S3E03: Qondiswa James

“We are everywhere is a performative explication of some of the theoretical concepts and how they found themselves as public interventions through last year. It was public interventions, not interventions in school. So it was important to be like, my practice is in the public and a public that goes beyond the institution. And it's also a practice of movement, like marching, that asks of the audience to move together from one place to another place.” 

We sit down with cultural worker Qondiswa James to talk through her provocative 2022 performance We are everywhere – comprising a public intervention in Cape Town’s Company’s Garden, a film, and a battle rap by James’s developing alter ego, the tragic clown –  which interrogates invisibility through acts of witnessing, reflection and disruption. James invites us to consider socio-political functions of public art interventions and how these can be mobilised towards transgression.

 

The ICA Podcast is a creation of the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) at the University of Cape Town. Season 3 is hosted by Nkgopoleng Moloi, and produced and edited by Catherine Boulle.

Read more about the ICA and the vision for the podcast: http://www.ica.uct.ac.za/ica/podcast/Season3.