Chimurenga » Blog Archive » The Chronic (New Cartographies, March 2015)

http://www.chimurenga.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/covers-together.jpg

We understand the role of cartography as a tool of imperialism. However, in this edition of the Chronic, we ask: what if maps were made by Africans for their own use, to understand and make visible their own realities or imaginaries? How does it shift the perception we have of ourselves and how we make life on this continent? We don’t have an easy answer, nor will we find one alone. Together with Kwani? we’ve invited writers and artists to produce this new language, in words and images.

►http://www.chimurenga.co.za/product/the-chronic-new-cartographies-march-2015

#cartographie #visualisation #revue #cartographie_radicale #cartographie_critique #contre-cartographie
cc @reka

The Chronic presents a new cartography for Africa

▻http://www.contemporaryand.com/blog/exhibition/the-chronic-presents-a-new-cartography-for-africa

The Chronic presents a new cartography for Africa

Chimurenga, South Africa

http://www.contemporaryand.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Soft-Power-spread1.jpg

Since its launch in 2011, every edition of the Chronic has engaged, forcefully, with the question: When will the new emerge – and if it is already here, how do we decipher it? But no edition has addressed this query with as much urgency as our current project on cartographies.

Broadly, the project contests the notion of the ‘failed state’ mainstreamed at the peak of the structural adjustments of the late 1980s, to justify Western interventionism in the so-called developing world. This notion does not exist in isolation; it is inextricably tied to the idea of development and the resulting instrumentalist logic in which our imagination seems imprisoned. These are conceptual frameworks that we, Western-educated Africans who came of age during the 90s, have absorbed. But our reality refuses to be mapped only by GDP, scales, set squares and compasses; it also requires hands, feet and hearts. And memory.

We understand the role of cartography as a tool of imperialism. However, we ask: what if maps were made by Africans for their own use, to understand and make visible their own realities or imaginaries? How does it shift the perception we have of ourselves and how we make life on this continent? We don’t have an easy answer, nor will we find one alone. We are collaborating with Kwani?. Together we’ve invited writers and artists to produce this new language, in words and images.

#afrique #cartographie_radicale