Equator #1

‘The end of the West is not the end of the world’

Equator is a new, large-format political and cultural publication launched in response to the failure of the West to respond to the global violence of events such as the genocide in Gaza. As the American Century stutters to a halt, the magazine proposes that ‘the time has come to create something new,’ instead of attempting once again to reform the West’s legacy media and intellectual assumptions.

The stories here offer multiple voices, ignoring strict political lines in favour of a shared refusal to accept what has been the norm for the last century and beyond. Lina Mounzer discusses the Western media’s tendency to box Middle-Eastern writers into a cliché voice of tragedy; Rahmane Idrissa recalls her first flight from Niger to the US as she examines ‘Statemania’—the late 20th century African obsession with migrating to the US; and Zheng Ziaoquiong presents the stories of Chinese labourers who migrated across the country to power Guangdong’s manufacturing revolution.

The main channel here is long-form writing, but Sohrab Hura’s vibrant photography series ‘The Coast’ bursts out of the centre spread, its pages unfolding to offer an alternative view of the magazine’s outlook (one of the images is used on the front cover of the issue). Capturing intimate, informal moments from along the Indian coastline, it reminds the reader of the people on the ground, the individuals affected by the new world paradigm gradually revealing itself.