Insurrections II & III – Performance at District 6 Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

 

In 2014 and 2015, I was part of the Insurrections Ensemble performances in Cape Town as a video artist. 

         “Insurrections was conceived and initiated by Ari Sitas, Sumangala Damodaran, Sazi Dlamini and Neo Muyanga in 2011, to open a conversation between the imaginations of Indian and South African writers and musicians.  The idea was to articulate our dismay and rage, and to address the inadequacy of political expression in our times.  This was not to be a glib declaration of commonalities already given but an ongoing method of discovery.  The first two Insurrections were compendia of individual songs; they gave us the exhilaration of knowing that such communication was indeed possible, that it could be deep and full of surprises for all of us.  For the third, the question was how to develop a single, long-form text to address the historical moment we find ourselves in. What emerged is .. something perhaps darkly appropriate for our times.  We realise all too clearly our powerlessness at this moment in history, with the forces of aggressive capitalism and ethnic majoritarian nationalisms in a happy marriage, on a winning streak; and yet we find this knowledge of inadequacy to be something that we instinctively share across our various locations.  In that shared knowledge, which is also memory, there is unexpected power.  And what we share too is a dream of now-forbidden places, of hope that we will not, cannot let go of, even if we wanted to”.

                                                            -   The Insurrections Ensemble

 

 

KHOJ Residency with members of the Insurrections Ensemble  - The Coriolis Effect : Currents between India and Africa

 

Over four weeks Tina Schouw, Priya Sen and Malika Ndlovu from the Insurrections Ensemble, engaged creatively and spontaneously with Delhi-based artists, poets and musicians from the India-SA Insurrections Ensemble, fellow KHOJ residents, and members of the public. This engagement was reflected in the work presented in an exhibition of poems, songs and narrative text, musical compositions, photographs, videos and audio recordings.

           Their sites of intervention through music, word and song, were a pop-up recording studio at KHOJ, and spaces in the city that remain hidden from the gaze of power and surveillance. These included a hip-hop battle in Gurgaon, a collaboration with an MC and rapper, recordings at Jahanpanah forest, and journeying on the lesser known Circular Rail that runs through the centre of Delhi. Being within these spaces amidst colliding as well as individual practices produced a shared body of material that were presented in the studio space. This was accompanied by a live performance with fellow Insurrections Ensemble members - Sumangala Damodaran, Ahsan Ali, and Sabitha Satchi.