There is a double bind to writing about performance art, or live art as it is also called. Generally speaking, live art involves combinations of the body, time and space.

It is an ephemeral artistic mode, in which site-specificity and duration are part of its meaning. What, then, does distilling live art into words and images do?

Dr Kim Gurney, Senior Researcher at CHR, notes this dilemma in a recently published book review of Jay Pather’s edited volume, ‘Restless Infections – Public Art and a Transforming City’ (Wits University Press, 2025). In ‘Catching Lightning in a Bottle’, Gurney suggests that one of the reasons to write about live art is to valorise overlooked everyday urban practices. As one of the contributing authors, Sarah Nuttall, observed at the book’s Cape Town launch, “it builds an archive that is otherwise invisible”.

The book is a collection of essays drawing upon 15 years of programming at the University of Cape Town’s Institute for Creative Arts, best known for an annual festival ‘Infecting the City’. Free to the public, the festival’s ambulatory format through central Cape Town follows loosely themed routes. For Pather, this publication was also a goodbye salute as he handed over the reins of the ICA to a colleague, Nomusa Makhubu.

The book’s content is divided into three thematic sections – the city; multiple publics; & land, home and belonging. It is published by Wits University Press (2025).