The Chronic is a one-time only edition of Chimurenga which takes the form of a speculative newspaper. Back-dated to the 18-24 May 2008 – the first week of the xenophobic violence across South Africa three years ago, the Chimurenga Chronicle is an opportunity to provide the depth of reporting and analysis that should have appeared during this period. The newspaper also looks outward – covering events, scenes and situations from around the world during this period. And it launched today!
It was Sun Ra who said it a long time ago: “Equation wise, the first thing to do is consider internal linktime as officially ended… we’ll work on the other side of time… we’ll bring them here through either isotope, internal linkteleportation, transmolecularzation… ” . The time was 1974 and Space was The Place. A prolific jazz composer, bandleader, philosopher, afronaut and historian, Ra was ahead of his time.
Almost four decades later, it is increasing clear that time, once thought continuous, is actually marked by radical disjunctions and overlapping time-spaces. What’s more, the tools we have at our disposal, particularly in the area of knowledge production, do not help us much to grasp that which is emerging.
What we need now is a Time Machine! A device that will allow us to work “on the other side of time”, to discover possibilities for new ways thinking through the “having been and yet to come.”
The Chimurenga Chronicle such a machine, a once-off edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present. Both a bold art project and a hugely ambitious publishing venture, the Chimurenga Chronicle comprises of a 96-page multi-section broadsheet, the stand-alone 56 page Chronic Life Magazine and a self-contained 96 page Chronic Book Review Magazine.
By imagining the newspaper as a low-tech time travel machine, our aim is not only to reanimate history, to ask what could have been done – but also to provide a space from which to re-engage the present and re-dream the future.
The print edition includes a 128-page multi-section broadsheet, packaged with 40 page Chronic Life Magazine and the 96 page Chronic Book Review Magazine.
An intervention into the newspaper as a vehicle of knowledge production and dissemination, it seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream representations of history, on the one hand filling the gap in the historical coverage of this event, whilst at the same time reopening it. The objective is not to revisit the past to bring about closure, but rather to provoke and challenge our perception
Featuring contributions from Mike Abrahams, Olumide Abimbola, Toyin Akinosho, Paula Akugizibwe, Sello Alcock, Max Annas, Gabriela Carrilho Aragao, Ayi Kwei Armah, Sophia Azeb, Robert Berold, Marlon Bishop, Louis Chude-Sokei, Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Imraan Coovadia, Goran Dahlberg, Kwame Dawes, Jacob Dlamini, Manu Herbstein, Sean Jacobs, Neelika Jayawardene, Billy Kahora, Parsalelo Kantai, Bill Kouèlany, Jackie Lebo, Miles Marshall Lewis, Percy Mabandu, Munyaradzi Makoni, Dominique Malaquais, Lionel Manga and many more
Besides Puleng; dontsa-ring and roving preoccupations by Simnikiwe Buhlungu (Chisenhale Gallery, Kunstinstituut Melly and Mousse Publishing)
In her most expansive publication to date, Simnikiwe Buhlungu takes the site of the ubiquitous water puddle as her starting point. With contributions from musicians, artists, curators, and scientists from around the world, the publication draws upon research related to hygrosummons (iter.01)—commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam—and gathers an intertextual conversation around the literal and metaphorical possibilities of the water cycle. The artist’s original writing uses the footnote as an editorial style to trace personal anecdotes and literary references that have informed her commission. Situated amongst original drawings, texts, song lyrics, posters and correspondences, a series of research images reveal geographical sites and experimental processes that have shaped the development of a new body of work.
Delving into puddle microbiology amongst disciplines of art, science, geography, and history, Buhlungu questions the language of standardized scientific expression. Her ongoing inquiries into sensing instruments and invisible systems of knowledge, positions the puddle as a body of water with agency, exploring how knowledge is created, by who, and the ways in which it is encountered. With these ideas woven into the publication’s design and materials, the book acts as an index to concepts within Buhlungu’s practice, whilst continuing her experimentation with how conversations are disseminated in exhibition and publishing-form.
Edited by Olivia Aherne, Amy Jones, Rachel Be-Yun .Wang, Zoé Whitley
Texts by Alunamda Buhlungu, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, El Colegio Desextinction, Khwezi Gule, Taylor Le Melle, George Mahashe, Gabi Ngcobo, Saïd Rosales, Norbert C.A. de Ruijter, The Brother Moves On, Zoé Whitley, Riet Wijnen
Designed by Rose Nordin