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.
Into the nothingness: The Strangeness of Seeing, What Blinds our Being was curated by Fulufhelo Mobadi in 2020. Fulufhelo Mobadi is a South African photographer and curator. She was the second ARAK Collection 2020 Curatorial Residency Fellowship Recipient. Into the Nothingness: The Strangeness of Seeing, What Blinds our Being brings to the fore the entanglements of historical, physical, metaphysical and existential spheres of contemporary African lives. Through the distorted faces, fragmented landscapes and clear references to the dark memories that travel with us in sometimes nightmarish visions, are traces of knowledge systems that seem to explore these spheres of existence through artworks that cover cultural identities, different beliefs, cultural practices, mythologies and cosmologies. The publication allow one to visualize, respond to and create dialog around the complexities that inspire African artists to create work that speak of their beliefs, thoughts, histories and their futures as well as the rich and complex traditions in a contemporary world.