anthea moys

Gautrain Construction Site, Braamfontein, 2008

Performance commissioned by Urban Concerns project and Johannesburg Art Gallery

Photographer Alastair McLaughlan, Cameraman: Benji Magowen

Wits Art Gallery collection.

 

Gautrain: Ophelia was a project that explored the symbolic dimensions of the monolithic Gautrain project at a more human level. These sites are transitional spaces of tremendous potential, but also threat. The futile act of digging with my hands, as giant graders and bulldozers remake the landscape around me, was an admission of the helplessness that many South Africans feel in the face of change, but also an attempt to be part of that change. 

 

Included in the video exhibition and publication: The Underground, the Surface and the Edges: A Hauntology of Johannesburg by Leora Farber and Anthea Buys. Also included in Fiona Siegenthaler's Phd thesis: Visualizing the Mental City: The Exploration of Cultural and Subjective Topographies by Contemporary Performance Artists in Johannesburg.