetter artist, Mmabatho Grace Mokalapa, io makandal, Cow Mash, Blessing Ngobeni and Ana Pather

WRITER | David Mann

SEASON 5 CURATORS | Phala Ookeditse Phala and David Thatanelo April
FOUNDER | William Kentridge
ANIMATEUR FOR THE CENTRE | Bronwyn Lace
PROJECT MANAGERS | TMWR, Ann Roberts and Brooklyn J. Pakathi
CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
PRODUCTION DESIGNER | Shruthi Nair
CREATIVE TECHNOLOGISTS | EDEN, New Reality, Ambrosia XR, Left Post Productions
SOUND | SoulFire Studios
APPLICATION DESIGNED AND PROGRAMMED BY | Brent Robinson
STAGE MANAGEMENT | Hayleigh Evans and PopArt Productions