Season 6 was co-curated by architect and urban designer Thiresh Govender and dancer and choreographer Sello Pesa of Ntsoana ContemporaryTheatre, alongside founder William Kentridge and co-animateurs Bronwyn Lace and Phala Ookeditse Phala - Theatre.
See the full film here: https://vimeo.com/378545704
Lorin Sookool's durational "Sitting Still & Chocolate Cake": https://vimeo.com/375640593
Find out more: https://lessgoodidea.com/
NESTING
Hundreds of bristling hives occupy the walls, floors and ceilings of The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s Second Space. The installation, part of The Centre’s 6th Season, is visual artist Usha Seejarim’s mediation on work, domesticity, and the migratory forms of labour we encounter in city and home spaces alike.
It’s the sheer volume of these ‘hives’ that stands out, initially. Comprised of grass broom heads – the kind sold in and around the Johannesburg CBD – Seejarim’s network of vespiaries, apertures, or nests are first encountered on the stairway up to the second floor where they proceed to multiply. Close your eyes and it’s the smell that greets you: dry, prickling grass hinting at vast, open landscapes, but refined or restricted to a tool of domestic labour.
A similar incongruity sits outside in The Centre’s atrium space where a warped, dissected, and elongated broom handle hangs. It is a tool, undoubtedly so, but it has been rendered unusable through the manipulation of its form. At its highest point, arched over and pointing towards the ground, the top of the broom handle is poised like the sting of a scorpion’s tail – a warning, or perhaps a reminder, of the poisonous possibilities of an overworked tool, or an exploited form or labour.
Seejarim’s work is not without its playfulness and magic, however. While the relationship between pre-existing materials and repurposed tools in her practice is not all that distant, it is the odd and softly provoking experience of viewing these transformed objects that makes for the magic of NESTING.
An example: Two irons sewn together at the helms and welded to the legs of an ironing board. Again, the tool’s purpose is immediately recognisable, but its function has become corrupted or shifted through its new form – a Frankenstein’s monster lurking amidst the household, unable to carry out its chores, or perhaps simply refusing to.
Concept & installation by | Usha Seejarim
grass brooms, steel supports, & wire ties
Assistance by | Busani Msimanga, Zanele Ravhutulu & Jabu Tshuma
Special thanks to | SMAC Gallery
THE TYRANNY OF THE CLOCK
A great deal of how we approach the act of work, and of living, is down to the mechanical or digital workings of the clock. In The Tyranny of the Clock, this influence of time, as well as the resonances of work and silence are explored through a daily sound installation and once-off performance.
Conceptualised and created by Cape Town-based musician, composer, and sound artist Warrick Sony, The Tyranny of the Clock takes its title from the 1944 essay by Canadian anarchist George Woodcock, and is a looped, seven-minute meditation on time, timing, silence, sound, work, control and more.
As an installation, The Tyranny of the Clock presented a macabre and imminent atmosphere that is not without its playfulness. Installed in The Centre’s 2nd space, a series of clocks on the wall present time in various forms and stages – stopping, racing forwards, and even creeping backwards. There is also the lone blackboard serving as a canvas for Sony’s video projection. Here, time explodes, rewinds, oscillates between fast and slow, too late and too soon. Accompanying it all is the taped reading of Woodcock’s essay, as well as Sony’s looped composition – a sonic distillation and manipulation of the labour, activity, and daily conversations that took place during Season 6’s workshops. There is chatter, shouting, and applause. Sounds are far off and distorted, and then they are directly beside you. Bookending this, and in the sharp moments between it all, there is the undeniable presence of silence.
As a performance, Tyranny of the Clock: the ‘Daylight Saving’ version for six speakers and double bass utilised the improvisational talents of musician and researcher Catrin Dowd and presented a stirring collaboration between chopped-up, manipulated sound, and the instinctive, responsive, and reverberating notes of Dowd’s double bass. Viewed in succession, the performance and installation prompt subtle interrogations into work and labour in a time of machines, as well as the possibilities of merging work and play, recordings and improvisations, and sound and silence.
Concept, composition & installation by | Warrick Sony (2019)
Text by | George Woodcock (1944)
Performed by | Warrick Sony & Catrin Dowd (Double Bass)
MY SIZE
The medium of photography is inextricably linked to the phenomenon of the gaze. Similarly, the navigation of Johannesburg’s city spaces is always accompanied by the gaze. For women, this is experienced on an intimate level and it is this navigation of being looked at, being gazed upon or leered at by men in the city, that photographer Angel Khumalo tackles in My Size.
Part performance, part installation, My Size played out in The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s atrium space for three consecutive nights before remaining as a completed installation thereafter. Comprising a series of large-scale prints of a woman’s face and eyes, Khumalo proceeded to build the work by photographing, with a polaroid camera, the eyes of men.
