Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
City fills its public spaces with art and performance in celebration of freedom
ACHIEVING social cohesion through art during Freedom Month this April. That’s what the Infecting the City (ITC) project is aiming to do with its annual art festival. The initiative hopes to shake things up in the city, by occupying public spaces and infiltrating the usual routine of Capetonians – through art that deals with issues affecting Cape Town.
The festival, which started at noon on Thursday and ends today, is celebrating its tenth year. “Infecting the city is about the physical expression around creativity of the city and creating something extraordinary in the CBD,” said spokesperson Lindsay McDonald.
Since its inception in 2007, the festival has grown each year, and has created a platform for contemporary arts and performance. “This platform is in response to the important idea of a ‘coming of age’ of the country,” he said.
McDonald said Infecting the City is a statement of collective ownership of the city’s spaces, and has become an institution which people have come to know about and look forward to annually. “We show how much effort goes into keeping these spaces alive. This freedom doesn’t come automatically, we endeavour to keep continued access and collective ownership of our city,” he said.
The festival, backed by the City of Cape Town, follows two routes.
The first art took place at the Company’s Garden, and featured the Indoni Dance, Arts and Leadership Acad- emy’s Ikhaya, while the second – Mandla Mlangeni’s Born to be Black – took place at the Grand Parade on Wednesday and yesterday, respectively.
The second route’s first work took place on Thursday, while the second route starts today at the Open House on Long Street, and features Aphiwe Mpahleni’s Ingcibi.
“The festival showcases extraordinary art works to reclaim the streets of Cape Town and re- imagine civic existence. “This year’s collection of innovative artists represent the breadth of artistic vision capable of morphing city spaces into new dimensions, as they fill with visual and performance art, dance, music, video and more,” McDonald said.
The dynamic festival programme, he said, offers the audience the opportunity to discover new heights. It also explores ways of “reconciling personal and often emotional relation to public, private and internal spaces”.
“Everybody, including the artists, stands to benefit. It’s extremely exciting for artists to work in public spaces – it is risky, stimulating and challenging (for them),” he said.
The organisers aim to create a thought-provoking festival, which connects a diverse audience.
Plans include ways to sustain the festival and turn it into a flagship project for more work to take place in public spaces.
“We want to continue to engage with socio- political and socio-economic landscape of our country – to explore the sensitive and gruesome of our society and find new ways to address our challenges,” McDonald said.
“Infecting the City heralds a new season of possibility in South Africa and illuminates the critical role of performance in our shared history. The creative response to each urban space by this year’s cutting-edge artists, sparks a renewed interest in the power of performance. We invite the public to join us as we conquer Cape Town with the imagination and ignite inspiration through art.”
Artists billed for this year’s festival include: Mandla Mlangeni, Aphiwe Mpahleni, Joan Catala Carrasco (Spain), Moeketsi Koena and Gaby Saranouffi ( Madagascar); Enkidu Khaled ( Iraq- born, Belgium- based), Philiswa Lila, Yazeed Kamaldien, Sita Suzanne, Alex Trapani; Tamryn Pelser, and Mandla Mbothwe.