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Contents
editorial
SIYAMTHANDA-MUHLE MUYANGA
Ngiyasaba makusa, ngoba kumele ngivuke (I fear the morning, because I must wake up)
MNQOBI NGUBANE, TSOGO KUPA & EUGENE SKEEF
Mathonga Elizwe (Spirits of the Land)
ITUMELENG MAHABANE
Towards an ontology of [decolonised] being.
LAVITUDE RAMPHOMANE
The Elephant in the Room
SIMON NKULULEKO SPOOR
Thinking about Violence and GBV in South Africa
DHIRU SONI
The Silent Crisis of South African Libraries
Theme Decay Without Mourning
WAMUWI MBAO
A Circumstantial Account of The State of Decay
LIZABÉ LAMBRECHTS
To Decay - on custodianship, care, and the ethics of returning.
KATI LINDSTRÖM
Antarctica: Continent of the Future
LIZE-MARIÉ HANSEN VAN DER WATT
Imperialism, South Africa’s Antarctic Heritage and Decay, 1910-1961
NICOLA DEANE
Endling by Dominique Edwards & Nicola Deane
LEIF PETERSEN
Decay: transcript of a documentary film about bossiedokters
EVE WONG
Missing People, Present Decay: Fabulous Matter, or the Decomposition of Colonial Ontology
PAKAMA S. NCUME
Digitisation and Decay: An Archivist’s Ethics of Care for Reel-to-Reel Tape Preservation
SIMPHIWE MLAMBO
Flowers on Your Grave - Postcards to the occupants of the subsurface, below the monument line
NELISIWE XABA & BRENTON MAART
In Conversation about vRot: The politics and poetry of decay
NJABULO CHIPANGURA
Relational care in reimaging meanings of African Heritage Objects at Manchester Museum
HANNA B. HÖLLING
What of Conservation? After Permanence: On Decay as a Critical Ethics
SIGRID ADORF & ANDREA SICK
Restaging, De-closing, Versioning: Unfolding Temporalities of “the Archive” (Lecture Script)
TSHOLOFELO MOCHE
Home Truths II: What Is in A Name
MICHAEL SCHOFIELD
Decay, Creativity and Care in Stellenbosch
FLORENCIA LEVY
Audiencia de espectros
NEITH MOORE
Molecular Fabulations: From Ashes to Algorithms
MARISA MARÉ
Beyond Solutionism: Decay as Relational Practice in Bioplastic Art
MAIJA HIRVANEN
Mycoscores / Choreospores
HYUNGGYU KIM
Afterimages of Decay: Rebuilding the Democratic Process of Designing through Digital Ruins
ORLANDO VIEIRA FRANCISCO
Flags of Other Winds: Decay, Resistance, and Infrastructural Entanglements
ALEXANDRA DODD
hypha: A response to the first screening of Aryan Kaganof’s found footage film during the Decay Without Mourning conference
CARA STACEY
Hypha
GLICÉRIA TUPINAMBÁ
Bordunas
IRINEU NJE’A TERENA
Ancestral Ceramic Technology
galleri
LIZABÉ LAMBRECHTS & NICOLA DEANE
Deaccessioned
IO MAKANDAL
Watermelon
CECILIA VICUÑA
'Your Rage is Your Gold'
THOKOZANI MTHIYANE
Fragments (Memory of others)
JOAN OTIENO
Art as the Social Impact of Repurposing Waste Materials
DAVID EDWARDS
Urban Decay in Johannesburg and the Reef: The world as Evidence
BERKVELDT
Necrosonic Landscapes – Exploring the Transitional Realm Between Life and Death
DICK HIGGINS
Symphony No.357 from The Thousand Symphonies 1968
FEDERICO FEDERICI
Reactivating the Score: Unmastered Bones
STEVEN J. FOWLER & FEDERICO FEDERICI
Some notes on bones as writing tools and the Unmastering technique of Federico Federici
ANDREA ROLFES
my mother’s eyes
NICOLA DEANE
Spectres of Decay: The archive breathing at its horizon by Jurie Senekal & Nicola Deane
ADLI YACUBI
The Price of Silence: Gaza, Venice, and the Fear Inside Cultural Institutions
TANIA HABERLAND
the torrid zone
NEILL SOLOMON
33rpm
MEGHAN HO-TONG, MATTY ROODT & LUCIENNE BESTALL
Chorus
FRANCOIS ROBERT
Stop the Violence
TAKAHIRO SAWAMURA
Liberating Letters and Words from Lines and Stanzas
DICK VERDULT
CUANDO BUENA PATADA ES MAS QUE BIENVENIDA
JAMES USILL
Disruption
LOUISE POTGIETER
remarking life
DAVID CRITCHLEY
Trialogue
LUIS HERNANDEZ
Three Figures and Two Landscapes
borborygmus
ANDILE KHUMALO
The Invisible Life of Sound: Nachklang, Decay and Ancestral Temporality
DIMITRI VOUDOURIS
“Sound an ecological engagement”
CARA STACEY, ADAM MIRZA & AKIVA ZAMCHECK
“Where’s Wanda?”