These eyes came from audience members, passers-by, and strangers along Maboneng’s Fox Street and ultimately served to frame, document, and reflect the male gaze in Johannesburg’s inner-city. Striking in their candidness, the photographs belie a certain vulnerability in their subjects, while giving little away in terms of their identities, backgrounds, or intentions. So it goes in the streets of Johannesburg: a series of anonymous flickering eyes, ill-cast stares, and loaded ways of seeing.
My Size not only seeks to highlight and document this gaze, it actively encourages its viewers to engage in a simple, yet empowering act – stare back. It is through this invitation that we can begin to puzzle out the innumerable effects and intentions of a fixed pair of eyes in the city, the home, or even in the audience.
Conceptualised and performed by | Sizakele Angel Khumalo
DUNUSA MARKET
Can we place the inherent performativity of the inner-city market in a broader economic and artistic context? Performer and choreographer Humphrey Maleka’s Dunusa Market employs performance art, installation, and the choreography of the everyday hustle to probe a little deeper.
Situated in and around The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s atrium space, Dunusa Market features an array of clothing laid out on the floors, suspended from the walls, and draped over the arms of Maleka himself as he navigates the space, belting out his familiar sales pitch.
Inspired by the informal stalls and clothing piles common to the city’s sidewalks, Dunusa Market takes its name from the famous inner-city market of Johannesburg. Replicated in a space like The Centre, the piece allows audiences to stop and quietly engage with the scene that Maleka puts forward, providing an opportunity to view its inherent choreography and performative components. Having the clothes readily available for purchase each night provided a further element of participation to the piece, allowing audiences to interact with the performance, thus influencing its shape and outcome.
Finally, Dunusa Market serves as a subtle, yet crucial bridge between the bustling pavement stalls of Fox Street and the porous performance venues, restaurants, and studios of Arts on Main, blurring the boundaries between performance and labour, street and stage.
Conceptualised & performed by | Humphrey Maleka
Dramaturgy by | Sello Pesa
Clothes provided by | Thabiso Modimoeng
THE WALL OF TOOLS INSTALLATION
Part vertical stage, part innovative tool rack, The Wall of Tools is a modular installation conceptualised by co-curator Thiresh Govender for Season 6 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.
Drills, brooms, hammers, items of clothing, tools used to build, to break, or repair, The Wall of Tools serves as a representation of work itself, while also exploring the story of a heaving, working, grinding city as told by its instruments of labour. Situated in The Centre’s main space, the installation is both a visual and functional accompaniment to the Season’s staged works as well as a permanent installation to be viewed and interacted with by audiences throughout the Season.
Viewed in conjunction with the overall works of Season 6, The Wall of Tools becomes something of a thematic touchstone or an abstract cartography of the many ways that work has been played with, picked apart, and re-imagined through the collaborative and imaginative efforts of The Centre’s various artists.
Conceptualised by | Thireshen Govender
Designed by | Thireshen Govender & Kyle Hollis
Production design by | Shruthi Nair
Built by | FODES – Fountain of Design and Electrical Solutions
SITTING STILL AND CHOCOLATE CAKE
A once-off public performance, Sitting Still and Chocolate Cake is a 20-minute offering by choreographer and dancer Lorin Sookool which explores, amongst other things, the intersections of identity, labour, and ambition.
Situated outside the entrance to Maboneng’s Arts on Main, Sitting Still and Chocolate Cake grapples with private or intimate themes on a decidedly public level. With a single balloon fixed to her hair, Sookool takes her place opposite fellow performer Kamogelo Maglaela, and a single chocolate cake replete with thick icing and decorations. Throughout the duration of the performance, Sookool makes her way through the cake, not eating it, but smearing it over her face – a slow and cloying process, startling and even stifling in its affect – before having her hair removed and packaged by Maglaela.
Small collage-like images inspired by the various street-side salons of the city are placed next to Maglaela. Populated by hairstyles and noticeably devoid of faces, the images become a shrewd commentary on identity, self-worth and belonging. The performance also marks a turning-point for Sookool – a departure from the work of commercial modelling and its reliance on particular beauty standards and identity markers.
As such, Sitting Still and Chocolate Cake can be read as both a refusal of the kinds of labour we find ourselves bound to, and a move towards work that is creatively and spiritually fulfilling. The performance also serves as a subtle bridge between public and private forms of labour and performance, highlighting the work that takes place in the city and building on its inherent performative and artistic framework.
Conceptualised by | Lorin Sookool
Performed by | Lorin Sookool & Kamogelo Maglaela
Sound by | Dave Audinary
Writing by | David Mann
Cinematography & Editing by | Noah Cohen
Photography | Zivanai Matangi