Marked by his upbringing in South African apartheid, which lent him an understanding of the disruptive force and threat that a body has when occupying a space where it’s not ‘supposed’ to be, performance and visual artist Steven Cohen has orchestrated radical interventions in the public realm, galleries, and theatres for more than four decades. In this conversation with interdisciplinary artist and performance researcher donna Kukama, the artists reflect on Cohen’s trajectory as an unapprehended outlaw with a practice that persistently perpetuates the act of trespassing, stretching the conventions of what is allowed in public space, and expanding on the lineages of performance art in the context of South Africa and beyond.

Uninvited, unexpected, unwelcome, being born queer is how Cohen describes how he came to be a trespasser. When one senses their entry into a world not made for them is ‘unauthorized’, survival becomes synonymous with success—and everything else a triumph. Departing from the territories—both mental and somatic—within himself which he perceives he does not have permission to enter, Cohen makes work that does not constitute violation but rather re-vindication. Without asking permission, his performances firstly challenge the artist himself, just as means to do to others.

donna Kukama’s artistic practice is deliberately undisciplined, presenting institutions, monuments, gestures of protest, rumours, and fleeting moments that are as real as they are fictitious. Weaving major with minor aspects of histories, Kukama introduces fragile and brief instances of ‘strangeness’ within sociopolitical settings, occupying sites and territories to incite the remembrance of less-told stories.

The title of the talk is kindly provided by an astute unhoused man of Cape Town, who once exclaimed the phrase upon looking at Cohen. This commentary revealing class, race, and gender disparities, politics both personal and social, and infused humour and irreverence, mirrors well the blurring Cohen archives in his public performance, costumes, and ethics. The subtitle Sphincterography, a neologism pointing to the journeying within a legislated body, is, in the artist’s own words, the story of his life.