Paper short abstract:

The paper revisits research on memory activism to decolonise the public space in postcolonial southern Africa through embodied and performative practices that subvert dominant historical narratives. I explore methodological and epistemological questions relevant to art-based practices of fieldwork.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper revisits two decades of research on contestations of memory activism and efforts to decolonise the public space in postcolonial southern Africa, insisting that social memory is primarily about contested claims to power. My earlier work primarily engaged with the historical staging of former colonial empire and postcolonial nationalist narrative through memorialisation and the built environment. More recently, my work has increasingly shifted to include embodied and performative practices that subvert dominant narratives of nationalism and liberation. Artist-activists have (re-)created spaces, in which the meanings of remembrance as a fiercely contested process of past-based meaning production in the present are subverted through artistic interventions.

In the proposed contribution, I will further explore methodological and epistemological questions relevant to art-based practices of fieldwork: How does multimodal fieldwork practice reflect diverse ways of working across, and outside of disciplinary bounds between art and anthropology? How does the site and the dynamic situation in which the artist and the researcher work shape the co-production of multi-faceted knowledge? Which complex questions are raised for radical art and art-based research practices regarding collaboration and ethics?

I unravel these questions through case studies from South Africa and Namibia, where artists, scholars and activists have come together in intersectional activism such as #RhodesMustFall and #ACurtFarewell. These campaigns to decolonise public space through removing colonial monuments have linked mobilisation for the decolonisation of the public space with enduring and entangled structural violence, highlighting issues of racism, gender and sexuality, as perpetuated by coloniality.