ARCADE 2025
Through the works selected for Arcade2025, an organic theme emerged: the performativity of placemaking through installation, play and ritual. Here, placemaking is about actively inscribing spaces with meaning through performative action. Similarly, installation shapes atmospheres of presence and absence, while play invites improvisation and audience agency, as ritual transforms space through repetition and resonance. These works do not only inhabit sites/sights; they reimagine them, interrogating how bodies negotiate, disrupt and generate meaning within space. Nine artists from across South Africa have come together to offer eight performances, installations and activations, all warranting multiple means of engagement. These artists and artworks strive to question, provoke, reflect, subvert and archive our current realities in order to postulate and consider alternatives.
Audiences were invited to engage with the various performances as they wished within the Arcade at POPArt Performing Arts Centre between 6pm and 10pm on Friday 21 March 2025 (which was Human Rights Day in South Africa).
Artists and artworks included:
Inherited Fatherhood by Nqoba Boyi
Choruscore by Andi Colombo and Naledi Majola
Grain and Fibre: An Archive of Holding by Nokuthula Mabuza
Life Under the Matrix by Brian Montshiwa
Run 359 by Toby iMpendulo kaNgomane
ROU Marlon Pokpas
Red Architecture by Thabile “Terry” Rala-rala
A stormcloud balanced on the chin, glistening like a raspberry mid-licking by Huge Sillytoe
Curated by Gavin Krastin
Performaturgy by Alan Parker
Production Management by Hayleigh Evans
Artist coordination by Kirsten Harris
Research and writing by Adilson De Oliveria
Project management and technical and logistical support by POPArt Performing Arts Centre
Photography by Zivanai Matangi
Videography by Raymond Taiwe and Nkululeko “Nkuli” Nqanu
All-round volunteerism by Ryan Dittmann
Programme and poster design by Rat Western
Special thanks to the National Arts Council of South Africa, the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme, the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, the Network for Embodied Research in Africa and POPArt Performing Arts Centre for supporting Arcade2025.
Essay:
De Oliveira, A. (2025). The Live Arcade: Eulogy at a Baptism.
URL: https://liveartarcade.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/LAA2025_Eulogy-At-A-Baptism_A-De-Oliveira.pdf
