Interview by Laura Simpson

Lerato Shadi has been commissioned by Iniva for their annual window project which takes place in the glass front of Rivington Place, London. The new work will be presented as a performance for passers by. From 10 to 18 December 2014 Shadi will spend eight days in the window with an opening event happening on 12 December. The drawing then remains until January 2015.

This work will be a reaction or companion to a previous work, entitled Seipone, exhibited in concurrent months in the middle of 2012 in Berlin and Johannesburg where Shadi paced back and forth across a low plinth in the gallery, writing about the past – a biography of the artist; the following day each word, each phrase was read and erased, and so the daily routine continued for the duration of the performance. For the Iniva commission Shadi will be writing about the future and the arrangement will be more circular than linear.

The temporal, quiet, methodical elements of this work and the relationship of the action to the remains, deal directly with one of the core questions within Shadi’s work which considers ‘when is it a performance?’. Aware always in the past (and interestingly also specifically through recent experiences of studying in Germany) that by being involved in her own performances she cannot avoid feeling the responsibility of how to portray the female black body. This idea is a current and lived responsibility with plenty to debate today but also is a prism in which Shadi researches the past and connects into history.

Lerato Shadi: The future of course connects to the content of the previous performance. Seipone was born out of a realisation that I am not in control of the archive of my own history and thinking how to reconcile the separation I felt from what was on record. I was doing this with the clear understanding that whoever is in control of the archive is the one that affects the perception and reality of the future. I aspire to continually subvert this by putting up new images and thinking ‘How does one create oneself’.

This extends to thinking about my own history and creating images within a near future and therefore re-imagining a new future.

Laura Simpson: What do you see as the differences in preparing for and executing the performance Seipone and this new work?

Lerato Shadi: Making this new work will be a very different experience to Seipone where the writing about the past was live and then erased.

With Seipone I had hoped to prompt the audience members to be imagining what I was writing and then also thinking about what they would write.

The past performance was an attempt to erase life, and also to erase scars. It was an attempt to erase something which was very concrete to me, which of course you can’t do. In contrast, the future is not here. The process is, in a way, mimicking what words do, they go out into the world and have a life of their own. Erasing my words after, imagining the future can mean they can have a life in the future.

When I was writing about the past I really tried to focus my mind to not be self-censoring, to not feel inhibited, the absance of a live audience ( save for the camera) was a consious tool toward removing that inhibition.

Within this work there is an element that it is a wish to the future – a prophecy.

This time the audience will be able to read what is written before it is earased.

Laura Simpson: You referred to how sometimes in your performances you need to forget about the audience to be able to properly focus. The great dual quality of predicting the future is tied up in the exertion of optimism and cynicism. In the new work will you feel self-conscious about the content of what you are writing? There are several sorts of writing associated with future scoping, what sort will you write?

Lerato Shadi: I haven’t really been anticipating being self conscious about what to write on this occasion. It will be part manifesto and part flow of consciousness. I will have notes, pointers about how to build this imaginary future. It will be a narrative about the future and that places my process in a space between thinking and writing. It’s something I often dwell on; the different lives you give your thoughts when you speak, write or perform.

Laura Simpson: In the past you have had to do different sorts of preparation for your performances, physical and mental.

Lerato Shadi: I am being realistic. I can’t just turn up and expect to be able to write for eight hours a day. If I am taking the idea of imagining a future seriously I need to research and plan. Every performance has its own set of preparation requrements in terms of physical and mental needs.

Makhuba

Live: 9-16 December 2014 

Installation: until 4 January 2015 

Iniva, Rivington Place’s street facing window