In this performance piece the complexities around tradition, identity and political structures in the core family are explored. My grandparents have always been racist. At some point when I was a young girl I started noticing and understanding their violent way of thinking. The icons of family, protection and love in my life were saying things and acted in ways with which I deeply disagree. And in this uprooting disagreement, our very close relationship dissolved in a sobering coming of age. The violence spoken of here is rarely physical violence, but subtle gestures, private thoughts and backwards remarks that underpin many social, professional and private interactions in Post-Apartheid South Africa. This backwards discriminatory thinking is what, along with other factors, feeds the race division in the "New South Africa".

 

Investigating the often obscure relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, ‘Prieska’ aims to highlight this omnipresent underlying violence experienced when visiting racist Afrikaner relatives. The influences of Afrikaner ideals, as subtly and often openly expressed by my grandparents are, almost obsessively so, unraveled and examined by jumping between forgotten and remembered pasts, current encounters and future intentions and anxieties. In this strange performance of recollection, enactment and magic, hopeful possibility meets the disillusioned child lost to the irreconcilable relationships with living and dead loved ones.

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에스빠스 리좀                                                                                                                                               http://accrhizome.com