Branding Desire

Branding Desire proposes the inauguration of the country’s incoming future president, and brands that future into existence. It entertains the victory of EFF leader Julius Malema and proposes his inauguration on the Marikana massacre site.

The author interrogates his life as event-based and a microcosm of the county’s larger branded reality, as his freedom fighter parents were under threat around the time of his birth, yet his childhood photos reflected only extravagance and joy. The project investigates how one’s surroundings participates in selling branded narratives as true.

The work proposes a flood as the inauguration platform, an event that devastates the land and leaves destruction behind. The inauguration ends only when the flood water dries, as a statement on the length of time it takes for trauma and grief to subside, while its aftermath remains.

True to South African resistance movements, the work proposes local radio broadcasts of the event, one of which is on Marikana’s real local radio station, Madibeng Broadcast Radio.

From Credo Mutwa saying the opening prayer, to Die Antwoord as live performers, the event makes commentary on the Rainbowism-oriented events of the past in an effort to make sense of the future it is projecting.