Africa Is a Country

Pan African Space Station, NYC

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Pan African Space Station, NYC

By
Africa is a Country

A periodic, pop-up live radio studio, a performance and exhibition space, a research platform and living archive.

Photo by Alice Obar.

The Cape Town-based arts collective Chimurenga publishes a magazine (named for the collective) and a newspaper (The Chronic), puts on live performances and runs the Pan African Space Station (PASS),  “… a periodic, pop-up live radio studio; a performance and exhibition space; a research platform and living archive, as well as an ongoing, internet based radio station.” Per Chimurenga, the Space Station was “founded by Chimurenga in collaboration with musician and composer Neo Muyanga in 2008.” PASS takes inspiration from American musician, Sun Ra. “PASS is a machine for traveling at the speed of thought – it borrows [his] slogan ‘There are other worlds out there they never told you about’ …” Finally, “has landed in and transmitted from Johannesburg, Paris, London, New York, Lagos, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Cairo, Dakar, Mexico City and Harare featuring over 150 artists, musicians, writers, activists and more.”

In November 2015, Chimurenga brought the Pan African Space Station at Performa 15 to New York City. The session in New York City, run over multiple days, consisted of a “market” of sorts and a pop radio radio session featured (amongst others) the Brooklyn-based African Record Center/ Yoruba Book Center; artist and educator Nontsikelelo Mutiti; and poet, choreographer, and Afrosonics archivist Harmony Holiday.

As part of the installation, Africa is a Country curated three panels over the course of the weekend, covering reflections on music and migration, identity and cultural expression in photography; as well as the exchange between African and Caribbean music. All the sessions are available on our Soundcloud.

We also made a short video on the PASS installation, directed by via Alice Obar (one of editor Sean’s former students) featuring interviews with Chimurenga associate editor Stacy Hardy, artist Nontsikilelo Mutiti, and African Record Center co-owner Roger Francis. Not to mention highlights from the panel discussion, as well as some music by Lamin Fofana, Innov Gnawa, and Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa.

Watch.

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.