Abstract:
In 2008, Johannesburg, and the rest of South Africa, began experiencing an energy crisis, resulting in blackouts
pointing to a colloquialism now known as ‘load shedding’. This occurred during a collaborative performance-based
project at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) School of the Arts. The project called Skin of Memory (2008)
was inspired by Charlotte Delbo’s (1995) dilemma of how to explain the inexplicable; an audacious task of translating
trauma into testimony by conjuring up the metaphor of a snake shedding its old skin. Skin of Memory was a project
that became troublesome, intensified by particular notions of the participants, including myself, performing specific
types of roles. The project was not resolved. This outcome presupposed the on-going process of crises. Trouble in this
case meant locating a methodology of practice and reflection reconfiguring the arrangement of the modes of
masculinity inherent within works created by male artists (such as myself). It is an attempt to subvert the innate
tendencies such as patriarchy, power and authority that might emanate from these works. In reflecting upon these
intersections, I want to reconsider how memory and identity intersect through the metaphor of load shedding. I aim to
represent this argument through a retrospective of the events leading up to the performed presentation at the
colloquium ’Collaborative art activism: A tool for decolonising genders and sexualities in the global South’ in 2014. In
this performed lecture I provoked how a performer is able to load and shed identity. I consider performance strategies
as interventions that subvert marginalised identities in order to understand how the categorisation of identity might
be redeemed and transformed through performance.
