Zidane, a 21st century portrait
Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parenno’s ambitious 2006 cinematic collaboration, Zidane, a 21st century portrait, follows the French soccer star Zinédine Zidane in real time over the course of a single match, which took place in 2005. Assembled from footage shot by seventeen synchronized cameras placed around the stadium, the film captures Zidane from multiple angles, […]
Keorapetse Kgositsile on Johnny Dyani
Jazz was crucial to South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile‘s most influential idea: his sense of a worldwide African diaspora united by an ear for a certain quintessentially black sound. He wrote of the black aesthetic he pursued and celebrated: “There is nothing like art—in the oppressors sense of art. There is only movement. Force. Creative […]
Staffriding the Frontline – An Essay by Lesego Rampolokeng
May 2008 Down from a couple years beyond 30/30. it was the age of cerebral haemorrhage. The oppression monster was thirsty. YET tabloids were in flight on slaughtered chicken-wings, darkest science witchcraft… Could only track rites of human sacrifice… caught between bullet & gullet, turn to what? It came from that time when the mind […]
Culture And Resistance In South Africa
by Keorapetse Kgositsile Keynote address from the Culture and Resistance Symposium (1982) held in Gaborone, Botswana A few years ago a fellow South African writer asked me to explain to him how people like la Guma and I could be in the Movement but still manage to write novels and poems. And I replied, with […]
Crossing Borders Without Leaving
by Keorapetse Kgositsile Returning home, even though just for a short visit, for the first time in twenty-nine years, as John Oliver Killens might have put it, is a humdinger. Jan Smuts Airport is a seemingly huge, clean, efficient monstrosity. Its size is more shadow than substance, though. No huge nothing about it. Monstrosity, yes. […]