Feast or Famine | CENTRE OUTSIDE THE CENTRE | BROWN UNIVERSITY

Feast or Famine, conceptualised by Bronwyn Lace as an exploration of a pre-existing work in Pepper’s Ghost, finds a new life through the Brown Art Institute residency, and finds profound expansion in the form of a performative catastrophe.
In Feast or Famine, live physical and musical performance interact with video installation in a piece that explores mortality, mourning, fragility, and transformation.
On the screen is manipulated footage taken in the basement of the Natural History Museum in Vienna in 2016. It is the carcass of an owl, slowly being picked clean by a community of beetles, its bones sighing and shifting as the insects work away. Then there is the human presence (Teresa Phuti Mojela & Brian Mertes) who, lying on the floor beneath the Pepper’s Ghost, and moving behind the glass, superimpose themselves on the footage.
In this way, she merges with the scene, writhes with the bones of the creature, bristles with the many beetles. It is a deeply affecting scene, and one made all the more compelling by the use of a pre-recorded vocal chorus - a kind of elegy for the scene we see taking place before us. But the vocals also serve as a salve for the scene.
They lend an enduring humanity to the performance, an ebb and flow of warm words and whispers spoken over bodies that are picked apart and pieced back together again.
CONCEPTUALISER & EDITOR | Bronwyn Lace
PERFORMERS | Teresa Phuti Mojela & Brian Mertes
MUSICAL COMPOSERS & PERFORMERS | Nhlanhla Mahlangu & Xolisile Bongwana
VIDEO FOOTAGE | Victor Neustetter
Thanks to The Natural History Museum,Vienna
FOUNDER OF THE CENTRE | William Kentridge
CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR | Bronwyn Lace
MOMENTEUR-THE SO ACADEMY | Athena Mazarakis
HOLDER & ASSOC. PRODUCER | Dimakatso Motholo
DIRECTOR CINEMATOGRAPHY & EDITOR | Noah Cohen
EDITOR & COMPOSITOR | Octavia Sonyane
SOUND DESIGNER & ENGINEER | Zain Vally
ASSISTANT SOUND ENGINEER | Jack Garrett
WRITER & COMMUNICATIONS | David Mann
PROP & COSTUME DESIGNER | Nthabiseng Malaka
COSTUME DESIGNER ASSISTANT | Iris Courchaine
PRODUCTION MANAGER | Brendon Boyd
STAGE MANAGER | Meghan Williams
LIGHTING TECHNICIANS | Audrey Visscher,
Fred Young, Gabriel Goldman, Chris Griffin &
Alexander Foley
ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE | Bukhosibakhe Khoza
PRODUCED BY | THE OFFICE performing arts + film
Rachel Chanoff, Laurie Cearley, Bruna d’Avila, Elly Obeney
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Brown Arts Institute at Brown University
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