FAKA (art collective)

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FAKA is an art collective founded in 2015 by Fela Gucci and Desire Marea in Johannesburg , which produces performances on the background of queerness in Africa. They became known in Germany through their appearance at the 9th Berlin Biennale in 2016. They are known worldwide through videos on YouTube and their EPs , as well as through their appearances at festivals . In Johannesburg they organize nightclub events under the title Cunty Power .

Name of the collective

The name of the art collective, FAKA, comes from the Zulu language and literally means "to penetrate and occupy". FAKA would like to see penetration not only understood as a sexual allusion, but also explicitly as an act of penetrating into exclusionist spaces. The name of their website Siyakaka can be freely translated as "We shit on everything", although the original version remains more open with regard to what this "everything" could be and prompts readers and listeners to ask who or what is "shit" on here. becomes. Beyond the website, Siyakaka stands for a feminist ideology in the broadest sense that deals in particular with femininity in a queer context.

Art style

Music is an important part of FAKA's art, but other aesthetic dimensions such as fashion and the performative element itself are part of its art expression, which also extends to the fields of literature, video art and photography.

In a certain way, the artists themselves are part of their own art and their work cannot be classified into the usual categories and definitions. Their music incorporates the rhythmic elements of house and gqom , an electronic dance music style from Africa; she works with loops and chants . The texts of the pieces are considered to be equally witty and witty as well as well thought-out and are often performed in variants of spoken chant . Fela Gucci and Desire Marea name their early experiences with gospel and kwaito as formative influences on their understanding of music.

FAKA is also understood as a cultural movement that goes beyond the appearances of the collective and undermines the cis - hetero perspective that is dominant in South Africa . In all areas of their art, FAKA challenge existing social structures in post-colonial Africa by translating their own experience as queer people from this social context into images and narratives of proudly and joyfully lived non-binary gender identities . With their art they disturb the existing prejudice that queerness is incompatible with African cultural contexts.

Music publications

  • 2016 Bottoms Revenge (EP)
  • 2017 Amaqhawe (EP)

Festival appearances (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CTM Festival: CTM 2018 Phase Out I. Accessed on July 5, 2020 (English).
  2. ↑ FAKA - PUCH Open Air 2019. Accessed July 5, 2020 (American English).
  3. ↑ FAKA on penetrating art spaces and designing a new sound. Retrieved July 5, 2020 .
  4. ↑ FAKA. Retrieved July 5, 2020 .
  5. ↑ FAKA Unleashes Rhythmic GQOM Gem, 'Uyang' Khumbula '. In: Platform. Retrieved May 16, 2017, July 5, 2020 (UK English).
  6. ↑ “Ancestral gqom gospel sounds” - FAKA drop their debut EP 'Bottoms Revenge'. In: Between 10and5. Retrieved July 5, 2020 (en-ZA).
  7. ^ Johannesburg Duo FAKA Are Fighting Queer Erasure With Visibility. Retrieved July 5, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Floretta Boonzaier, Taryn van Niekerk: Decolonial Feminist Community Psychology . Springer, 2019, ISBN 978-3-03020001-5 ( google.de [accessed July 5, 2020]).