Introducing Iwalewabooks – Independent Art and Discourse Publishers

David Krut Bookstore is pleased to introduce the independent book publishers Iwalewabooks! Iwalewabooks is a publishing house for art and discourse. Through a number of series, they dedicate their publications to questions about aesthetic social discourses, the politics of collecting and debates about archives and artistic and academic positions from the Global South.

All publications are based on the conviction that creating books is an aesthetic and collective endeavour. Many volumes are therefore produced in collaboration with research projects as well as cultural and societal initiatives.  They are currently based in Bayreuth (Germany) and Johannesburg (South Africa). 

The Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan – This book aims to reactivate the archival material by Ulli Beier, co-founder of the Black Orpheus Magazine and the Mbari Clubs in Nigeria in the early 1960s. To better understand the formation of modernities from a transcultural perspective, the book gives an overview on the exciting times of the Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan through the archival documents.
This book is published in the context of the exhibition “museum global. Microhistories of an Ex-centric Modernism” by Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf and is the first collaboration between the Centre of Black Culture and International Understanding in Osogbo (Nigeria) and Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth.

Uche Okeke’s Art in Development – A Nigerian Perspective is the most important publication by the founding father of Nigerian modernism. Orig- inally published in 1982, the book compiles texts, interviews, concept papers and other material from the late 1950s until the 1980s, containing such important texts like the “Natural Synthesis” manifesto of the Zaria Art Society from 1960.Having been out of print for many years, this re-edition by iwalewabooks wants to bring these texts back to life for artists, academics and an interested public.

The zine “Handle with Care: Post_Colonial Object Matters is the product of cross-cutting conversations. Designed as an open invitation to think further about post_colonial object_matters, it conjoins contributions from participants of a workshop on “un_doing post_colonial knowledges: perspectives from academia_arts_activism” which was held at the University of Bayreuth/Germany in July 2019, that was organised by Manuela Bauche (FU Berlin), Katharina Schramm (Univ. of Bayreuth) and Nadine Siegert (iwalewabooks). Building on current discussions about the colonial legacies and the decolonial responsibilities of ethnographic museums, we wanted to explore the possible futures of objects marked by colonial relations of power and knowledge(s). We sought to shift the grounds of the debate from institutional concerns and legal aspects of restitution to more daring and wider-reaching questions. Our idea was to spark a debate around postcolonial justice that would decentralize the institutions of the European museum and university.

So we asked: What are the possibilities that can open up after an act of restitution to establish future-oriented relationships between different people, institutions and objects? How can we work with these “loaded” objects and generate a future with and for them? How can we create new platforms of welcoming these objects back on the African continent? How can we bring critical approaches from art, academic research, activism and museum practices in a fruitful dialogue with each other that works towards a responsible engagement with the colonial history and its material and immaterial traces?

0Start / Goldendean: Plan B. A Gathering of Strangers (Or) This Is Not WorkingZurückWeiterIn July 2017 the South African Equality Court dismissed charges of Hate Speech against Goldendean’s exhibition of a poster using the words “Fuck White People” in the Iziko National Gallery.The Chief Magistrate found that the work’s context, as art, brought attention to structural racism and white supremacy, and drew South Africans to a “critical moment of self-reflection”. Goldendean presents PLAN B, A GATHERING OF STRANGERS (OR) THIS IS NOT WORKING reflecting on the affects of their performance of the very simple acts of dissidence in a transgressive Fat Queer White Trans Body. The book explores how strategies of Technology as Self-Reflection and Radical Sharing, Queer Love and Queer Disobedience contribute to “making whiteness strange” by destabilising the normal invisibility of whiteness to bring white bodies under surveillance.

bixinho – There is a Brazilian saying that says “carnival affair does not go up the mountain”. It was the unofficial carnival opening when Helio and I kissed for the first time. Rio de Janeiro, midsummer, 40oC, one Capricorn and one Virgo. There was no better time to know each other than the party of the flesh, of bodies’ cult, of passion and samba.After Ash Wednesday it did not take long until he came to live with me and Fernando Donato and Roberta, dear friends, roommates, and talented photographers who divided their time between capturing ordinary impressive “insta”ants and time to embrace our ideas of “self-promotion” / “self-acceptance” online via Instagram.. “Bixinho” is an affectionate term of northeastern Brazil, to refer to someone close, and it is about affection the images here present, about different affections: the affection of the photographers to the art of photography, the romantic-sexual affection between two lovers, the affection of friendship. “These photos can be a gun for those who hate, for those who try to deny our very existence, our love, our family. But our intention is not to hurt-yes, we are fighters, but if our art, our bodies can be weapons we chose to fight side by side the ones who love, staying strong, staying together. In the midst of chaos, hope resists, Marielle Vive!” “And our bodies become resistance, beyond any and every art.” (Raí Gandra, bixinho)

0Start / TswaloZurückWeiter by Billy Langa in collaboration with Mahlatsi Mokgonyana. From the multi award-winning Theatreduo comes Tswalo, a celebration of the art of solo performance. Tswalo, re-published by iwalewabooks in 2019, entwines poetry and physical storytelling to interrogate the rules that govern life on earth, such as power, creation, politics, connection, and intuition – the performer’s expression of his ‘source’. It is the product of a creative collaboration: written and performed by Billy Langa with Direction, Dramaturgy and Design by Mahlatsi Mokgonyana in collaboration with award-winning composer and sound designer John Withers. Tswalo is the winner of the Standard Bank Ovation Award, Cape Town Fringe Fresh Performer Award and Cape Town Fringe Fresh Creative Award for Directing, and has toured  South Africa, Namibia, Germany and Scandinavia. Tswalo is a body of poems constructed to fragment a narrative that is carried in both physicality and voice. It is placed in a timeless space of existence, which explores the primary themes of being, chaos and beauty, blood and birth, love and war in the same frame. Tswalo combines ritual, physical storytelling and heightened text to create new distinct theatrical language as a way of reconstructing and deconstructing the orthodox and the traditional chronology of telling stories. “This is what theatre should, and can be”, the critics of Weekend Special wroteiwalewabook is proud to present the re-publication of the work, with a foreword by Nondumiso Msimang.