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.
A trip across the intersection between reality and its multiple possibilities of the future. Jamil Osmar (Parasol) is the curator of Split infinity: A glimpse into a harmonious future. Jamil is an Angolan curator, artist and video game developer. Split infinity was curated in 2023. He is the ARAK Collection third 2023 Curatorial Residency Fellowship Recipient. Split infinity: A glimpse into a harmonious future brings together selected works from the ARAK collection to carefully craft a story profoundly impacting us to stir public opinion in the hopes of creating a space where everyone can experience a minimalistic multiple choice narrative that addresses social, psychological and environmental themes in the African context; deconstructing the concept of afro-futurism, standing apart from Western narratives of progress and modernity. Split infinity presents beautiful, colorful and meaningful works by thirty-five contemporary artists.