The Alternative is at Hand
[hr] Working within the black radical tradition, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney frame a rethink of concepts such as policy and planning, critique and study, debt and credit, and governance and logistics – they invite us to imagine and realise social life otherwise. Stacy Hardy spoke to them about the globalisation and professionalisation of education and the possibility of […]
Beyond Oppression-Liberation-Maendeleo
by Parselelo Kantai It may have been the economist David Ndii who coined the term “the Chlorophyll Zone”. Recalling the tragic fallacy of centralised economic planning in Kenya in the early years of uhuru, Ndii describes how the drafters of that touchstone of economic planning in Kenya, Sessional Paper Number 10 of 1965, divvied up the country into a hierarchy of six […]
Propaganda and Politics tunnel vision history of art activism in South Africa
The important contribution of the Black Consciousness Movement to art activism in 1970s South Africa is without question, yet mainstream art history ignores it. The poet and painter, Lefifi Tladi, reflects in conversation with Percy Mabandu. With his blue beret slanting sideways to hint at his balding head, the painter-poet who became one of the creative dynamos of the […]
The G.Spot Protagonists
by Goddy Leye I am sitting in front of the Cologne cathedral, amazed by this architectural masterpiece. Wondering, like dozens of passers-by, how this was done without modern building materials and tools. At the foot of the cathedral is an artist miming an Egyptian sculpture, perfectly establishing connections with similar mysteries surrounding the construction of the pyramids. He is covered with silver coloured […]
Philatelic Pan Africanism
The Otolith Group, founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002, uses essay films to explore forms of critical futurity and the psychic simultaneity of historical experience. In their new film, In the Year of the Quiet Sun, postage stamps produced in Ghana between 1957 and 1966 are assembled into a political calendar of pan Africanist images. At “After Year Zero”, Eshun discussed […]