What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? The latest issue of Chimurenga provides alternatives to prevailing educational pedagogy. Through fiction, essays, interviews, poetry, photography and art, contributors examine and redefine rigid notions of essential knowledge.
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it. All entries are regrouped under subjects such as body parts, language, grace, worship and news (from the other side), numbers, parents, police and many more. Through a classification system that is both linear and thematic, the textbook offers multiple entry points into a curriculum that focuses on the un-teachable and values un-learning as much as it’s opposite.
Inside: Amiri Baraka waxes poetic on the theoretics of Be-Bop; Coco Fusco flips the CIA’s teaching manual for female torturers; Karen Press and Steve Coleman instruct in folk-dancing; Dambudzo Marechera proposes a “guide to the earth”; Dominique Malaquais designs the museum we won’t build; through self-portraits Phillip Tabane and Johnny Dyani offer method to the Skanga (black music family); and Winston Mankunku refuses to teach.
Other contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Akin Adesokan, Isoje Chou, Sean O’Toole, Pradid Krishen, E.C. Osundu, Salim Washington, Sefi Atta, Ed Pavlic, Neo Muyanga, Henri-Michel Yere, Medu Arts Ensemble, Aryan Kaganof, Khulile Nxumalo and Walter Mosley amongst others. Cover by Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani.
Lovedale Heirloom Collection 2
A beautiful collection of historically significant titles from the Lovedale Press archives.
This box set comes in a Lovedale Press tote bag - the second edition designed by BODYLAND merged the press’ vintage logo and a text that is believed to be the first text published in the isiXhosa language, marking the occasion of the language moving from oral graphic to textual . VOW and BODYLAND seek to continue this legacy from text to embodied artist production.
VOW aims to prevent the doors of Lovedale Press from closure and to ensure that the legacy of the press continues through artistic embodiment . The Lovedale Heirloom Collection was started as a way of bringing books that have been out of print to the wider readership . Along with this VOW established BODYLAND - a residency and mentorship programme in the Tyume Valley, the site of the first isiXhosa printed word in 2024.
Titles in the box set include:
- IQWILI LESIZWE by S.C. Mbelu
- ABAZIBALULEYO NOKUBHALIWEYO NGESINTU by R.H.W. Shepherd
- IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ME – VOICES FROM SOMAFCO
- ITHEMBA LIYAPHILISA by Witness K. Tamsanqa
- UPHUMEZA by A.M. Dikana
- UMZALI WOLAHLEKO by Guybon B. Sinxo