Over five days, Chimurenga occupied the Performa 15 Hub in New York with the Chimurenga Library. This multi-tiered programming platform takes the form of a library-of-people, bringing together a broad spectrum of collaborators and literal bodies of knowledge in an improvised, pop-up library which also functions as radio studio and market. The Chimurenga Library engages trade as both the process of buying, selling, or exchanging goods or services and the practice of exchanging ideas, imaginaries, perceptions, and vocabularies.

From 11 to 15 November 2015, the Chimurenga Library hosted PASS with a live broadcasting programme of music, interviews, and events with Chimurenga collaborators in New York, including musicians, journalists, writers, curators, and filmmakers. The live broadcast studio functioned amidst an installation that brought together pop-up stores that experimented with trade, informal economies, aesthetics and body language, music and spoken word, mobility and infrastructure.

Working with collaborators such as Brooklyn-based African Record Centre and Yoruba Book Center (established 1971); artist and educator Nontsikelelo Mutiti, who set up an African hair braiding salon;  and poet, choreographer, and Afrosonics archivist Harmony Holiday, ideas, thinking, and debate moved fluidly between events, transactions, broadcasts, conversations, music and records, publications, archive material, services, and objects.

Bringing together existing work, research material, and areas of interest whilst at the same time expanding focal points, the project represented a moment of activation, interaction, and expansion within a mobile and complex network of geographical and organizational contexts.

Participants in the PASS program included: South African composer Neo Muyanga; Africa is a Country – a blog about media and politics; Hisham Aidi, the author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture; Moroccan poet Omar Berrada; Cuban-American artist and writer Coco Fusco; curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray (in conversation with African Arts Festival in Brooklyn); poet, fiction writer, and playwright Rashidah Ismaili AbuBakr; Somali novelist Abdi Latif Ega; journalist and broadcaster Giovanni Russonello; and photographer Marilyn Nance.

Thanks to Adrienne Edwards and peeps in NY.

Visit the PASS blog and/or 15.performa-arts.org for more.

Reviews of the Show: On Art News

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