Welcome to the new ITCH; an experiment with online media.

This new digital platform aims to function as a space for creative and intellectual expression across the board. In our mediated world, boundaries between written and visual communication are increasingly unclear. The relationships and links between verbal and visual communication create fertile opportunities for creative expression; quite simply, the sharing of abstract ideas.

Although our (self-defined) mandate is to prioritise creating a space for new writing of all genres, we also recognise the value of making it possible for new visual and multimedia work to be shared through our online magazine. So, in our first issue you will find a mix of visual and verbal work submitted by writers and visual artists from around the world.

Our textual submissions are loosely categorised into Metatext (polemic, commentary, opinion, satire, non-fiction), SubText (narrative, short stories, semi-fictional essays) and PreText (poetry, experimental and unclassifiable writing). We're fully aware that these categorisations are somewhat arbitrary, but we've done them so as to try and make the website navigable. Sometimes the labels are a good fit, at others, they're the closest we can get to an oversimplification. They're not meant to be reductive or to impose some kind of eliminating genre on the work, just to try and organise the content somehow. Comments and/or alternative tags are welcome.

Our first issue is titled " / " and features content from writers, poets and visual artists who were inspired to engage this rather abstract theme. It took us a long time to get the new site and this issue put together: it is the product of a sincere commitment to creating non-mainstream, non-consumer media for and by independent writers and artists. We intend to publish new issues at regular intervals. How often will depend on the number and type of submissions that we receive - so take advantage of this space if you have something you want to share with a broader creative community.

Although you may remember ITCH as a print magazine, circumstance and a taste for the new encouraged us to experiment a little with format – hence our migration to binary code.

We fully intend to make a new ink and paper magazine in the future, most probably aggregated from our online editions. But that's later. Now, we invite you to participate in our new medium.

Submissions are now open for our second online edition.

Sometimes I wonder: how would my life be if I could be assured of exactly the same measures of pain, love, lust, fulfillment, success, failure, jealousy, boredom and pleasure as every single other living person on the planet?

Counter Currents is a beautiful and ambitious book. 

Cased in the garb of a coffee table, haute-design collector's item, Counter Currents, edited by Edgar Pieterse (director of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town) has a mission: to provide a compendium of possibilities for sustainable development in the Cape Town region. It asks: 'What changes the city? How do we imagine this change coming about?'

The book is essentially an edited collection of academic and policy essays, punctuated with some visual content, and all wrapped up in the cloak of a sexy coffee table book. Its trendy design and the inclusion of images from well-known Cape Town-based photographers like Dale Yudelman and Mikhail Subotsky seems to suggest that its target audience is the Cape Town art and design set. However, the content tells a different story. It seems to speak most directly with a mixed audience of policy makers, urban planners, government decision makers at all levels, academics, architects and activists. Laypeople interested in urban planning and sustainable development might make up a broader target audience, and it was as a member of this rather shadowy and unquantifiable group that I counted myself as a reader. Coming at the book as a layperson rather than an expert makes for slightly difficult, but nevertheless worthwhile, reading. The experimental combination of, broadly speaking, aesthetics and ethics makes the book quite unique, and combined with the committed focus on 'macro ambitions' and 'micro experiments' in the Cape Town region in particular makes it a very focussed and applied set of interventions.

First, the aesthetics. Despite many annoying typesetting and proofreading errors, the book is beautifully laid out and printed and is a pleasure to hold and look at, testament to the touch of its designer, Tau Tavengwa. Unlike almost every other policy and research tome out there, this one represents a clear effort to integrate creativity at both the level of content and form. At times this has the feel of window-dressing - certain diagrams and graphs might communicate information better without the bells and whistles of three-D shading and fancy colouration, for example. Nevertheless, at times, the hand of a talented and experienced designer is exactly what is needed in order to bring to life for the non-expert an otherwise hard-to-understand, inaccessible map or architect's diagram. It is an exceptionally difficult task to integrate design aesthetics and scholarly content, and overall I think the effort is laudable. To some extent, Counter Currents stands as what may come to be seen as a first-generation attempt at bringing together scholarship, policy and design. I really hope that the trend it has started continues, and that more academic publishers start to look into the potential of markets for books that integrate leading edge design and creative content alongside (and inside) research-led, policy-oriented writing.

Next, the ethics. The book is filled with probing texts that that make arguments for how sustainable development in the region might take shape, putting forward project plans for a variety of areas from the Spier estate outside of Stellenbosch to District Six to the City Bowl to the Kosovo informal settlement near Khayelitsha. It is also filled with expositions on why these projects have not, or will not work (usually due to a lack of political will). Drawing on the experiences, critiques and visions of a wide range of urban planners, policymakers, architects and other experts, the collection of essays takes on what might to sceptics seem an insurmountable task - how can socio-economic rights, particularly with relation to housing and public services, be provided to the poorest of the poor in an environmentally sustainable and humanist way?

