We have come full circle. At the beginning of this blog, I wrote how I was inspired to create this blog because of a clip from the documentary, “The Last Angel of History.” Fortunately, one of my followers, Mr. Thumble Waddle, gave me a link to the documentary and I was finally able to see it in its entirety. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the film:
“…Mothership connection is like the link between Africa as a lost continent in the past and between Africa as an alien future…” – Kodwo Eshun
“Roaming the internet, the data thief discovers a new word, Africa. Somewhere in this street is the secret of the mothership. The data thief knows that the first touch with science fiction came when Africans began playing drums to cover distance. Water carried the sounds of the drums; sound covered the distance between the old and the new world.”
“Our music is a mirror of the universe. We explore the future through music.”
“I am the firmament computer, I am the sky computer” – Scratch Lee Perry
“The data thief knows that there is a connection between music, space and the future.”
“The line between social reality and science fiction is a science fiction”
“Ever since the 50s you had electronics, which summoned up the alien, the monster; In the 70s you had Disco, which summoned up the idea of the clone and the robotic; by the time you get to the 80s, and Derrick May, techno is now something like a species…” – Eshun
“Techno to me means…to express man and machine intertwined…to bring these two elements together…to take technology up to level of human instinct…to make people see the human side of the technology…” Derrick May (That is what makes up the best Techno music)
“Black existence and science fiction are one in the same…the form itself, the conventions of the narrative in science fiction, in terms of the way they deal with subject, it’s usually someone who is at odds with the apparatus of power in the society and whose profound experience is one of cultural dislocation, alienation, estrangement…” – Greg Tate
“Our thief from the future gives up the right to belong in his time in order to come to our time to find the mothership connection. The thief becomes an angel, the angel of history. The data thief can visit the old world and the new, but he cannot be a part of either. He doesn’t know that is his problem.”
“Science fiction doesn’t try to predict the future, but rather offers a significant distortion of the present…We sit around and look at what we see around us and we say how can the world be different” – Samuel R. Delany (science fiction writer)
“New words: Sonic warfare, sonic Africa, Afrofuturism, digitized diaspora, Analog ecology.”
“Technology has broken time down because we are the future…We are always looking for the future and it is right underneath our nose….Because of technology and being able to take from any of those eras, time is irrelevant.”
Sadly, I will be putting this blog on a hiatus as I travel to London for a study abroad trip (that part is not sad hehe). You can follow the blog, A London Overture, that I will be running during my stay there. Thank you for reading my blog and I will be back the week of August 8th.
Up, Up and Away…….
Sherese Francis: Futuristically Ancient 