Wendy's Subway / Residency / Reading Zimbabwe

LIBRARY-IN-RESIDENCE: READING ZIMBABWE
March-May, 2018

Wendy's Subway is pleased to announce the fourth in a series of one to two to three month-long residencies designed to host artists, publishers, special collections, and libraries. From March through May 2018, Wendy's Subway will host Reading Zimbabwe, founded by Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

Check back for a full schedule of upcoming programs.

About Reading Zimbabwe

Reading Zimbabwe is an independent not-for-profit platform committed to discover and celebrate Zimbabwean stories and to place them before the largest possible audience. The project was born out of a curiosity for a deeper understanding of the nature and extent of knowledge production, dissemination and use around the subject of 'Zimbabwe.'

Tinashe Mushakavanhu is a Zimbabwean writer and editor. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Kent and degrees from Welsh and Zimbabwean universities. He co-edited State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry (2009) and Visa Stories: Experiences Between Law and Migration (2013).

Nontsikelelo Mutiti is a Zimbabwean graphic designer and visual artist. She received an MFA from Yale Art School, with a concentration in graphic design. She is currently an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Image: Dambudzo Marechera in conversation with Wilson Katiyo and their host, Musaemura Zimunya. Still from the film House of Hunger, 1982 (Director, Chris Austin).

The Wendy’s Subway Residency Program is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

Screening Zimbabwe: After the Hunger and the Drought
Saturday, April 21 - 7pm

Join us for a screening of Zimbabwe: After the Hunger and Drought (1987, Directed by Olley Maruma, 49 mins), followed by a discussion with Reading Zimbabwe founders Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

Zimbabwe: After the Hunger and Drought presents a series of interviews with some of Zimbabwe’s prominent literary figures including Stanlake Samkange, Solomon Mutswairo, Charles Mungoshi and Dambudzo Marechera. They talk about the role of the writer in society, freedom of expression, and the place of tradition in modern literature. The film opens with Egyptian writer Nawal el Saadawi who had been a guest at the first Zimbabwe International Book Fair held in 1983.

Olley Maruma was one of the first black filmmakers in post-independence Zimbabwe.

Archive Fever: Making History Now
Saturday, April 28 - 7pm

Bringing together artists, writers, archivists, designers, and activists, Archive Fever: Making History Now, reflects on intersections of research, print culture, archival preservation, and cultural production. Tinashe Mushakavanhu from Reading Zimbabwe (current Library-in-Residence), Nora Almeida & Jen Hoyer from Interference Archive, and Kristian Henson from Hardworking Goodlooking, each give brief presentations highlighting recent projects that activate social histories, national contexts, and political urgencies through publication, exhibition, and preservation initiatives. An open discussion will follow.

Tinashe Mushakavanhu is a Zimbabwean writer and editor. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Kent and degrees from Welsh and Zimbabwean universities. He co-edited State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry (2009) and Visa Stories: Experiences Between Law and Migration (2013).

Nora Almeida and Jen Hoyer are volunteers at Interference Archive (www.interferencearchive.org), an all-volunteer, collectively run archive of social movement ephemera. The mission of Interference Archive is to explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements. This work manifests in an open stacks archival collection, publications, a study center, and public programs, all of which encourage critical and creative engagement with the rich history of social movements. Through our programming, we use this cultural ephemera to animate histories of people mobilizing for social transformation. We consider the use of our collection to be a way of preserving and honoring histories and material culture that is often marginalized in mainstream institutions.

Kristian Henson is a New York–based designer and publisher. After receiving his MFA from Yale School of Art in 2012, he continued his research and extended his design practice by actively collaborating with artists and institutions in The Philippines. In 2013, he co-founded Hardworking Goodlooking (HWGL), a publishing imprint and studio that consolidates the experiments of The Office of Culture & Design (a social practice and research project created by HWGL co-founder and Manila-based Clara Lobregat Balaguer). HGWL is a publishing and graphic design hauz interested in decolonization of aesthetic voices, vernacular artisanry, and giving value to the invisible. Primarily, they publish cultural research and theory, printed in very, very small cottage-industry presses in the Philippines. But they also work with small and large studio clients in order to fund or generate original content for the social practice projects of The OCD. HWGL works out of Brooklyn and Parañaque City. http://officeocd.com/

Image: A printing machine operator at work on the Nebiolo flat bed press in Zambia in the 1960s.