bombastic element

The Rural Modern Library

2012-09-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

The new generation of local Washington, DC public libraries coming on line have been referred to as "striking ... buildings that sit like aliens in their neighborhoods, thoroughly unlike their surroundings—and intentionally so." Two of the libraries--Hillcrest and Washington Highlands library/Bellevue--were designed by British architect David Adjaye -- who's of Ghanaian descent and was born in

South Africa's Great Advertising [Creative] Divide

2012-08-31T07:30:00.000-04:00

Over @ the Daily Maverick, Mandy de Waal has a much discussed piece about South Africa’s extremely white advertising industry, and why she thinks it continues as "a colonial enclave where racial polarisation is rife and the best profits are being creamed by a handful of foreign-owned advertising companies." But it is the quote from the Association of Black Communications Practitioners'

More on How a Single Spot in the Sahara Desert Creates the Amazon Jungle

2012-08-29T06:54:00.000-04:00

In case you missed it, a 2006 paper titled "The Bodélé depression: a single spot in the Sahara that provides most of the mineral dust to the Amazon forest" was recently dug up by science writer Colin Schultz. Listen below to Schultz's talk with Niagara Falls' News Talk 610 CKTB about the paper's findings: As the title of the paper suggests, and as Boing Boing's Maggie Koerth-Baker

Africans in the '60s - Liberation and Neil Armstrong's Moon Landing

2012-08-27T05:35:00.000-04:00

The sad news of Neil Armstrong's passing offers a chance to revisit how much the idea of space travel and race to land a man on the moon also had a powerful hold over the popular imagination of many Africans in the 1960s. One example, of course, is grade-school science teacher Edward Makuka Nkoloso's Zambian space program and its proposed mission to Mars on the eve of Zambian independence in

"How Modern Jazz Figured in the Formation of a Modern African Identity" and Other Recent Jazz Writing

2012-07-30T05:52:00.001-04:00

Robin D.G Kelly in Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Nathan I Huggins Lectures) (published February 2012), gives us a meditation on Africa, jazz and modernity: we see innovation not as an imposition from the West but rather as indigenous, multilingual, and messy, the result of innumerable exchanges across a breadth of cultures. From the prelude: By

"So Many Africans in Greece" and Other Flattering Images

2012-07-27T06:30:00.001-04:00

Με τόσους Αφρικανούς στην Ελλάδα..Τουλάχιστον τα κουνούπια του δυτικού Νείλου..θα τρώνε σπιτικό φαγητό!!! — βούλα Παπαχρήστου (@papaxristoutj) July 22, 2012 "with so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitoes will be eating food from their own home" - Translation of the tweet that got Voula Papachristou, Greece’s triple-jump champion, barred by the Hellenic Olympic

Nigerian Princess

2012-07-27T06:30:00.000-04:00

From the archives of Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen: Scams - the Dry Bones Blog

Graphic Novels and the Rwandan Genocide

2012-07-25T06:30:00.001-04:00

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Why the Web Divides Us

2012-07-23T06:30:00.000-04:00

The Internet has changed many things. But it has not changed the insular habits of mind that make us replicate in our online social networks the physical networks we already have; in other words, connecting with only those who share our interests, laying waste to the utopia of a truly connected world. Ethan Zuckerman's older TED talk on this topic - here . Author Eli Pariser 2011 TED talk

To Albert, Mukhtar and African Bus Drivers Everywhere...

2012-07-20T08:46:00.000-04:00

That story of Albert from South Africa's First National Bank TV ad (above) feels inspired by the birthday story of a real African bus driver in Copenhagen called Mukhtar, who was the very surprised subject of a flash mob back in 2009. Mukhtar's flash mobbed birthday was also an ad - more here.

From Carte de visite to Album Covers - Photography and Liberation

2012-07-18T06:30:00.000-04:00

The industrial revolution and the emergence of photography in the 1840s ushered in the modern age. In Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, a PBS documentary (consider donating), you can see the new realism of photographs used in combination with older media like newspapers and postcards in administering racial terror to maintain the status quo.

Evolution of Nigerian Characters on U.S. Television

2012-07-15T06:30:00.001-04:00

Season 8, Ep. 17 - Last season of American Dad, American comic Wayne Brady plays Tungee (Tunji?), one of those kids in the pictures sent to you by NGOs/charities in those late night infomercials, asking you to stick the kid's pic on your fridge and send a few cents to the NGO every month so the kid can eat. Anyway, Tungee is all grown up now, and he flies to the U.S to visit his long

...The Modern Imperative in Contemporary Africa - A Manifesto

2012-07-13T06:30:00.000-04:00

Book launch in Lagos @ the Jazzhole on Awolowo and Glendora @ Ikeja for Prof. Olufemi Taiwo's new book - Africa Must be Modern: The Modern Imperative in Contemporary Africa - A Manifesto . Of course, I'm a big fan of his 2010 treatise on modernity: How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa. I even pulled quotes and included a visual treatment of it in 3bute #1 - page 2:

