The Elevator, a durational performance holding water and sitting on water, presents the playful exploration of the body as an adaptive site for probing and reimagining being-together in the present. The passage of time is marked by the melting of ice on the body which particularly evokes the painful deprivations and generative possibilities that paradoxically characterise the impossible and necessary work of cultivating collective futures in the aftermath of environmental and cultural devastation.

Oupa Sibeko is an interdisciplinary artist whose work moves between theatrical, gallery, scholarly and other public contexts, overtly dealing with matter and politics of the body as a site of contested works. Enabling opportunities for affective and relational encounters using ritualistic performance and play, he seeks to critically engage approaches to the body, particularly the black male body, the history of representation and the ways in which certain subjectivities have been (and are) figured, (black) pain, (black) spectacle, (black) negation, and the ethical implications of reimaging and re-enacting pain.