Focussing this research question on the unique complexities of the Cape Town region's history, geography, climate, socio-economics and culture, a variety of scenarios are sketched out. Compelling arguments are made about possibilities for low cost-housing, for an arts and culture hub in the Winelands, for sustainable public transport infrastructures, and for educational spaces. But these remain largely visions, scenarios, ideas and proposals. There is a strong sense of 'blue-skies thinking' and creative, innovative approaches to solving the myriad of problems that a city like Cape Town faces. Surely all decent people imagine a more just future, in which every citizen of the greater Cape Town area has access to shared public space, comfortable places to live, work and play, green place and safety? So why hasn't it happened? Critics might argue that much of the content of Counter Currents is nothing but variations on a pipe dream, and that the lack of political will and the presence of corruption make the projects impossible to achieve. Indeed, in many of the chapters, the authors themselves point out how and why the vision is as yet unattainable.

But, as Pieterse argues in the conclusion, the views included in the volume should be seen as ideas that are 'open to be appropriated and deployed by anybody who wants to make a contribution without feeling they need resources or permission to act'. This is a pretty darned optimistic vision. At best, the book could be considered a starting point for an ongoing debate about how sustainable development can be enacted in Cape Town (and beyond, if successful interventions can be appropriated as blueprints for other regions). In this sense it is inspiring. But in some senses it is also a catalogue of political failure. It is full of ideas, many of which may never be realised in material terms. But we can always hope that they will be - and expressing the ideas and sharing them in a lasting and noticeable format such as Counter Currents is perhaps the best possible way of getting started on that journey towards a better life for all.

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Counter Currents: Experiments in Sustainability in the Cape Town Region
Edited by Edgar Pieterse
2010
Published by African Centre for Cities, UCT and Jacana Publishing

Zinaid Meeran's debut novel Saracen at the Gates, winner of the EU Literary Award, was published in 2009 by Jacana. It is "a revolutionary tale that is as raucously hilarious as it is poignant, with a satirical edge"; it is also a story a love affair and a coming-of-age, a political piss-take, a thesis in post-modern identity politics, a buzzing portrait of a crazy city, Johannesburg. Read an extract of Saracen at the Gates here.

Zinaid agreed to field some questions from ITCH Editor, Mehita Iqani.  

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Mehita Iqani: How long did you work on the novel?
Zinaid Meeran: I worked on it sporadically for two years.

MI: Why did you write it?
ZM: I have an Afrikaner cop grandfather, a Cape Coloured-atheist-exiled mother of Madagascan/Khoisan/Indonesian/Afrikaans/Portuguese descent; an apostate-Lay-Z-Boy-armchair revolutionary father of Muslim Junglee Canecutter origins, and an agnostic-exiled stepfather of Swiss/English/Godbevok Christian Missionaries-doing the Lords' work in Lebanon origins. I had no male role models as my pops was strapped into his lay-Z-Boy chowing peanuts and slangetjies for the duration. I grew up surrounded by crazy hyperfeminine curry mafia aunties and my Islam Dizzy stepmother. So I grew up wondering why on earth people kept calling me Indian and just as bad - a man. Being boxed in like this traumatised me finished, so I had to write the novel to make sense of why people are so obsessed with forcing racial, gender and sexual identities on others. The book is a war cry in support of all those people who don't have a class, gender, country or race. There are many people out there who are thoroughly puzzled at having these identities foisted on them and they need a voice. This is a voice that mutters/stutters/whispers/roars that some people see their sense of self as fragmented and fluid and not those old school stiff, concrete identities. Seeing as I had time to write the book in between struggling to make feature films about the same vilified themes, well, I ended up being one of those voices.      

MI: How did you feel about having it published, and winning the award?
ZM: I was in the forests, on a Chingachook hiking trip when I finally got around to checking my SMSes. It was my twin brother and partner in gunpowder, treason and plot, Jean, saying that I been nominated for the award and might win. I was not at all surprised as for some delusional reason I always think I will get whatever I want, but I was also stunned as after ten years of Team Tarbaby's feature films on the same themes tanking - Saracen at the Gates had also been mired in development hell with the SABC - that I strongly believed the bigshots had put the kibosh on what I had to say. I understand too, why they would do this.

MI: Are you working on any future novels?
ZM: I have been thinking about it, but it's a little hazy at the moment. In the meantime, read my brother Jean's novel. It's very racy.

