Reimagining decolonial futures: subverting extraction in two South African performances

This paper considers two performances engaging (South) Africa’s mineral and creative wealth as decolonial reimaginings, investigating the ways in which scenography is deployed to embody (colonial) extractive practices and subvert still-prevalent global practices of disposability and extractivism. In Bling!, first performed in Vienna in 2024, South African playwright and performer Buhle Ngaba stages the Cullinan diamond’s journey from a South African mine to Buckingham Palace (and back), embodying the tensions between colonial extraction and digital restitution through the figure of Phatsima, an anthropomorphized diamond whose presence oscillates between the live stage and social media platforms. By contrast, Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness by South African artists Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze, and Amy Louise Wilson presents and engages a speculative archive of reclaimed technologies made from discarded or technologically outdated materials, fashioning a futuristic space that reimagines waste as revolutionary and technologies as relational and restorative. Both works address Africa’s extractive colonial histories using innovative scenography, fashioned both physically in the performance venue, as well as virtually through various forms of digital media. In bringing these two performances in conversation, the authors provide critical contemplations on value and waste (diamonds and discarded techno-minerals), digital performance archives and ephemeral stage production, and the physical and virtual possibilities of scenography to embody extraction and counter-exploitative narratives. Furthermore, through our respective perspectives we reflect on the fragmentary nature of what remains in the archive, highlighting the affective limits and subversive possibilities of digitally documenting scenographic elements.