Playing with the Ansteys Kids: More chalk! More chalk!
2012
Watch the video here.
Over the course of about 2 months from April 2012 I began working/playing with the Ansteys Kids as a participating artist in the dis/play art project, curated by Portia Malatjie. I would arrive on Saturday morning and we would start to play. Sometimes it was soccer, sometimes hop skotch and sometimes we tried to mix games together. On different Saturdays I would bring different materials and games for us to play with. Sometimes it was a large red cloth which covered us as we ran around underneath it, chanting as if we were in some playful yet powerful protest. Other times it was chalk that was used for colouring in the square tiles. "More chalk more chalk" became a trancelike chant as we worked to colour in our temporary imaginary rooftop swimming pool. I started documenting these games that we played from above and then edited this into a short animation which was then included in the exhibition at the Goethe Institut.
Before the exhibition opening at Goethe, we (the Ansteys kids and myself) created a performance for the audience which was predominantly made up of the kids' parents and guardians, sisters and brothers. We gave them all chalk and invited them to colour in the rooftop with us with chalk. We all got to work on our knees, colouring in the square tiles. Once a big square had been coloured in we projected the video of our playing together for everyone to see and hear.
