Sello Pesa & Vaughn Sadie – Inhabitant

Nese Ceren Tosun

Inhabitant by Sello Pesa and Vaughn Sadie is a moving example of how hospitality can be a political act through the means of performative framing. The artists use the space of Dolapdere and its inhabitants as the object of their aesthetic-bodily and social research. The space, during the performance, becomes the site of a confused and shared guilt of spectatorship while at the same time involving everyone in the act of care for each other: the drivers who might get distracted, the performers rolling in the middle of the street, the kids who might take the performers as examples for courageous yet fatale acts all become concerns one feels the need “to do something about”. One does not know what to watch, how/when/or whether to intervene. Where the daily scenery of Dolapdere mixes with the framed-performed acts, the audience deals with his/her own dilemmas of spectatorship, both in real life and as a performance audience. Inhabitant is a strong piece operating in the blue space that affect-aesthetics-political engagement and curiosity occupy, not on separate chairs, yet as a single entity.