Sequins, Self & Struggle: Performing and Archiving Sex, Place and Class in Pageant Competitions in Cape Town

该项目是埃克塞特大学戏剧系和玛丽皇后学院、伦敦大学（英国）、开普敦大学档案馆管理中心和非洲研究中心（南非）、布朗大学非洲研究中心（美国）和第6区博物馆之间的合作项目。主要目的是研究、记录和传播大开普敦不同肤色社区举办的春季女王和西开普同性恋小姐选美比赛的档案。春季皇后选美是一项独特的活动，来自南非西开普省服装和纺织业的有色女工每年都要参加比赛，争夺南部非洲服装和纺织工人工会（SACTWU）的“春季皇后”。公众对种族隔离的抵制往往导致种族暴力冲突，1970年代服装业首次出现了以罢工形式对低工资进行报复的行为。正是在这种异议和强烈反弹的气氛中，1978年左右出现了春季女王选美比赛。当地工会设计了选美比赛，作为缓解工人之间日益紧张的一种模式。作为开普敦社交活动的一个亮点，多达30000名支持者参加了在开普敦好望角中心举行的最后一次活动。这个项目将把春季女王作为一个重大文化转变的时刻。随着纺织制造业越来越多地转移到中国，这可能是记录开普敦服装和纺织工人的最后机会。这场盛会见证了种族隔离期间和之后开普敦工厂工人的生活。参赛者居住在边缘化和贫困地区，主要是亚特兰蒂斯和开普平原，他们前往以“白色”为主的市中心参加选美比赛。这些表演活动的重要人物是“moffie”，一个奇怪的有色男性，通常是变性人，他们传统上编排和设计了选美比赛，但他们被禁止参加比赛。西开普同性恋小姐是由春季皇后选美和南非新宪法发展而来的，新宪法是世界上第一部保护性少数群体的宪法，是一个平台，让非白人同性恋者在安全的环境中表演，而不受剥削。这个项目将调查这些选美比赛的意义和他们产生的表演。通过创建一个替代种族隔离时代的档案，使这些社区边缘化，我们将参与更广泛的民主实践，重新想象南非，首先由真相与和解委员会发起。我们将考虑：选美表演造成的代表类别的混乱;以“女王”的形象表现解放和自决;少数群体社区对性别、美和替代性行为的建构;以及开普敦继续存在的空间隔离。该项目旨在通过跨学科的透镜，为边缘化生活提供一个独特的视角;专注于视觉性，表演性和口头性，它将为以前否认的叙述提供一个空间，这不仅有利于这些社区，而且有利于后种族隔离的南非和整个后殖民的非洲。合作研讨会将汇集来自表演研究，视觉文化，文化地理，性别和酷儿研究，数字人文和非洲研究的学者。深入的档案研究，从公共和私人来源收集新的和“普通”的档案材料，口述历史和访谈将作为一个公共在线档案。传播形式将有广泛的受众。这些将包括期刊文章，跨学科的学术研讨会，表演和策划研讨会的选美参与者，纪录片和数字档案。

This project is a collaboration among the Departments of Drama at the University of Exeter and Queen Mary, University of London (UK), The Centre for Curating the Archive and the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), Africana Studies at Brown University (US) and the District 6 Museum. The primary aims are to research, document and disseminate archives of the Spring Queen and Miss Gay Western Cape pageants performed by disparate coloured communities in greater Cape Town. The Spring Queen pageant is a unique event where coloured female factory workers from the clothing and textile industry in the Western Cape of South Africa compete each year to be crowned "spring queen" of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Worker's Union (SACTWU). Public resistance to apartheid often resulted in violent racial conflict and for the first time in the garment industry in the 1970s there were acts of retaliation to low wages in the form of strikes. It is within this climate of dissent and harsh backlashes that the Spring Queen pageant emerged around 1978. Local trade unions devised the pageant as a mode of alleviating rising tensions amongst workers. A highlight on the Cape-Town social calendar, up to 30000 supporters attend the final event at the Good Hope Centre in Cape Town. This project will situate the Spring Queen as a moment of significant cultural shift. As textile manufacturing increasingly moves to China, this is perhaps the last opportunity to document garment and textile workers in Cape Town. The pageant bears testimony to the lives of Cape factory workers both during and after apartheid. The contestants, who live in the marginalised and impoverished areas, primarily in Atlantis and the Cape Flats, travel into the predominantly "white" city centre for the pageant. Important to these performance events is the figure of the "moffie", a queer coloured male, often a transsexual, who has traditionally choreographed and designed the pageants, but who is forbidden from competing in them. Miss Gay Western Cape, which grew out of the Spring Queen pageant and the new South African constitution that was the first in the world to include protection for sexual minorities, is a platform for queer non-white persons to perform in a secure environment without exploitation. This project will investigate the significance of these pageants and the performances they engender. By creating an alternative to apartheid-era archives that marginalized these communities, we will engage in the wider democratic practice of reimagining South Africa, first initiated by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. We will consider: the disruption of categories of representation engendered by performance in the pageants; the performance of emancipation and self-determination in the figure of the "queen"; constructions of gender, beauty and alternative sexuality in minority communities; and the continued segregation of space in Cape Town. The project aims to provide a unique perspective on marginalised lives, through an interdisciplinary lens; focusing on visuality, performativity and orality, it will offer a space for previously disavowed narratives to be articulated, which will not only be of benefit to these communities, but to post-apartheid South Africa and postcolonial Africa at large. Collaborative workshops will bring together scholars from performance studies, visual culture, cultural geography, gender and queer studies, digital humanities and African studies. In-depth archival research, the gathering of new and 'ordinary' archival material from public and private sources, oral histories and interviews will be made available as a public online archive. The forms of dissemination will have an extensive audience. These will include journal articles, interdisciplinary academic workshops, performance and curation workshops for pageant participants, a documentary and a digital archive.