MI: Any advice for aspiring writers (many of whom publish work on ITCH?)
ZM: I would say, simply write about what hurts you the most and makes you feel the most exposed. Don't be afraid that people will misread your work. The more they misread it the better. That means your work is an exploration rather than a lecture, and that makes beautiful writing. You see with Saracen at the Gates when I had finished I realised with a horrible bang that most people would see it as the story of a cloistered Muslim girl when, for me, it is nothing of the kind. But then I thought, well I'm happy, as that means the story is wide open for interpretation.

MI: The narrative seems to suggest that, to start with at least, Zakira is simply a product of her environment. To what extent do you think someone's identity is defined by nature and nurture, and to what extent is it a choice to be something?
ZM: Well it's all of the above. That we are products of our environment and nature makes it all the more exciting to fiddle with or even overturn our sense of self. It's a wild ride and makes life worth it.

MI: Would you agree with a reading of Zakira's journey as one of enlightenment? We know she starts out as a 'curry mafia princess', what does she become?
ZM: I think she comes to the brink of shedding her camouflage. She comes to the point of realising that the exploration of a fragmented and fluid sense of self might be more exciting than a life of ducking and diving. However, it's a cusp and who knows where she might go. I suspect she might have a relapse when Sofie and Zakira move to mosquito-ridden Hazyview on the outskirts of the Kruger National Park. In a fit of princess pique Zakira may bunt Sofie into the hippo-infested river that rings the golf course.

MI: The character of Zakir, the protaganist's twin brother, ricochets between a series of (hilarious) spoofs. Did you intend him to be a chameleon/clown, or simply place his seemingly petty identity struggles in the background so that we would focus on the real existential woes of Zakira?
ZM: I like that he comes across as a funny chameleon but I saw his identity struggles as pretty grave. What I think I was on about is that even the prince of the curry mafia, the heir to all the largesse and perks of his status, struggles to find his own sense of self. I wanted to show that even seemingly patriarchal, rich jollers are also pummelled by patriarchy, are both the masters and the slaves of a camouflage they are trapped in. Zakir takes all the sanctioned markers of curry mafia princedom to such extremes that they become a kind of rebellion. He is the most reckless driver, the most fanatical pro-Palestine raghead sympathiser, the most tycoon-like, the most pious, and eventually the most renegade, and distant. For him to break out, considering the weight of his privilege he must run all the way to Iceland to farm potatoes with his Ethiopian Jewish girlfriend.

MI: So many of the witty and funny observations in the book entail incisive descriptions of the identities of the many diverse ethnic/cultural/religious/subcultural groups that populate the Jo'burg scene. Sometimes these seem to border on essentialism - but the entire political thrust of the book seems to suggest that identity is fluid, fragmented and ultimately contestable. How do you reconcile these two things?
ZM: Satire, I think, is where the book took me. I wanted to show that ethnic and racial and gender categories are just nonsense. So I portrayed the characters in a deliberately stereotyped way while subverting these stereotypes with savage satire. I take the ethnic and gender stereotypes so far and so perverse that they must shatter into fragments and flow into a lovely goo. Of course those looking for essences of race, gender and ethnicity will happily find them in the book. I think if you have a satirical bent you have to run the risk of being accused of being at best an essentialist and at worst, a patriarch and Ku Klux Klansman.

MI: At times I felt Zakira might fall in love with all sorts of other people - enigmatic Bilkis, post-outed Panty, even the sexy Somali chicken guy. Considering these hints of her voracious erotic appetite, do you imagine that things will work out with Zakira and Sophie - long term, I mean?
ZM: I think after Zakira shoves Sofie into the hippo-infested lake the golf course landscaper busy pruning the Strelizias will dive in and save Sofie. Of course Zakira will have her way with this same landscaper, then the vet who has to take care of the traumatised baby hippo that Sofie falls on, then Bilkis when she drives to Hazyview to comfort the shaken Sofie. Panty will hook up years later with Sofie in Shanghai when he is the head of his own underwear dynasty, and she is doing research for her post-doc by posing as a rogue trader on the Shanghai stock exchange.