LARS GOTRICH
Divinity From Dust: The Healing Power Of 'The Disintegration Loops'
THE CARETAKER
Decay, Everywhere At The End of Time
PETR FERENC, KRISTUPAS GIKAS & MARTIN JANIČEK
Broken Music Feedback Concert
THOMAS MICHIE
Claudia Molitor's Decay: An evolving and reflective meditation on life's work-in-progress
CY CANTEREL
Living with Ghost Machines - Generative AI as hauntological determinism
MICHAEL SCHOFIELD
Aura, Decay and the Simulation of Ghosts
STEVEN CRAIG HICKMAN
What is Posthuman Porn?
PIOTR BOCKOWSKI
Artaud’s media of corporeal decomposition
ARYAN KAGANOF
Endling: decaymentation as poetics
frictions
SONGEZIWE MAHLANGU
Echoes of Blackness and other Underground Bound Poems for God’s Children on A Cold Night Tenant’s Meeting before the Revolution (Fire Story dub)
LESEGO RAMPOLOKENG
= DECAY
PIETER MADIBUSENG ODENDAAL
a beautiful amnesia
DONALD RICHIE
The Zen Library - A Sermon
JURGEN MEEKEL
Lost in Dictation
RINA GARCIA CHUA
Ataulfo
THOMAS BERNHARD
Fäulnis
ABIGAIL GEORGE
Two Decay Poems
TAKAHIRO SAWAMURA
Asemic Diaries
VONANI BILA
Masonto (an excerpt from the epic LAMENT FOR MZALA)
TUANA
Hiç Anlaşilamamis
SERAME ICEBOUND MAKHELE
"Icebound Keeps Poetry Alive"
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI
The Unmaking of the Colonial Archive and the Aesthetics of Evasion: Mudimbe, Coetzee, and the Problem of Writing Africa from the European Archive
SARAH MANGUSO
The Two Kinds of Decay (excerpts)
claque
DINI SANDISO BAZANA
Receiving Lesego Rampolokeng's When the Fires Go Down, the Reading Begins: Not a review. A reception. A sitting with a book that became dirty because it stayed with me.
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI
The Empire’s Cabinet of Curiosities - A review of Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums, Edited by Sela K. Adjei and Yann LeGall
STEVEN CRAIG HICKMAN
Chthonic Thresholds: Andrew C. Wenaus and the Decay of Electronic Literature
ARYAN KAGANOF
The Entropic Real: Louis Armand's Entropology through the lens of decay studies
MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
Neo Lekgotla Langa Ramoupi’s Robben Island: Songs of Struggle – Izingoma Zomzamalazo
SITHEMBELE ISAAC XHEGWANA
Disgrace and the Politics of Shame: Sexual Violence, Colonial Legacies, and Post-Apartheid Identity in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
SIPHOKAZI JONAS
Stacy Hardy’s An Archaeology of Holes
MBE MBHELE
Notes on the Return to the Rural
SEAN O’TOOLE
Gnossienne
MURIEL TINEL-TEMPLE
Jonas Mekas, Shiver of Memory, by Peter Delpeut.
NIDA YOUNIS
A Review of Antemanha's poem Berlin Fragmente
LETHOKUHLE MSIMANG
Fatherland - Theatre Production
FAT CITY VINYL & MUSIC BLOG
Keith Hudson - Flesh Of My Skin (VP, 2021)
MKHULU MBAZO
Under good influence: a warning on the dangers of idolatry and the worship of money.
