Demetrius Oliver, Till, 2004

FAK'UGESI DIGITAL AFRICA CONFERENCE

Will be held at the Wits School of Arts on the 4th, 5th and 6th of December 2014.

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Deana Lawson, Jouvert, Flatbush, Brooklyn, 2015

Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems With Digital Colonialism

Angolans have found a clever way to share files using Wikipedia Zero and Facebook’s Free Basics, but what happens to the existing Wikipedia community?

The fact is, I don’t think SF can be really utopian. I mean utopia presupposes a pretty static, unchanging, and rather tyrannical world. You know: ‘I know the best way to live, and I’m going to tell you how to do it, and if you dare do anything else…’

Samuel R. Delany, interviewed in 1986, “On Triton and other matters” (via notesonresistance)

“We wanted to capture the essence of South African township culture in the 80s and 90s,” says South African photographer Kristin-Lee Moolman, recalling the brief for this shoot – the SS16 lookbook for emerging designer Rich Mnisi’s brand OATH studio. “The culture of androgyny was at its peak, supported largely by the need to ‘show up’ (out do each other).” So, to shoot the images, they headed to Mnisi’s grandmother’s house in Chiawelo, Soweto. When it came to casting the story, Moolman and Mnisi were keen to paint an accurate picture of youth culture in Johannesburg.

While Janet Otobo is a professional model, Wayne Swart is a student who they street cast on the way to the shoot. Aart Verrips is a photographer and, in fact, was Moolman’s assistant on the day. Incidentally it was Verrips’ first time in Soweto. “(It) was a new experience, especially being Afrikaans and gay,” he told us. “It was incredibly refreshing to go to the township and experiencing something totally different to what your perception had been.” As for Lucky Macheke – an accountant – he is Mnsis’s cousin and just happened to be hanging out in his grandmother’s house.

Desire Marea is one half of FAKA, an art duo who, as black queer artists, explore their complex identities through performance. “We teach complexities in a radical fight for our own humanity,” Marea says, explaining their raison d’être. In fact, Moolman and Mnisi also wanted to engage in identity politics in this shoot. “We felt that androgyny resonates with young people in South Africa now, where there is almost a celebration of LGBT communities as a movement to oppose cultural stereotypes and homophobia.

Written by Ted Stansfield for Dazed

Inner Cruise - Selly Raby Kane La mode oui, mais dans un monde magique. La styliste sénégalaise explore, expérimente refuse de se laisser enfermer. A suivre.

I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of caution and organization we deserve victory. You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.

Thomas Sankara, 1985 (via thefutureweird)

Khayelitsha, a human dumping ground of about 1 million people was built by the apartheid government and continues to be maintained by the current neoliberal ‘democratic’ regime. The townships are hell on earth. They are a space that dehumanises all those who live in it. by The Tokolos Stencil Collective

THE NEXT ECONOMY: International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam calls for projects from Africa

by Edgar Pieterse

“The mainstream hype around the strong GDP growth of many African countries over the past fifteen years belies the fact that very few decent jobs are being created and income inequality is alarming, and worsening. It is shortsighted and ignorant to think that the fortunes of the majority of urban Africans will be improved through “more of the same” models of economic growth. A paradigm shift is needed, and urgently.  As IABR–2016–The Next Economy’s Curator Statement suggests, such a new paradigm must serve the majority of people and nature in an integral way, which demands “an active re-imagining of the city, a redesign of its underlying logic, its system and the way it is arranged both spatially, organizationally and financially.” Thus, the IABR-2016-THE NEXT ECONOMY provides a fantastic opportunity for African urban designers, architects, landscape architects, academics, artists, planners, cities, universities, companies and social organizations, or coalitions thereof, to submit best practices, projects and plans that contribute towards or illuminate the dimensions of a new imagination for the African City  in response to the IABRs’ global call for projects.”

Read more at futurecapetown.com