MI: The Saracens infiltrated the Hooligans crowd, ostensibly to bring the place down from the inside. Do you think it's really possible to cause a revolution from within a system, without getting distracted and seduced by what that system provides?
ZM: I don't think it is possible, no. But the thrill of our postmodern-to-the-power-of-three lives is that we are all subsumed and co-opted within the monster. Its like we have been swallowed up, pretty much since the revolutionary era ran aground, and we have no option but to tough it out from deep inside the body of a giant marine brachiosauraus. I am not saying that its possible to effect a revolution from inside the intestines of this leviathan, but we sure as hell gonna make the critter giggle by tickling its ribs and maybe tickle so hard it breaks a rib or busts a gut one day. Living inside the beast means dreaming about a better world and doing whatever we can to bring it about, without assuming something so grand, and ultimately self-defeating as a revolution. I think Sofie comes to this realisation herself. To revolt against the monster she flirts with becoming a curry mafia bandit herself, and pulls back in shame. I think she chooses a life of subversion and dissidence instead of one of a totalising revolt.

MI: Is Osama bin Laden really hiding in Fordsburg, do you think?
ZM: I hope so. It will bring the good ol' RSA back into the media limelight. Plus the curry mafia will be the first ones to sell him out and that will bust any stereotyped ideas of Muslims loving Al Qaeda.

MI: Did you model the Cachalia family bakery on a specific place? Those confectionary delights sounded so delicious - I'm just wondering if they are obtainable in real life too.
ZM: Ja, there is a joint on Fordsburg Main Road, Shalimar I think its called. That's the spot.

MI: I struggled to believe that Zakira really willingly abandoned her Bee-Em. She went back to get it later, right? And drove it off into the sunrise?
ZM: You are perceptive! I suspect you have a shade of curry mafia in your background. That is exactly the Bee-em that Sofie and Zakira drive to Hazyview in, though they sell it in Mozambique to fund their LM prawn habit.

MI: If you were to turn this into a film (you are after all, a filmmaker too), who would you cast to play Zakira?
ZM: The film's been in development with the SABC for a good couple of years now, as part of a venture by the broadcaster to make feature films but Team Tarbaby has not heard a word from the execs since July 2009. I fear they might be incarcerated. Anyway, the film is called Gazelle911, but is very recognisably based on Saracen at the Gates. I would cast the girl from Let the Right One In, the Swedish vampire film, as Sofie. She is only twelve but it will take a good ten years for the film to be made so she is the right age. For Zakira any tween gypsy waif will do, the Roma, after all, are the finest curry mafia the world has seen.

Guerilla Art, edited by Sebastian Peiter, is a coffee-table style, hardcover art book that contains a compilation of profiles and interviews with some of the world's best-known street artists. These include British Banksy (of course!), Brazilian twins os gémeos, New York graffiti crew, Barnstormers, and Parisians Space Invader and Blek Le Rat, as well as a number of up and coming artists who are constantly redefining the scene. The hardcover, image-strong format of the book suits its purpose – to profile influential street artists and record a snapshot of their signature style and key works. Fans of typography might enjoy the photographs of Eine's distinctive letters on London roller-doors which are used as headings throughout the pages. While rich in images and very effective in terms of ensuring that the voices of the artists themselves comes through loud and strong, thus providing insight into their creative drives and political motivation, the book is somewhat lacking in a critical narrative that ties all of these different perspectives together. It does not explore the key themes and similarities that drive the diverse collection of artistic styles, or dig into the aesthetic debates, disparities and schisms that may drive innovation and creativity within the scene. The interviews and profiles merely sketch out a brief history of each artist – when they starting making street art, what motivated them, how they defined their unique style. This is not to say that such insights are not interesting or even useful, especially to fans of popular and street culture, but I felt there was a little something missing in terms of bringing together these narratives into something that was more than the sum of its parts; more than a catalogue of individual street artists with memorable visual signatures.

This is rectified to some degree, however, in the accompanying DVD documentary, which is cleverly embedded into the book's front cover. Filmed in large cities all over the world and featuring interviews with many key street artists, it shows the artists' in action, and includes an accessible and in-depth commentary on the ways in which commercial cultures have appropriated and interacted with graffiti artists, and vice versa. An overarching critical theme comes together in the film much more strongly than in the book. There is something about the multimedia format of the film that brings the subject matter more to life – to see Blek Le Rat pasting up a massive stencil, or witness how WK Interact gets his dynamic portraits of stretched gunslingers on to the walls of Manhattan's streets is truly fascinating. It is also very interesting to see how leading street artists – such as Paris' André, known for his stick figure tags - have successfully crossed over into gallery spaces and become innovative cultural entrepreneurs in their own right, skirting the appropriation of large multinationals.  

All in all, the Guerilla Art book/DVD set is sure to be a handsome addition to trendy coffee tables (especially if there is a Banksy or Obey print on the wall behind it). Its certainly a good introduction to the word's leading street artists to those not yet in the know, although to those who are, the film in particular offers great insight into a fascinating area of popular culture. 

Guerilla Art
Edited by Sebastian Peiter
Laurence Kind, 2009