“What better fictional reality to explore than the ZONE?
That strange place of constantly shifting boundaries: unknown, tricky and dangerous-yet rewarding, with unexpected difficulties and surprises. One had to learn how to navigate the Zone. One needed to become a Stalker to lead others through the terrain, riddled with the potential for calamity and misplaced or misunderstood dreams.”
— Carrie Galbraith
Originator of the Cacophony Society ‘Zone Trip’
There is a secret message, hidden in the anthropomorphic cave drawings of the Cape Fold Mountains, half-horse half-man, half-heffalump half-narwhal; still rumoured amongst the Khoisan of the Karoo, whispered by wolf se vrou on the desert winds and cackled by the three witches at night… that nestled in the foothills of Tankwa Town, wedged deep in the cradle of mankind, somewhere between the timeless sand dunes of Quaggafontein and the crack of Anansi’s ass, lies a place in which magic still exists…
Dearest artists, dreamers, miscreants, poets, builders, believers, renegades, anarchists, lovers and light weavers… whether you’re ON the Bus or OFF the Bus, we invite you to take a journey with us into that mythical liminal zone – that elastic upside down, inside out, uncomfortably delicious, deliberately serendipitous, threshold – between the desert and the default world… that we all call Home.
It’s buying the ticket and taking the ride
It’s meeting a new group of people, and changing their lives
It’s creating a space that opens others eyes as much as your own
It’s painting your mind with technicolour raindrops
It’s your pozzie in the Platteland
It’s the sound of a dop going pop
It’s being fluent at speaking Arabic in Swahili
It’s your nipples feeling jas in a dusty breeze
It’s the shudder down your back when you have a good pee
It’s a bishop in space boots praying for a spanking
It’s a lunge so deep it’s got a PhD in philosophy
It’s an oh ja, a come on, a come up and a hayibo
It’s your alter ego in high heels
It’s your own kak gedagtes
It’s a temple, a mirage, a message, a massage
It’s a cow jumping over the moon with a silver spoon
It’s none of your hopes and all of your dreams
It’s realising we all bak for the same team
It’s a fearless rainbow leader in his birthday suit
It’s a penguin eating an ice cream telling a joke
It’s the kuns, the questionable kuns, the outrageous kuns, the kuns that does not stop to wonder whether or not it is kuns
It’s a kakpraat and an inability to speak
It’s your own experience, and everyone else’s too
It’s the music, when the music starts to read you
It’s all the things you wished you said
It’s a sense of je na sais quoi dancing through the elements
It’s a rising Clan, a shooting star, a downward dog, a massive hug and a hiccup
It’s a case of tennis elbow and a bon vivant trying to sabrage a bottle of Dutch Courage
It’s a powerful playful working ephemirage, a dreamy timeless archetype of the muddy afro x-tribe
It’s now now, just now and right here, right now IN 2022
It’s the time of your life, when life needs more time
It’s alles at once and none of the above
It’s not for sale, and neither are you
It’s new and improved, old and used
It’s something borrowed and something blue
It was better next year
It’s that moment with sand in your eyes and tears in your mouth, when you know: after today, things will never be the same again
It’s the love inside you that you can’t contain
It’s bursting from your heart and it’s always in your head
It’s between your sheets and beneath your bed
It’s what you make of it, everything you need and all the rest
iPhuma EMzantsi Afrika
It’s the … Elastic Kraal-Art Burning Test
Well it seems to me, that all real communities grow out of a shared confrontation with survival. Communities are not produced by sentiment or mere goodwill. They grow out of a shared struggle. Our situation in the desert is an incubator for community.
— Larry Harvey