Venice and Makoko - "the Possibilities of Contradictions between Modernities"

2012-07-11T06:30:00.000-04:00

Established in the 18th century primarily as a fishing village, much of Makoko rests in structures constructed on stilts above the Lagos Lagoon. As Lagos' waterfront development bulldozers make their way towards... ... ...the fishing community on water to pave way for modern-seeming facades, the lawyer in the video above implores us to take a closer look at Makoko as people coming together

Evolution of English - Pidgins and Degeneracy of English in Postcolonial Contexts

2012-07-09T06:30:00.000-04:00

In their paper Sociolinguistic Variables in the Degeneracy of English in Postcolonial (Non-Native) Contexts , A. Anchimbe and Stella A. Anchimbe (University of Ludwig-Maximilians In Munich and the University of Yaounde in Cameroon) argue Pidgin English in postcolonial contexts is less about the degeneracy of English and more about the successful existence of the English language in

Nigeria Fashion Week - Vice Style

2012-02-01T08:22:00.002-05:00

@hamdi02. Yep, Vice nailed this one. More.

Ghanaian Writer Taiye Selasi on the "African" in "African Literature" (Jaipur Festival 2012)

2012-01-27T11:57:00.025-05:00

Taiye Selasi, author of "The Sex Lives of African Girls" and "Ghana Must Go", talks to the Daily Beast from the Jaipur Festival about the challenges of the young African novelist and the unique connection she sees between the Indian readers & African literature.

Being Garifuna

2012-01-23T07:16:00.000-05:00

An interesting pocket of Nigerian history in connection to the Garifuna of Central America; the Garinagu can be found in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. According to Wiki: Young recorded the arrival of the African descended population as commencing with a wrecked slave ship from the Bight of Biafra in 1675. The survivors, members of the Mokko people of today's Nigeria (now known as

Review of 'The Ticket' : Guinness Nigeria Ad Celebrates a Resilient People, Culture

2012-01-11T11:14:00.000-05:00

The Guardian's Chuks Nwanne reviews The Ticket, an international TV commercial by Saatchi & Saatchi - Cape Town, produced by Guinness Nigeria and shot in location within Nigeria with local talents and crew: When the invitations to the screening of new Guinness TV commercial, The Ticket, were given out to media men, there was little or no detail on what exactly the brewery actually intends to

Remaking the Modern in Cairo

2012-01-09T06:30:00.004-05:00

Excerpt from the 2003 review of the book: . . . The study focuses on the ways in which people have altered the visible forms and uses of the spaces allotted to them by the government when they were relocated to al-Zawiya. The book describes the “tactics” and “strategies” employed by people in efforts to realize their visions as individuals and as families. These actions are explored as

Victorian Lagos and Modernity

2012-01-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

The quote below about an emerging elite class of Lagosians embracing modernity under colonial rule is from Michael J. C. Echeruo's Victorian Lagos: Aspects of Nineteenth Century Lagos Life , which uses archives of the Lagos Press from that period to reconstruct patterns of life and thought in Lagos during the second half of the 19th century. These Lagosians were usually very conversant with

Neoliberal Fuel Subsidy Removers

2012-01-07T09:40:00.001-05:00

Above (4:00 in), Nigeria's CBN governor, Lamido Sanusi, making the frank--many will say unfair--neoliberal argument for the removal of the country's fuel subsidy on the BBC Africa Today podcast a few days ago (David Harvey's 'neoliberalism and the city' lecture springs to mind about now). If neoliberals weren't so smug by how right they are, this necessary enterprise could be phrased in over

Zimbabwe: Graphic Design - AKA R!OT

2012-01-05T10:13:00.000-05:00

From Nico Colombant: profile of graphic design artist South Africa-based and Bulawayo Zimbabwe native Sindiso Nyoni aka R!OT.

Mounir Fatmi's (Updated) ‘The Lost Springs'

2012-01-04T08:28:00.001-05:00

About Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi's ‘The Lost Springs’: ...minimal, elegant and poetic installation comprises of the twenty two flags of the states that make up The Arab League, seen at half-mast. Leaning up against the wall, tucked underneath the Tunisian and Egyptian [and Libyan] flags, like ersatz flag-poles, are two brooms that refer to the uprisings that led to the falls of, respectively,

Modern Architecture in Tanzania

2012-01-03T08:28:00.001-05:00

An excerpt from Dutch architect and film maker Jord den Hollander's 2009 documentary on Anthony B. Almeida and modern architecture in Tanzania... From synopsis:In 1950 architect Anthony B. Almeida was one of the first to introduce modern architecture in Tanzania. At that time architectural modernism was the preferred expression of the intended colonial welfare state. After Independence in