Pidginization as Curatorial Method by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Pidginization as Curatorial Method: Messing with Languages and Praxes of Curating by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung was edited by Steven Henry Madoff and published by Sternberg Press:
In this compelling rethinking of curatorial practice, renowned museum director, curator, and writer Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung proposes that Pidgin languages and pidginization as a mode of being and doing offer a decolonialized reinvention of communicative practices—a space in which the boundaries between disciplines of knowledge collapse and sociopolitical, economic, ethical, and spiritual concepts and questions are renegotiated. Written as a series of powerful anecdotes, the book grounds its provocative ideas in personal, cultural, and political histories of challenge and improvisation, and argues, as Ndikung writes, that “pidginized curating is a curating that combines works, ideas, practices, and languages in resistance to canonical conventions, cultural stasis, ossified practices, dead rhythms, and singular forms.”
Designer Bardhi Haliti used Magister [more specifically, Magister ST, see comments] to typeset the book’s headers, subheaders, page headers and body text. The perfect-bound softcover has 64 pages and measures 112×178 mm.
The same typography was used for the other volumes in the “Thoughts on Curating” series, see Curating the Complex & The Open Strike by Terry Smith and Unannounced Voices by Zdenka Badovinac.
2 Comments on “Pidginization as Curatorial Method by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung”
I’m aware of four different digitizations of Aldo Novarese’s Magister now, but none of them is a match for the type on the book cover, at least when I compare it against the samples available to me.
The visual comparison above shows, from top to bottom:
• a detail from the book cover designed by Bardhi Haliti in 2023
• Magister Ten as digitized by Laurenz Brunner with Fabian Harb around 2013. Unreleased, but further developed into ST Magister, to be released with Source Type?
• OT Magister Book as digitized by Leonardo Azzolini as part of his thesis project at ECAL in 2015 and to be released with Omnitype
• Magister FL Neretta as digitized by Ben Fehrman-Lee in 2016–2020 and made available on request
• R41 Magister Regular as digitized Fulvio Bisca and Stefano Torregrossa and released with Reber R41 in 2021
This suggests that there is yet another one.
Alright, mystery solved – it’s Magister ST! Brunner took his interpretation quite a bit further from the early Magister Ten (and Twenty). The beta version of Magister ST used for the 2021/22 season preview of Schauspielhaus Zürich appears to match the font used by Haliti.