ekaya
ZANDILE JOY DYWATI
“Black daughters and father(s): love as a praxis embedded in daughters' relationality with Black father(s)”
SOPHIA OLIVIA SANAN
De-centring White Histori(city)
KOPANO RATELE
How You Define African Psychology Determines What You Focus On: A Short Comparison of Five Definitions of African Psychology by African Psychologists
MTHUTHUZELI ZIMBA
The Mourning Project
ANDRÉ CLEMENTS
Urban Decay: A Post-Nihilist Aesthetic
JURGEN MEEKEL
Palinopsia
MARTIJN PANTLIN
The Decay Machine
MARKO PHIRI
Zimbabwe’s artistic truth decay
off the record
Dr SAZI DLAMINI
In memory of Abbey Duze Mahlobo and The Malopoets
LIZABÉ LAMBRECHTS
The Woodstock Sound System and South African sound reinforcement
LAURENCE HAMBURGER
The Lost Films of Abdullah Ibrahim
BLACK PLASTIC POSSE (BPP)
The Black Plastic Project (bpp)
FANIE JASON
Decayed Vinyl and the Real Value of Things
RANDALL ROBERTS
Meet the guardians of the world’s earliest musical recordings
WARRICK SWINNEY
Cow, Bears and Surfers: A few personal intersections with Chris Cutler.
HYBRYDS MUSIC
Erasure: a virulent form of decay
BRENDAN FRANZ & THE OTHER VINYL RECORD COLLECTORS CLUB
Our Grading System Sucks! Agree?
TEAGUE SCHNEITER
Ethical Presentation of Indigenous Media in the Age of Open Video: Cultivating Collaboration, Sovereignty and Sustainability
SAM MATHE
Remembering Michael Tshehla Phahlane
ARYAN KAGANOF
The Last Time I saw Bra Fiks
SOPHIE GRIMES
Beautiful Decay: The Poetry of Lucia Perillo
feedback
ALLAN BOESAK
6 September 2025
TSEPO YA RONA WA MAMATU
1 June 2022
CHRISTIAAN BOONZAAIER
An Interview in Die Burger 13 December 2021
OMOSEYE BOLAJI
My Apologies 6 December 2021
DIMAKATSO SEDITE
1 December 2021
PETER DELPEUT
The Forgotten Evil herri version 1 analysis and proposals 6 December 2020
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Facebook
the selektah
TED RIEDERER
Transfigurations
DUNKELHEIT PRODUKTIONEN
Index of Mechanical Signal Decay
PhD
ALÉSHA BREDELL
Visual Enquiries and Idiosyncratic Selections: A Close Reading of Dust
ALÉSHA BREDELL
A Close Reading of Dust as a Rhizomatic Phenomenon
ALÉSHA BREDELL
Dust as Abject
SEZGIN BOYNIK
Dust and the Archive
IGSHAAN ADAMS
When Dust Settles: The Body's Archive
STEVEN CRAIG HICKMAN
The Truth of Dust
DAVID MAISEL
Library of Dust
GLITCHMAN
SIGHTING THE DUST
hotlynx
hotlynx
hot hot
shopping
SHOPPING
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contributors
CONTRIBUTORS
From A to Z
the back page
REZA NEGARESTANI
Undercover Softness: An Introduction to the Architecture and Politics of Decay
WALTER MIGNOLO
HERITAGE, QATAR, ACСESS: Enacting the Archives, Decentring the Muses (on the decolonization of Western museums)
WOLFGANG ERNST
The Archive as Metaphor: From Archival Space to Archival Time
JULIE RESHE & ALENKA ZUPANCIČ
Human Animal, Positive Psychology, and Trauma: A Conversation
STEPHEN SCRIVENER
The art object does not embody a form of knowledge
SIMON TAYLOR
Cinema Signifies a Change in the Fundamental Structure of Reality
JEFFREY BABCOCK
The Alexandria of Absence
ASUBHA
Some Imaginary Conversations About Decay Without Mourning Between the Dead, the Living and the Living Dead
MICHAEL E. ZELLER
New Studies of Rare K+ Decays
© 2026
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    #13
  • frictions

LESEGO RAMPOLOKENG

= DECAY

(creaky gate open? sound escape rusty door close? soundscape)

From darkest destruction, magnificent brillance shards
Rearrangement from decay, evolution to a higher plane
(feel some religion coming on,
‘get thee behind me, Satan’ though sounds odd in this context
Let the riot burst forth & multiply, filth in the world cleanses.
Purity is death. despite taxi driver monologues)
Body horror rancid flesh ooze (suck the pus) & the brain drip
Blood congeal. Menses. One side rotten egg stench, other…foetus.
Long made Choice. Furtive. Sentient. Fugitive. Neither fixed nor fixable
abode. State: ultimate in-betweener, though, to be sure, not fence-sitter.
Exist in survival-mode. Cycle maggot to fly and back in one verse run on
reserve tank. Refuel on the hoof, off life. And death. Though more ebb
than flow function. Tension & release? More the ‘take the piss’ call.
