Not the Country We’re Sitting in Now
The first in a series of four posts to commemorate what would have been James Baldwin's 90th birthday.
Culture
Not just some passing foreign journalist
Lawyer and writer Elnathan John interviewed U.S. photographer Glenna Gordon. Listen.
It’s Time to Stop Laughing
In neoliberal global capitalism, anything can be monetized, even the criminal exploits of a marginal schizophrenic.
The Dangers of a Single Book Cover
The historian Simon Stephens discovers a meme in the book covers of novels set in or with African themes.
Hip hop and electoral politics
South Africans vote on May 2nd, 2014, the country's 5th democratic elections. Do rappers vote?
Jeremy Clarkson’s long history of escaping accountability
Cancel Jeremy Clarkson, cancel Top Gear and cancel British jingoism.
In Search of Freedom
Belgian-Congolese filmmaker, Nganji Laeh, along with musician and composer Badi and filmmaker Monique Mbeka Phoba, explore present day DRC via film.
Tumi Molekane’s New Song
With no Volume to his name, it seemed almost impossible to imagine South Africa-based self-proclaimed poet/emcee Tumi Molekane as a solo artist. He had released two albums before forming a band: A dream led to this and Tao of Tumi, the latter which, if memory serves right, had an accompanying anthology. Yet it’s the years between 2002 […]
Why is there a Colombian film festival in South Africa
A group of Colombian artists who live in South Africa on "the incredible amount of similarities between Colombia and South Africa"
To discover Stuart Hall
Hall was a skilled storyteller, who placed his memory, his deep sense of alienation, and his autobiography at the heart of his theory and politics.
The art of Victor Ehikhamenor
Victor Ehikhamenor’s images always work as a proliferation of forms. It’s the sort of proliferation that explodes in your face, making the shapes and objects something other than shapes and objects. Too much is happening, which is the imperative for this transaction—no space is left uncontained. These images and objects embody forms; to uncover any […]
Meleko Mokgosi’s monumental installations
The paintings in Meleko Mokgosi's ongoing "Pax Kaffraria" series interrogate colonialism, politics, power, and identity in Botswana and Southern Africa
The African Hip-Hop Generation Arrives
Frantz Fanon once said: “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.”
Rwanda and the New York Times
On those images by South African photographer, Pieter Hugo, pairing perpetrators and victims of the 1994 Genocide.
‘Township’ is a Planet for Aliens
If you only visit South African townships to confirm your prejudices and not to experience them the way they are, stay away.
Lupita Nyong’o and the Mexicans
The actress Lupita Nyong'o was born in Mexico, who wanted to claim her Oscar win. But why should she owe the Oscar to Mexico, a country with such high levels of racism?
Latin America is a country
Gabriel Garcia Marquez wanted to counter the notion that everything in Latin America can be understood only through Euro-American lenses.
Intimacy in Africa, on film
Bringing attention to African filmmakers who challenge prevalent cinematic depictions of the continent.
The hands played by themselves
Basil Breakey's photographs serves as an important recording of South Africa jazz music in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Sonic Geography of Cartagena
The strong local identity of Colombia's most African big city is slowly being erased. But not all its artists, especially musicians, are giving up without a fight.