Exhibition
The Chimurenga Library
8 Oct 2015 – 21 Nov 2015
Regular hours
- Thursday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Friday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 12:00 – 18:00
Address
- 63 Penfold Street
- London NW8
- London
- NW8 8PQ
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Numerous buses from central London stop on the Edgware Road within a few minutes walk of the space, including the 6, 16, 98, 332 and 414.
- The Showroom is a short walk from Edgware Road underground station, which is served by the Hammersmith and City, Circle and Bakerloo lines.
- Edgware Road Tube for Bakerloo, Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines
The Showroom and The Otolith Collective present the Cape Town-based outfit Chimurenga.
About
For their first UK presentation, Chimurenga will infiltrate The Showroom’s building in the form of The Chimurenga Library, inserting themselves into the existing frameworks, functions and structures of the space without displacing its everyday activities. Founded by Ntone Edjabe in 2002, Chimurenga (a Shona word that loosely translates as ‘struggle for freedom’) is at the centre of vibrant new cultural projection across Africa, which includes championing new music, literature and visual arts.
Drawing together myriad voices from across Africa and the diaspora, Chimurenga takes many forms operating as an innovative platform for free ideas and political reflection about Africa by Africans. Outputs include a journal of culture, art and politics of the same name, a quarterly broadsheet called The Chronic, The Chimurenga Library – an online resource of collected independent pan-African periodicals and personal books, and the Pan African Space Station (PASS) – an online music radio station and pop-up studio.
For the first week The Chimurenga Library will play host to PASS with a live broadcasting programme of music, interviews and events with Chimurenga collaborators in London including musicians, journalists, writers, curators and filmmakers. The live broadcast studio will function amidst a major cartographic installation, mapping a series of ‘routes’ running throughout the building between the two floors.
These taped routes will link ideas with people, writing, research, music, publications, record cover design and other materials. Other events will take place off-site in different venues, extending these ‘routes’ still further. After the live broadcast studio closes, the sounds and images generated in this process will live on as part of the library installation until the show closes.
