10th Berlin Biennale: We Don’t Need Another Hero

(as part of the installation “Untitled (Of Occult Instability) [Feelings]” by Dineo Seshee Bopape)
KW Institute of Art, Berlin, Germany, 2018

Dineo Seshee Bopape
Untitled (Of Occult Instability)[Feelings], 2016-18
Bricks, light, sounds, videos, water, framed napkin
including works by:

Jabu Arnell, Discoball X, 2018
Lachell Workman, Justice for ________, 2014
Robert Rhee, EEEERRRRGGHHHH and ZOUNDS,2015

“In Untitled (Of Occult Instability)[Feelings](2016-18) Bopape explores thinking through literature and sound. The work draws on South African author Bessie Head's novel A Question of Power (1973), about a woman's descent into insanity, and Nina Simone's 1976 performance of Feelings at the Montreux Jazz Festival as an inquiry into mental instabilities that recall Frantz Fanon's intersections between madness and the colony. The installation comprises numerous components: a borrowed video of Simone's performance, an arrangement of bricks suggesting different states of ruination, makeshift bucket-fountains, and a framed playlist written on a paper napkin. In a gesture of hospitality and collaboration, Bopape has invited three artists--Jabu Arnell, Lachell Workman, and Robert Rhee-to include individual works in her installation.

—Portia Malatjie

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