Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Stacy Hardy & Neo Muyanga
Pulmonographies
we have been asked to think about this coronaviral moment in the context of longer duree histories and structures. we have been asked to articulate our reflections in the form of a correspondence. the ethos of “cc: world”, as we understand it, is to look and think before and beyond the moment. to respond to this ethos, we must look and think before and beyond the moment of this exercise. hence, we offer a correspondence that precedes, exceeds and incorporates the task we have been set. the “correspondence” of cc: world emerges out of a longer duree correspondence, itself translocal, following different routes and trajectories, still emergent. our respective practices are different, but we have shared stakes in pedagogy. in a practice of teaching and learning, including teaching and learning from each other. what we offer here, therefore, is a syllabus of shared breath.
About the artist
Kaushik Sunder Rajan is Professor of Anthropology and co-director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. His work engages social theories of capitalism, technology studies and postcolonial studies, holding a special interest in the global political economy of biomedicine, with a comparative focus on the United States and India. He is the author of Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life (2006) and Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine (2017).
Stacy Hardy is a writer, an editor and a teacher. Her collection of short fiction, Because the Night, was published in 2015. She regularly collaborates with Angolan composer Victor Gama. Her experimental performance piece, Museum of Lungs (2018-2019), was performed around the world. She is currently working on a collaborative endeavor with anthropologist Kaushik Sunder Rajan and musician Neo Muyanga, as well as a libretto for an opera with composer Bushra El-Turk and director Laila Soliman.
Neo Muyanga lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a composer and sound artist whose work traverses new opera, jazz improvisation, Zulu and Sesotho idiomatic songs. He co-founded the duo Blk Sonshine with Masauko Chipembere and the internet platform for experimental music Pan African Space Station (2008) with Ntone Edjabe. He has released eight albums, including Second-hand Reading with William Kentridge (2016), and MAKEbdA (2019) which was a featured sound installation at the Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2019).