Useful Resources

Amidst austerity measures today, we find ourselves increasingly precarious and pixelated; atomized, alienated, and irreparably glitched. For the inaugural issue of The State, the theme was kept intentionally vague; fifteen writers from around the world responded in myriad voices and ways. Topics range from sociohistorical looks at sewers and single parenting throughout the ages, to reimagining a weedy field as a portmanteau of globalisation. Others take a more personal approach, interrogating experiences of Afropolitanism, of being a person of colour in post-9/11 America, and of returning to the Gulf with your tail between your legs. They are joined by two ‘website-specific installations’—exploring joblessness and speaking in tongues—which are scannable within these pages. THE STATE is a publishing practice that investigates South-South reorientations, alternative futurisms, transgressive cultural criticism, the transition from analogue to digital, and the sensuous architecture of this “printernet.”

The Supply Initiative: meeting the need for reproductive health supplies, has a new monthly newsletter that provides updates on the Supply Initiative activities, as well as news, materials and events related to condom and contraceptive shortages.

The crisis of capital, the rise of the Occupy movement and the crash of Southern Europe have brought the problem of income inequality into mainstream consciousness in the West for the first time in many decades. The video featured in this article points out that the richest 300 people on earth have more wealth than the poorest 3bn - almost half the world's population. In truth the situation is even worse: the richest 200 people have about $2.7 trillion, which is more than the poorest 3.5bn people, who have only $2.2 trillion combined. The video shows how this widening disparity operates between countries. It argues that the gap is growing in part because of neoliberal economic policies that liberalise markets, opening them to multinational corporations with a serious cost to poor countries of around $500bn per year in GDP. The video aims to help people to visualise this flow, and to show how it pumps up the Global North at devastating expense to the Global South.

This is an audio-library established by African women to share their stories and knowledge with their sisters across the continent, and with all listeners wherever they are. The collection celebrates the art and power of storytelling, and the creativity of African women, their achievements in arts, culture and media. The current weekly on-line release of new interviews forms a foundation for audio-visual training and creative media projects with women in the Zambezi region in 2014. The doors of this internet-archive are always open for listeners and for storytellers, who wish to contribute their stories and responses to the collection. In October, “Ibhayisikopo Film Project” and “radio continental drift” will join forces for a women-driven film- and media project. We want to train young women in Bulawayo as trainers in film-production and creative media. The facilitators are inviting listeners, artists and storytellers to build the sound-library of storytelling by contribute local recordings to the All Africa Sound Map and place African arts and culture on the global map.