Archival F(r)ictions: A Queer Vocabulary for a Live art Pedagogy

Abstract

In this article, I consider the global tradition of live art as a pedagogical force that draws on queer affect and resonance. Scholars of performance studies have situated live art in the field of experimental and undisciplined art but have not given enough attention to its pedagogical potential. In southern Africa, live art has been theorised as a practice that is leaky, transgressive, and undisciplined, emphasising risk, extremity and endurance. These conditions are partly shaped by the region’s historic struggle for liberation since the twentieth century but cannot be reduced to this period alone. As an African practitioner and scholar of live art with a Namibian and South African experience and training, I draw on various experiences of performing, workshopping, curating and researching live art, offering a queer vocabulary to develop the pedagogical potential of live art. I posit that this is a vocabulary for Archival F(r)ictions, emphasising the centrality of archival work in live artistic pedagogies. These pedagogical frameworks rely on the principles of critical consciousness, embodied learning and democratic participation as put forward by the Brazilian critical pedagogue Paulo Freire. As a result, I show how gestures of hoeing and smuggling can produce joy, pleasure, and irritations as sites of queer epistemic work.