Being deteriorate as come alive.
Fragmented image fractured optics
De/composition shit music
(Page-bait phenomena triggle to write
(pen brittle the sheet) Mental sheets excrete
Field record hollers crackle
Run through radio static signal mash wash
Out of mangle-ground Word the profound sound-
(innards exposed to the elements.
Jaco Pistorius—portrait of tracy
Decay in resurrection
A lower quality Christ
Second version come from ash
Reverse gravity pull heed the heavens’ call to rust
Sucked into the holy slit
‘anoint thee with mine venom-spit
‘Sip of the poisoned chalice’ covenant
Cult as intellect insult
Grater to the bible—Kemang wa Lehulere,
Posterity doctrine erosion
Exodus revelations
In the beginning was the grunt stutter that is Dub
Delay Echo Delay Sustain….spacecraft
Self-immolate the fire within
Sphincter haemorrage
Cost & change add & subtract multiply on the fly
The hurt Elastoplast butchered history plaster over it
Derangement campaign butchery training camp pain
Wriggle & squirm bandage
Crusts fall covers peel off the core reveals
Closer to the bone the fundamental
Strip insulate bleed pus sips
Suck on the purulence
Sesal & circuit
Spirituality commodification
(rotten from the neck down in the head resides heaven
Miscreant/deviant art Godly compensation
up from vegetable state to genius
‘eat what you shit’ perversion
Out the coffin the tombstone-blues
In the casket the basket case
Subvert it to remain ‘in the tradition’
In posterity find the ancient
They) puncture spine to heal brain
Out the anus into the mouth is regeneration
From anal to mineral deposit progression

--thantaomophose
Prosperity gore-spell cast upon the road to hell
Desperation street leads to worship
Soul-search the wishing well
Pray for the pastor his earthly riches yours in heaven
You to work to hair-fibre skin nail
past future and down the ages
From here to perverse paradise
Master & slave wink exchange
Script flips skin inside-out
Floats to surface the gem
Consumption elite gospel
Reptilian cables twist flick tongues
wires cross variegated flames burst
Signal (hill) on the blink
Transmission tower jam
Where the power switch?
The dying when the flames go down
Internecine surge
Breath gurgle is a blocked toilet system.
Foreign butt settle on native head
Drum & stick MOVE!
Illuminate the hate spite cast as light
(lived reality existent in the esoteric real)
Legitimise the paradise
Bog life bogged down in lice
Comes ideological chameleon
Spouting regime change
Got sense to derange
Play the divine card in the dop system vineyard
Cue the Vatican tithe the populace pope up opulence
Vantage point Hog’s Berth pit-latrine
Formal dick-hide
‘quite piggy’ on the riot-rig
Porcine vision scat-music
Audio-rape video-violate
We go in….rubber tongues animate
Bleached eye clear sighted grey conscious
Diaper Don trumps all liberatory noise
Acid thirst innards rust
Façades crumble faces eaten
Clap butt-cheeks offer the alternative christ
Strike pose for the most effective rectum-kick
Sediment Sewer-fare Decline Disintegration
Recede / recession at the Dub-tail of things
Reverb decay sustain release
Not invisible ink but ghost-lines are written
Kalahari Surfers
Lee Scratch Perry
Jimi Hendrix—3rd
Stone From The Sun
King Tubby
Kabasa - Love to Ralph
The Beatles - Revolution 9
Melt away take on existence different new meaning
Occupy a novel universe resurrection testament
Radioactive substance abuse
Shriek from the shadows
Echoplex sonics’ disappearance over the horizon
From around the corner phantom noise
Projectile dying along the way, record :
“the child stopped the life of a perfectly healthy, innocent bullet
with its back” target take the blame
Sight & sepsis void eyes
Burning, the pedo-file the pede-rust
Senses disintegrate logic evaporates
Perversion rises locked & loaded chambered lyric-flex
Meaning come in search of WORD The ingest & excrete cycle
The scream rolls back buckles up the throat to choke
Dying moment a new coming to life not Jesus-like
Rebirth before death rise from faeces night-mare riding
Psyche-ward sleep paralysis
Perfection is excretion
Decline to the top of the line
Caucasus mountains death caucus gathering of carcasses
Pile them up til the weight collapse
Then wait for the Lazarus rise from the wreckage
Age wrecks master-piss magnum-op-poes
Crash falls meteor hit earth explode
Birth itself manifold
Sound fragments pieced bits glued together
Morph into audio-collage
Cacophony here harmony there
To each their share melody transgress
‘bring the noise’-public enemy
Slime crisis: how to modulate hate?
