Zef as Performance Art on the Interweb : how Ninja from Die Antwoord performs South African White Masculinities through the Digital Archive

Abstract

The resurgence of the discussion and practice of performance art in the past thirty years has moved towards the digital age and consequently has been met with a new dimension for exploration: YouTube. This paper investigates a possible reconfiguration of the notion of performance art through the digital archive of performances by South African rap-rave group, Die Antwoord. Utilizing the notions of risk, digital liveness (as posited by Phillip Auslander), and a conceptual dimension of ideas, a distinctive characterization of online performance art is posited. The video archive as conduit, a performative channel of expression, is considered as means of interactive meaning-making processes. This is accomplished by looking at Die Antwoord’s digital archive of YouTube videos and its confrontational content, as well as the responses in the comment section from the YouTube community in order to consider how the archive is reconfigured.