Ntando Cele analyses fast fashion and colonialism with theatrical performance and music.
In the idiosyncratic Wasted Land, Ntando Cele highlights Western ideas about sustainability and ecology. Cele is from South Africa and lives in Bern. She uses theatre, music and pop culture to expose hidden forms of racism and stereotyping. In Wasted Land she explores fast fashion as an expression of contemporary colonialism. Fast fashion of this kind connects the consumerism of the West to developing countries, who produce at low cost and get back a waste mountain of discarded clothing in exchange.
Wasted Landis a melodic landscape somewhere in between theatrical performance, video projection and poetic concert. A post-apocalyptic satire inspired by decolonial protest songs that Cele reinterprets together with the Egyptian musician and composer Wael Sami Elkholy and three singers.
Wasted Land is accompanied by a small installation on waste colonialism. The installation at the Expo Square bridges the fiction of the play with the urgency of reality.