Frequency mutilation machine particle deployment
Gibberish hit wall bounce back eloquence rich
Empty trash-bin cache
Mask-A-Raid (lowest fidelity)
Military parade lie definition/detection charade
When least expected attack
Tape hiss serpent to Eve
message in the drum call up Adam
Mis/arranged marriage carnage pre-curse
Biblical apple-bite proportion
Elevator to hell escalator beyond the bottom
There goes the WordSound
Revelation end before the Genesis
The eaten corrosive cleans up the innards
Travel in the snout down the aliment out anal
caught in the air swallowed back then all over again
Reconfigured restructured rebuilt incorrectly put back together
With magic ability added to ‘perform reality’

Flared nostrils indicate intense listening when breathing through the ears
What polish? Caveman production no rand-paper rub-down
Bum-rush the art-garbage truck recycle to repurpose (Buthelezi)
Run metrics in reverse from trash to organics hyper-creation
Erosion expose bone bone powdered get smoked
Low toke to highest zone
Existence on multiple plane dimensions switch
Born formed then the Benjamin Button press
From over-polish reel back to demo-stage back-to-front value system
Intro corrosive foreign element
Forget ‘civilise’ this ‘barbarise’ mission
Fire up low fart it ignite power-scent high art
Bass & tweet crash-meet feed hard
Bottom & top meet-merge past threshold
Comes the treble caused all the rubble
Red light blink distortion set in
fuse blow out mix sink into mud
Combustion spontaneous mechanical internal bleed
Archival haemorrhage canon collapse inward
Self-demolition
WORD. lip-lash. Glitch. Cognitive ability decline.
Alien invasion in the machine. Mutation.
Opposite gimmick to joke trajectory.
Musician-ship-wreck.
Flotsam jetsam shore up the debris.
3-2-1 shame on!
As the paintings rot in galleries
Museum pieces fall apart
Let the paint dry
Age it have its light come out
Cultural muscle memory atrophies
Zero co-ordinates GPS malfunction
no map PIN where any compass points
Unchartered course on canvass
Graduate coke to crack the potency process
Flesh eat crank up to Tranq bear Croc-fangs
No war anywhere (but) gore everywhere
Charlie Parker
Frank Zappa
“the music was too beautiful…had to turn grotesque” misquote
Defilement called the shred beckoned don art-rape-coats & set forth.
Soul insolvency dredge & scoop out the slop-bucket
Floor mop then speak straight out pocket
Dread communicate step on broken hourglass pieces
Tape back together (out of cog) know what the real time is:
Knowledge beyond propaganda punch no agenda-clock
Origination springs from mistake
Crack in the system no fake
Error births creation, not fraud
Fallen through the slit to re-create
Self re-breed not counterfeit
Everything initiate/originate nothing imitate
The morphed the greatest most high the tramp
What castle equal the least crawled out the swamp?
Fallen angels glory-borne luminous most illuminated
Scripture middle reads: cash me if you can
Church is up for transaction sells life eternal
Capital institution at profiteer freak station
And the filth was precious to the Virgin Lie :
‘most cleanliness in the pigsty than god habitat in the sky’
Chief your chief deity
Spiritual bankruptcy aesthetic
Soul insolvency poetics
That’s the rhythm-n-blues of it
‘talking all that jazz’ loud on the finance platform
Let it rip with the whip come on the back-beat
But whose back gets beaten?
Take it with pinch of salt-of-the-earth
‘unto death’ the lynch was promised not just
physical emotional mental
From the gutted the real the sewer sustain
DECAY definition’s in the manifestation.
***
Prattle-Rant
Manual: how to mine atrocity
History manufacture in laboratory
Packaged in factory
Value negotiated in boardroom
Become the present's heirloom
As the Zim gong goes BOOM
We) catch the reverberate-sound
Before it hits ground at the tail-bubble-end & BEAM
future-ward restructured dividend
dried-up jerk-wad
crusted menstrual bleed
unrealised lines on virgin pad
from them instant magnum opus
from shriek in drizzle to quiet storm
from the volcanic something classic
from concrete material to the ethereal
wheels-of-steel anarchic technique
drums in a scrum pyro/fire-riddim deconstruct
tempest in a cranium lyric
the more it ferment the more potent
(Nothing original in evil brain-wreck
Colour-sound spectrum orgiastic still minimalist no
clash
Register opposite Trumpy tantrum treasure from trash)
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SONGEZIWE MAHLANGU
PIETER MADIBUSENG ODENDAAL
© 2026
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