In The Atrium of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, a crowd is gathered beneath a criss-crossing canopy of danger tape and dangling signs. At the centre of the scene is a grave of bottled water, with a body beneath it. From it, emerges the performer Sello Pesa, and so begins Ngoana oa Noka ea Kubetu.

Driven by the lamenting keys of the harmonium, and the chant-like, poetic recitations of Pesa, Ngoana oa Noka ea Kubetu is conversation with water in the form of a 20-minute-long installation of song, movement, and poetic ritual.

Ngoana oa Noka ea Kubetu is part of Nokeng Ya Kubetu, a series of performative inquiries, snippets and fragments interrogating a reweaving our relationships with the other-than-human world. As co-creators of the work Sello Pesa and Phala Ookeditse Phala explain, “The production tackles the issues of how the bottled water industry transforms water from a public good and fundamental human right into an exclusive commercial as result bottling a human right.”

— David Mann

CREDITS

CONCEPTUALISERS | Sello Pesa & Phala Ookeditse Phala
DIRECTOR | Phala Ookeditse Phala
PERFORMER | Sello Pesa
MUSICIAN | Molatudi Phasumane