Trans-Architecture, or Moving Monuments, is a performative critique of systems of oppression, used by human, animal and environmental rights activists at sites of memory and monuments celebrating these systems. 

 

The stone architecture becomes a ritual space in which the performing body and mind are reinstated in a fluid state as the trans-capital: the main site of oppression, memory, critique and liberation.

 

Trans architecture uses a similar ritual framework to rites of passage and spirit possession to safely guide the performer through an intensive, intrusive ritual that generates critical reflection and life-changing decisions, or helps to solve life crises. 

 

Trans-architecture initiates a period of liminality, or fruitful chaos, from which new ideas, perspectives, identities, realities and futures can emerge. Chaos is the prelude to healing.

 

Trans architecture provokes the self-revealing spirit and awakens the new, self-revealing ego.

 

Life is structured by the paradigm of healing.

 

NOTES ON THE SOUNDSCAPE​

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I developed the Trans-Capital soundscape during five improvisation sessions, observing the ritual images.

The aim of the soundscape is to densify every air molecule in the ritual space in order to create a mould around all human bodies. This creates a dense infrastructure of human flesh: an organic social and spatial architecture, disconnected from concrete and iron. This dissociation from an oppressive megastructure that serves capitalism reveals a self-sufficient organic system in which the human body and mind are reinstated as Trans-Capital: the true epicentre of life and change.

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​Production: John K Cobra Institute of Videoartfacts with the support of Calouste Gulbekian Foundation Paris 

Concept, direction, editing and soundscape: Roland Gunst / John K Cobra

Performer: Smangaliso Ngwenya 

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This research is also inspired by the works of Prof Koenraad Stroeken and Prof Johan Lagea from the University of Ghent.