A Pan-African Space in Cape Town? The Chimurenga Archive of Pan-African Festivals

Abstract

ABSTRACT Created in 2002 in Cape Town by Ntone Edjabe, Chimurenga is a multidimensional project that combines a print magazine, a workspace, a platform for editorial and curatorial activities, an online library, and a radio station (the Pan-African Space Station). Based on collaborative ethnographic research with the Chimurenga team, this paper discusses the collection, production and creation of an archive about Pan-African festivals that this collective has developed through their cultural activities. After a brief overview of Festival of Black Arts and Culture (FESTAC) which took place in Lagos in 1977, and the history of Pan-African festivals, I describe the materials collected by Chimurenga and the projects in which they have participated. By following the travelling routes which have led to this informal and unstable collection of materials, I highlight how Chimurenga’s work contributes to challenging the idea of the archive, transformed through their practice into a dynamic and generative medium. I consider how the archive and memory of FESTAC is spread by Chimurenga in global and local spheres, and how it is used to produce new cultural and art forms in the present day, scrambling boundaries between past, present and future to perform a Pan-African transtemporal space in South Africa.