ABOUT
Artist’s Statement
“Gavin Krastin has always straddled theatre and dance with work that is full of beauty, but not always easy to stomach.” – City Press
“There’s nothing polite or subtle about performance artist Gavin Krastin‘s work. His interests lie in the permeability and politics of boundaries – of the body and how it is represented, of theatre conventions, gender, and space – within the larger South African socio-political context. Rather than using performance as a means of escaping the politics of the body, Gavin uses it as a way to occupy and subvert, and challenge notions of presentation and representation.” – Indie Channel
Gavin Krastin is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and arts educator working predominantly in live art performance with an interest in the body’s representation in alternative and layered spaces. His work 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.
Favouring intimate audience experiences and a proclivity for immersive and site-based performances, he advocates for the extension of the performance frame and a migration towards unconventional spaces. In doing so the parameters of spectatorship are extended, positioning the audience as agents, co-conspirators and participants in live art practices.
For Gavin what live art and performance art surfaces and provokes is the revolutionary and resistant potential of contemporary body-based live art and performance practices where real live actions are able to unveil the many defeats of the body perpetrated by the traumas of history and representation. This unveiling constitutes the power of performance and live art; a minor revolt where local bodies can influence global shifts and connections in a manner that challenges the weary/wary status quo and our complicity within it.
He holds a Master of Arts Degree in choreography and performance and an undergraduate degree in drama and art history and visual cultures. The dove-tailing of these various influences is fundamental to his work as he aims to interrogate space, choreograph the visual and augment the body-silhouette.
Gavin currently operates from nomadic creative spaces between Cape Town and Grahamstown and presents work at numerous festivals and platforms in South Africa and internationally. When in Cape Town he lectures at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies and curates a festival of durational performances by young artists called “Arcade”. When in Grahamstown he lectures at Rhodes University Department of Drama and works with its affiliated project, the First Physical Theatre Company. As project manager of First Physical Theatre Company he is responsible for the design and implementation of the company’s activities, such as performance production, education, community engagement and embodied research.
As an artist, educator, curator, project manager and creative advocate permeating multiple spaces, Gavin nurtures and inspires an inventive and imaginative ethos in the realisation of artistic production, education and curation that feeds the performance industry and our communities.