Holy Contract

Streaming period: 72-hours
Genres: Art
Duration: 51 minutes
Availability: Worldwide

Urban-Think Tank has always been interested in working at the peripheries, including where art, architecture, and other socially-engaged disciplines meet. We believe that the production of true knowledge lies precisely in the confluence of such interdisciplinary and participatory action. This is evident in our ‘Empower Shack’ housing project in Khayelitsha, but equally in our ‘Mobile Agora’ project in Zürich, where we moved through the city with a set of custom designed performance infrastructure deployed to support events and gatherings that reclaimed underused urban space. As architects, designers, writers, researchers, and artists, we seek to draw attention to places and thinking that support a more diverse and equitable city.

A hybrid mix of theater and social science can be traced back to the Bauhaus or the Russian Constructivist movement. In the case of Holy Contract, the production represents a symbolic hybrid of what we observed in the townships, as well as our own cultural baggage and inspiration. We are open about our lack of understanding of the full reality of life in Khayelitsha — indeed this tension became part of a collaborative creative process. At the same time, we forced ourselves to confront a number of questions. Who does the play represent? What position does it take on the city? How does it engage with different social actors? And what does it teach us about the heterogeneous city?