CHIMURENGA CHRONICLE
The Chimurenga Chronicle (or Chronic) is devised and produced by Chimurenga Magazine in collaboration with two of Africa’s leading independent publishers, Kenya’s Kwani? and Nigeria’s Cassava Republic, and Swedish literary magazine Glänta, the Chronic is a once-off edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present.
Back-dated to the week May 11–18 2008, it reports primarily on the first week of the xenophobic violence in South Africa – and similar episodes of xenophobia such as the outbreak of »ethnic« violence in Kenya and »religious« attacks in Nigeria. The Chronic seeks to place these events within a broader context, focusing outward on the events, scenes and situations around the world during this period, to challenge the logic of emergencies that characterise the contemporary media.
An imaginary pan-African weekly that covers everything from politics, economics and life, to arts, sport, books etc, it straddles the space between fact and fiction, allowing for discreet, distinct, and possibly incommensurate accounts of the past and present, to be told in ways that deny a sense of obligation or sensationalism.
A social sculpture that embraces the newspaper medium as both a rhetorical strategy and a political method, it invites its editors, its writers, artists and its readers to take it seriously as a time machine; to re-consider the past as a territory to explore, and the present as a precarious and elusive entry-point through which, hopefully, a radically different future might make its appearance.
NEWSPAPER POSTER CAMPAIGN
The Chronic’s launch has been preceded by a public art intervention in the form of a newspaper poster campaign across Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos and Göteborg, in conjunction with the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, 2011.
The announcements on the posters are drawn from the content of the Chronic, and formatted into provocations by Swedish poet and Glänta co-editor Linn Hansén. Poster design is by artist Kudzinai Chiurai in collaboration with Keleketla Collective and the Chimurenga design team.
MAGAZINE RELEASE & OPENING OF THE CHRONIC READING ROOM
On Black Wednesday, October 19, the Chronic will be released and distributed on streets in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. We invite the Biennial visitors to Röda Sten Art Centre, at 7–10pm, to engage with the paper in the Chronic Reading Room. An intervention in both time and space, the reading room functions as a »time capsule« that suspends the normal pace and spectacle of the biennial, allowing for quiet and reflection away from the »pandemonium.«
The event is produced in collaboration with the Gothenburg-based cultural journal Glänta and Göteborg Public Library.
A special thanks to Mac Forum and Landsarkivet Göteborg.
