When Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes founded their underground satirical comic magazine Bitterkomix in 1992, they put themselves at the forefront of the international expressionist comix movement. Their assault on mainstream Afrikaner culture has continued to be challenging, outrageous and controversial. This book is an essential chronicle, catalogue and visual cornucopia of the work of the Bitterkomix artists -- from Pub. info.
Social commentary and political satire are presented through critically acclaimed graphics and confrontational illustrations in this brilliant and outrageous collection. Marked by an all-encompassing irony, a destruction of cultural taboos, and a love of cutting edge graphic art, the collection is a testament to the contentious history of Bitterkomix and its attacks on the Afrikaner culture and language that have developed into biting criticisms on South African society itself.
Drawing together the insights of postcolonial scholarship and cultural studies, Popular Postcolonialisms questions the place of ‘the popular’ in the postcolonial paradigm. Multidisciplinary in focus, this collection explores the extent to which popular forms are infused with colonial logics, and whether they can be employed by those advocating for change. It considers a range of fiction, film, and non-hegemonic cultural forms, engaging with topics such as environmental change, language activism, and cultural imperialism alongside analysis of figures like Tarzan and Frankenstein. Building on the work of cultural theorists, it asks whether the popular is actually where elite conceptions of the world may best be challenged. It also addresses middlebrow cultural production, which has tended to be seen as antithetical to radical traditions, asking whether this might, in fact, form an unlikely realm from which to question, critique, or challenge colonial tropes. Examining the ways in which the imprint of colonial history is in evidence (interrogated, mythologized or sublimated) within popular cultural production, this book raises a series of speculative questions exploring the interrelation of the popular and the postcolonial.
Urban Comics: Infrastructure and the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives makes an important and timely contribution both to comics studies and urban studies, offering a decolonisation and reconfiguration of both of these already interdisciplinary fields. With chapter-length discussions of comics from cities such as Cairo, Cape Town, New Orleans, Delhi and Beirut, this book shows how artistic collectives and urban social movements working across the global South are producing some of the most exciting and formally innovative graphic narratives of the contemporary moment. Throughout, the author reads an expansive range of graphic narratives through the vocabulary of urban studies to argue that these formal innovations should be thought of as a kind of infrastructure. This ‘infrastructural form’ allows urban comics to reveal that the built environments of our cities are not static, banal, or depoliticised, but rather highly charged material spaces that allow some forms of social life to exist while also prohibiting others. Built from a formal infrastructure of grids, gutters and panels, and capable of volumetric, multi-scalar perspectives, this book shows how urban comics are able to represent, repair and even rebuild contemporary global cities toward more socially just and sustainable ends. Operating at the intersection of comics studies and urban studies, and offering large global surveys alongside close textual and visual analyses, this book explores and opens up the fascinating relationship between comics and graphic narratives, on the one hand, and cities and urban spaces, on the other.
Wildly hilarious and almost too outrageous to believe, the correspondence of South Africa's most famous humor writer has now been compiled into one volume comprised of the author's (and fans') favorite letters. Assembled from his three previous compilations, this newest volume is a "greatest hits" of the riotous letters Ben Trovato has addressed to the rich and powerful abroad and the sidesplitting responses he received. Sometimes shocking, yet always funny, this collected works is Trovato at his best.
Encompassing black-and-white linoleum cuts made at community art centres in the 1960s and 1970s, resistance posters and other political art of the 1980s, and the wide variety of subjects and techniques explored by artists in printships over the last two decades, printmaking has been a driving force in contemporary South African artistic and political expression. Impressions from South Africa: 1965 to Now, published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, introduces the vital role of printmaking through works by more than twenty artists in the Museum's collection. The volume features prints by John Muafangejo and Dan Rakgoathe, a selection of posters produced for anti-apartheid coalitions in the 1980s, and nuanced political work by SueWilliamson, Norman Catherine andWilliam Kentridge. The book features many more recent projects, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of the medium in South Africa today. The work, presented in a generous plate section, is contextualized in an introduction by Judith B. Hecker, and accompanied by brief biographies of the artists, a timeline of relevant events in South African history, and a selected bibliography.
As South Africa’s democracy matures, this book raises pertinent questions: How does the state mediate between traditional tribal authority and constitutional law in matters such as initiation customs or the rights of women, children, and homosexuals? What are the limitations on artistic freedom in a society where sensitivities over colonial- and apartheid-era representations are acute? How does race open up discussions or close down dialogue? and What are the parameters of freedom of speech when minorities fear that hateful language may trigger actual violence against them? Examining disputes over South African art, music, media, editorial cartoons, history, public memory, and a variety of social practices, the culture wars' perspective is extended to new territory in this study, demonstrating its cross-cultural applicability and parsing critical debates within this vibrant society in formation.
Features the following interviewees with photos: Abdullah Ibrahim, jazz musician; Gabeba Baderoon, wordsmith; Vusi Beauchamp, comic shocker; Nikiwe Bikitsha, radio presenter; Bok van Blerk, singer; Jeanetta Blignaut, art agent; Chris Chameleon, pop boy; Kudzanai Chiurai, afro pop-artist; Toast Coetzer, lyricist; and, Fokofpolisiekar, taalrockers.
