Skeletal (in-)visibilities in the city – Rootless: a video sculptural response to the disconnected in Cape Town

Abstract

This article follows the construction and outcome of a series of installations based on an artwork created by the author, a life-size replica of a human skeleton made of tree twigs and branches, which journeyed across central Cape Town on a day tour. The work drew on museums, heritage and cities research, seminars and colloquia at the University of the Western Cape that problematised memorialisation, land, landscape, tourism, human remains, memory, archive and silences in histories in Cape Town. In a collaboration with another artist, Kitty Dörje, the skeleton was performed and set up in installations at Table Mountain National Park, Iziko Museum, Prestwich Street Memorial, Rhodes Memorial and the Table Mountain view from Blouberg beach. Along the journey new connotations began to occur between the skeleton and the places visited, the skeleton performing as a linking device. The resulting short film, Rootless, combined poetry, visuals and music, and was dedicated to ‘the silenced and forgotten people of Cape Town.’ This article traces the experiential process of the construction of the artwork installations and the performance of the skeleton in different environments, as a creative research process. The skeleton artwork constructs visual and conceptual links between spaces and histories in the city. It is argued that this visually disturbs the material silencing and erasure of past and present communities through evoking plural perspectives and histories, thus raising questions on issues of representation in which landscape and artwork become alternative forms of archive.