Performance
Gavin Krastin works in live art performance, scenography and performance education. His interests lie in the permeability and politics of boundaries and their transgressions within the larger South African socio-political and spatial context, using live performance as means to occupy, subvert and challenge notions of presentation and representation. Krastin is inspired by his immediate South African environment and the histories and performative identities embedded in its shifting post-colonial and de-colonial socio-political climate. The social underpinnings and philosophies of space intrigue him and inspire a questioning and mythologizing of operational systems, behaviours, proximities and the politics of boundary-crossings and transgressions in his work.
Curator at work (2024)
A live public intervention critically staging fundraising as live art curatorial labour, performed daily at the National Arts Festival, Makhanda, South Africa.
To the moon with a piece of paper (2023)
A three-channel performance-for-video triptych exploring paper’s speculative power, presented at Performance Studies International conference, Johannesburg, South Africa.
12 Labours (2022)
A multimodal durational interdisciplinary live and video performance reframing heroism as queer service, shown in South Africa, Greece, Brazil.
Labouring Gratitude (2022)
An intimate live performance, featuring the artist’s mother, reflecting on familial care and intergenerational change, performed at the Live Art Festival, Cape Town, South Africa.
Swell (2021)
An immersive three-channel video installation imagining post-human landscapes through inflatable scenography, shown at the National Arts Festival, Makhanda, South Africa.
Yet to be determined (2018)
A ritualised participatory live solo performance meditating on change, pain and presence, performed in Makhanda and Cape Town, South Africa.
Nil (2017)
An episodic live performance interrogating whiteness, erasure and national identity, presented at the National Arts Festival, Makhanda, South Africa.
Collapsing into representation (2017)
A short live vignette critiquing race, representation and patriotism, performed at New Dance Lab, Cape Town, South Africa.
Pig Headed (2016)
A live art solo performance confronting censorship and political power, performed in Chicago, Cape Town, Makhanda and various cities in the Netherlands.
On seeing red and other fantasies (2015)
An immersive live performance conjuring surreal escape fantasies amidst political rage, performed in Makhanda, Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.
Trophy (2015)
An ensemble live performance deconstructing colonial monuments and failed ambition, performed at Cape Town Fringe Festival, South Africa.
#omnomnom (2014)
A gluttonous immersive, participatory dining performance interrogating commemoration and ritual, staged in a deconsecrated religious space as a celebratory event. Performed at the National Arts Festival, Makhanda, South Africa.
Epoxy (2014)
A live art performance exploring restricted bodily movement, grief and transformation at Visualeyez Festival at Latitude 53 in Canada.
I Live Here (2014)
An unseen site-based conceptual intervention at the Unnoticed Art Festival infiltrating IKEA (in Dordrecht, Netherlands) to reflect on invisibility, presence and consumerism.
Rough Musick (2013)
An exhausting ritual performance confronting colonial shame and identity through ethnographic grotesquery at festivals across South Africa, UK and Brazil.
Discharge (2012)
A collaborative ensemble and immersive site-specific performance at the National Arts Festival, Makhanda, South Africa, exploring apocalypse, nihilism and human reconstitution in a real military base.
The Misses/Missus (2012)
A three-part public performance intervention disrupting what was then called Grahamstown’s (South Africa) bicentenary, by haunting civic spaces with spectral figures and colonial critique.
Sub (2011)
A collaborative ensemble and immersive site-specific performance installation at the National Arts Festival, Makhanda, South Africa, activating audience agency through dispersed performances in a local school.