MACHINE FOR LIVING (2014) RETURN TO PERFORMANCE MENU

‘If you live in the house, the house will stand.’
– Russian Proverb

‘A house divided cannot stand.’
– American Proverb

MACHINE FOR LIVING was a site-specific, collaborative installation and interactive, promenade performance.  Conceptualised and initiated by Rat Western, it was co-created with Wesley Deintje, Chiro Nott, Ivy Kulundu, Pumelela Nqelenga, Samantha Munro and Sikhumbuzo Makandula. This hive mind operated under the narrative of a Show House and was part performance, part exhibition. The audience was invited as fictional, prospective buyers who were to inspect a ‘house for sale’.

Drawing inspiration from the famous quote by modernist architect Le Corbusier (who has been critiqued for considering the efficient design of houses over their emotional function as homes), this work sort to investigate the relationship between the formalist strcuture of the nation state and political ideology and the organic lives of ordinary people.  In the 20th year of democracy, the participating artists (all Grahamstown-based) held up a mirror to the idea of living and working communally. Sometimes disjunct, sometimes strangely complementary, this combination of creative impulses was a synecdochal look at homes, nationhood and the individual psyche of any one member of the nation’s variously integrated communities.

Performed at the National Arts Festival 2014, MACHINE FOR LIVING was awarded a Standard Bank Ovation Award for artistic innovation,  excellence, the exploration of new performance styles and the courage to start new conversations in the arts.

MACHINE FOR LIVING was supported with a grant from the Eastern Cape Provincial Arts & Culture Council. (ECPACC).