Meet Market

Saturday 13 February, 11.30am
Monday 15, Wednesday 17 & Friday 19 February at 10.30am & 1.30pm
Tuesday 16 & Thursday 18 February at 12.30pm & 4.30pm
Sat 20 February 12pm
Athina has been selected to take part in an eight week creative residency in Cape Town to collaborate with performance makers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia and the Netherlands to make brand new site-specific works for Infecting the City festival.
A week-long festival of outdoor work taking place all over Cape Town, this year’s Infecting the City takes the theme of Human Rites. Meet Market is a new collaborative work by Athina Vahla, Andrew Buckland, Ibrahim Quraishi and Leroto Shadi made for Church Square.
On the square that was once home to the slave trade, a new rite is exercised. An infected wound is lanced, disinfected and then sealed to allow healing. The procedure is not pretty; it concerns dis-ease. The active disinfecting agent is a radical swing between the opposing dynamics of the violent and the funny, the extraordinary and the mundane… stillness in the midst of vigorous movement. The putrefaction of centuries of denial and shame requires removal. It is painful and yet, strangely, it provokes laughter: both are necessary for complete healing.
Summoning the conflicting memories and the fragmented histories of the people of Cape Town to Church Square, this ritual weaves one story from many truths.
Athina’s participation in Infecting the City festival New Collaborations programme is supported by the British Council and the Consulate of Greece in Cape Town.