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.
ASAI (Africa South Art Initiative)
Africa South Art Initiative’s research focuses on artists working on the African continent, particularly those challenging or commenting on power relations, unsettling dominant perceptions and frameworks, and/or who have a history of being under-valued by the art world and society at large. Research also focuses on community arts organisations with their roots in the struggle against apartheid. In addition, ASAI provides a platform for publishing research on a wide-range of relevant issues.
ASAI produces new and necessary resources on art and artists in Africa, and makes these resources accessible, mostly online. Resources serve a wide range of constituents, from students in schools to professionals and specialist practitioners.
ASAI’s emphasis on research and resources is rooted in activism, in conceiving of art as both a force for social change, as well as a site of struggle in its own right. Through critiques, discussions and debates, workshops and exhibitions, publications and social media, ASAI creates dynamic platforms that not only produce new resources, but also aim to generate new ways of seeing and doing.
