performance, conversation
curator, producer
@Steff Stessel
@Bongani Tau
SC
Spirit Capital is based on the Belgian-Congolese colonial history and its subsequent contemporary inheritance. As the artist Roland Gunst aka John K Cobra unpacks this complex and multilayered history, he has created a case study that can be activated and extended through its iterations and applications - the performance, research, and conversation.
Spirit Captial in the Johannesburg iteration links to current debates, academically as well as in the arts where the psychology of space is discussed in conjunction with the historical and contemporary reality of South Africa holding its painful inheritance of colonialism and Apartheid within a democratic society. While its legislative transformation since 1994 has introduced democracy, its spatial reality still speaks of segregation, restrictions, and the glorification of the past through its architecture, city planning, and public monuments.
How a body moves through this built environment, how its design evokes generational trauma, and how this can be reframed within a current reality is part of the performance Spirit Capital as well as the conversation staged for the Johannesburg iteration of Spirit Capital.
Spirit Capital:
“Domination must envelop the subjugated, the colonised, and maintain them in a more or less permanent state of trance, intoxication, and convulsion so that they are incapable of thinking lucidly for themselves. – Achille Mbembe
SPIRIT CAPITAL refers to an object from the Congolese Luba tradition: a wooden headrest, usually with two identical female figures at its base. These objects serve as ‘lieux de mémoire’, or spirit and history containers. They are part of a complex, reflective and historical infrastructure within the Luba community.
Two female, outwardly identical performers move through the theatre space. The stage design evokes the ‘Tropical Bungalow’, a residential structure installed by the colonizer in the Congo and organized according to the principle of ‘zoning’: the strict separation of circulation space for whites (the colonial residents) and blacks (the local domestic staff). The so-called boys, the black youths who worked there, began to copy the behaviour and style of the white ruler and appropriate them in all sorts of ways. This was the start of a rich tradition of ‘Sapologie’ or ‘SAPE’: performative identity practices of Congolese dandies, a counterculture to the spatial, social and racial classification of bodies.
SPIRIT CAPITAL transforms the stage into a ritualized place and invites viewers on a spatial and mental journey in which historically oppressed bodies can cast off the chains of history and free themselves through movements, words, sounds, music and changes to their appearance.”
Spirit Captial in the Johannesburg iteration links to current debates, academically as well as in the arts where the psychology of space is discussed in conjunction with the historical and contemporary reality of South Africa holding its painful inheritance of colonialism and Apartheid within a democratic society. While its legislative transformation since 1994 has introduced democracy, its spatial reality still speaks of segregation, restrictions, and the glorification of the past through its architecture, city planning, and public monuments.
How a body moves through this built environment, how its design evokes generational trauma, and how this can be reframed within a current reality is part of the performance Spirit Capital as well as the conversation staged for the Johannesburg iteration of Spirit Capital.
Spirit Capital:
“Domination must envelop the subjugated, the colonised, and maintain them in a more or less permanent state of trance, intoxication, and convulsion so that they are incapable of thinking lucidly for themselves. – Achille Mbembe
SPIRIT CAPITAL refers to an object from the Congolese Luba tradition: a wooden headrest, usually with two identical female figures at its base. These objects serve as ‘lieux de mémoire’, or spirit and history containers. They are part of a complex, reflective and historical infrastructure within the Luba community.
Two female, outwardly identical performers move through the theatre space. The stage design evokes the ‘Tropical Bungalow’, a residential structure installed by the colonizer in the Congo and organized according to the principle of ‘zoning’: the strict separation of circulation space for whites (the colonial residents) and blacks (the local domestic staff). The so-called boys, the black youths who worked there, began to copy the behaviour and style of the white ruler and appropriate them in all sorts of ways. This was the start of a rich tradition of ‘Sapologie’ or ‘SAPE’: performative identity practices of Congolese dandies, a counterculture to the spatial, social and racial classification of bodies.
SPIRIT CAPITAL transforms the stage into a ritualized place and invites viewers on a spatial and mental journey in which historically oppressed bodies can cast off the chains of history and free themselves through movements, words, sounds, music and changes to their appearance.”
artist
Roland Gunst aka John K Cobra
Spirit Capital trailer
at
The Market Theatre, Johannesburg
conversation with
Nosipho Mngomezulu
heeten bhagat
Gilbert Balinda
Roland Gunst
Samara Ragraven
Slindile Mthembu
with the support of
The Government of Flanders
credits
.Concept & direction: Roland Gunst_John K Cobra
.Choreography: Moya Michael
.Performers: Doris Bokongo Nkumu & Nathalie Bokongo Nkumu (Les Mybalés)
.Text: Roland Gunst_John K Cobra & Esther Severi
.Dramaturgy: Esther Severi
.Soundscape: Laryssa Kim
.Lightdesign: Stef Stessel
.Scenography & costumes: Andrea Kränzlin
.Engineer: Pieter Kint
.Production: John K Cobra Institute of Videoartfacts, Moussem Nomadisch Kunstencentrum
.Co-production: deSingel, Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Kaaitheater, d e t h e a t e r m a k e r.Supported by: de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, VGC en de Algemene Afvaardiging van de Vlaamse Regering in zuidelijk Afrika, Sabam
.Thanks to: Arsenaal/Lazarus, Latitudes Art Fair, The Centre for the Less Good Idea, The Market Theatere
Roland Gunst aka John K Cobra
Spirit Capital trailer
at
The Market Theatre, Johannesburg
conversation with
Nosipho Mngomezulu
heeten bhagat
Gilbert Balinda
Roland Gunst
Samara Ragraven
Slindile Mthembu
with the support of
The Government of Flanders
credits
.Concept & direction: Roland Gunst_John K Cobra
.Choreography: Moya Michael
.Performers: Doris Bokongo Nkumu & Nathalie Bokongo Nkumu (Les Mybalés)
.Text: Roland Gunst_John K Cobra & Esther Severi
.Dramaturgy: Esther Severi
.Soundscape: Laryssa Kim
.Lightdesign: Stef Stessel
.Scenography & costumes: Andrea Kränzlin
.Engineer: Pieter Kint
.Production: John K Cobra Institute of Videoartfacts, Moussem Nomadisch Kunstencentrum
.Co-production: deSingel, Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Kaaitheater, d e t h e a t e r m a k e r.Supported by: de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, VGC en de Algemene Afvaardiging van de Vlaamse Regering in zuidelijk Afrika, Sabam
.Thanks to: Arsenaal/Lazarus, Latitudes Art Fair, The Centre for the Less Good Idea, The Market Theatere