GENDER PERFORMANCE AND MEDIA IN A DIGITAL VISUAL PRESENT

Albert Silindokuhle ‘Ibokwe’ Khoza busies himself with several tasks in the centre of a quadrangle. His indifference to the curious eyes staring at him is impeccably studied. He begins the ceremony by burning impepho (incense used in ancestral ceremonies and rituals). Plumes of smoke dance across the quad and around his body, encasing him within a grey, permeable vitrine. His buxom figure is squeezed into a beaded Dinka corset, but its wire frame does not restrict his self-assured movements as he saunters from one corner to the next. He carries the bowl of impepho in one hand, while lifting the seams of a white tulle skirt in the other, ensuring that he does not trip. Ever so deftly, he begins throwing calcified animal skulls onto the ground. It is difficult to discern which animals these once were, or what their atrophied bones are supposed to signify in this moment. Waiting silently, the audience is left wondering if this is some sort of ancestral divination by a trained sangoma, or an aesthetically stylised performance. Gradually it becomes apparent that these aspects of the artist's persona are mutually co-constitutive. This performance, Take in Take out (to live is to be sick to die is to live), explores several elements of Ibokwe's identity: his blackness, his queerness, his traditional and ethnic heritage. But how might such a moment – so poignantly inflected by intersecting elements – be archived? What are the possibilities, platforms, or avenues through which this moment could be captured for posterity, while sustaining its dynamism and fluidity as live art?

Social networking websites have enabled South African performance artists such as Ibokwe to archive and disseminate their work. These artists use social media platforms to brand and stylise their personae in different ways, thus extending their live art practices into hyperreal and technologically mediated domains. This chapter pays critical attention to the social networking practices and self-representations of black queer South African artists Ibokwe, Umlilo and FAKA on Instagram. A theoretical premise foregrounded in this discussion is that the quotidian consumption and use of this social medium is itself a performance. These artists perform various aspects of their identities online, thus constituting a mode of queer artistic and archival production.