Zapiro: The Mandela Files

Design Activism/2009/Reel № 09.001

ByJonathan Shapiro

Zapiro Pecha Kucha (part one): The Mandela Files

What Can Your Creativity Do?/Recorded 2009

A close reading, kept within reach.

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The short version

Jonathan Shapiro takes design activism as a lens on the larger question the festival keeps returning to: what design owes to the people and places it works among. The talk moves from specific projects toward a broader argument about practice.

Recorded in South Africa in 2009, the conversation is grounded in Jonathan's own working method — the compromises, the constraints, and the moments where the work taught them something they didn't expect.

The closing turn is characteristic of the archive: less a conclusion than a provocation, handed to the audience to carry into their own disciplines.

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What did Jonathan say about…

The Mandela Files, by South Africa's best-loved and most widely known satirical cartoonist Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro), looks at Mandela as an icon and leader.

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About the speaker

Jonathan Shapiro

Cape Town/South Africa

Better known as Zapiro, he has published 11 cartoon collections and held solo exhibitions in New York, London and Frankfurt.