Video Poetry as Re-Creation and Remediation of Oral Performance in the Work of Kgafela oa Magogodi and Chirikure Chirikure

This article introduces two examples of mediatized poetry to analyze the interrelation of live performance, video, and (digital) technology: i MIKE what i LIKE, a spoken word film by South African poet Kgafela oa Magogodi and filmmaker Jyoti Mistry, and Directions, a poem by Zimbabwean poet Chirikure Chirikure remediated as a video installation by Austrian artist Wolfgang Spahn. By relying on Bolter and Grusin's theory on remediation and Philip Auslander's concept of mediatized performances, the article aims to shed light on how media influence the content and form of poetry as well as the space of performance, and may even affect the performer's use of body and voice. The question will be discussed as to what extent artistic collaboration may lead to reinterpretation and re-creation of the original poem.