The My-Stery: The Social Brain, Psionic Ability and Shiftings of Mind, Body and Space

While reading this morning Brainpicking’s, “The Science of Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect,” the article stood out to me because of its connection between sociality, survival and mindreading: “[Matthew D. Lieberman] argues that this osmosis of sociality and individuality is an essential aid in our evolutionary development rather than an aberrant defect in […]

Otherworldly Videos: High Priestesses – Gira Dahnee + Omega Sirius Moon

Love and Death: Gira Dahnee – “Painted Waltz” Omega Sirius Moon – “OSM: DESTROY: The Trip to Shaman Rock”

Cosmic Ghost at the Museum: Notes from Kindred Book Club

Here’s the third recap from The Shadows Took Shape exhibition. Today, I am sharing the notes and questions (some thoughts came after the club) from the book club for Octavia Butler’s Kindred with moderators Rasheedah Phillips of The Afrofuturist Affair and artist John Jennings. First, notes from Rasheedah’s presentation, Time, Memory and Agency *The mechanics […]

Cosmic Ghost at the Museum: The Shadows Took Shape Panel Recap

As Afrofuturism becomes more mainstream, sometimes popular conversations about it become also a bit stagnant, which is why I enjoy local conversations about it and hearing people’s personal relationships to it; I tend to learn a lot more. That’s what I got with this week’s panel discussion at the Studio Museum in Harlem with curators […]

Cosmic Ghost at the Museum: The Shadows Took Shape Highlights

To the right is the exhibition book from Naima J. Keith and Zoe Whitley curated exhibition, The Shadows Took Shape. It is a nice-looking book with purple pages and reversed alphabetical order of artists, and it’s royally expensive, too ($50), but it looks worth it. Anyway, here are some of the artists and work that […]

What Is Afrofuturism? Part 17: Decentering Cultural Space in Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism as an aesthetic and critical lens is known for its analyses and strategies of decentering and revising norms and stereotypes about race, gender, sexuality and class, but as Afrofuturism is expanding, there are other areas, besides the ones mentioned before, to still be worked on like issues of globalism (“the neoliberal vision of homogenising […]

The My-Stery: Why STEM Fields Need an A(rt)…

A few days ago I witnessed a twitter battle between astrologist Sam F. Reynolds and Science Nerd/Blogger Rai Elise on November 5th (click on view conversation to read her tweets) over the legitimacy of astrology and the conversation highlighted some important and common conflicts between art fields and science/math/technology fields. Reynolds says some key things […]

Otherworldly Videos: Transmission Series

Ekari (Ashleigh Ekari) is developing a series called TRANSMISSION: Afrofuturism as an Archive as part of her senior capstone project for the class Re-Imagining the Archive. She describes it as “exploring the ways in which speculative fiction, namely Afrofuturism, functions as a ‘future archive,’” or in other words, “a collection of speculative future possibilities, a collection […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Yugen Blakrok’s “Return of the Astro-Goth”

In continuing with women this week who are taking hip-hop to higher spaces: Cosmic rap (or God Hop as some artists call it) is in South Africa by way of the Johannesburg independent label Iapetus Records (Saturn’s moon) and emcee, Yugen Blakrok. Influenced by other labels like Boogie Down Productions, The Bomb Squad and Ninja […]

Otherworldly Videos: Colored Girls Hustle’s “Afro Aliens” + Pink Oculus’ “Sweat”

Here are premieres of two videos from women taking female empowerment to higher levels: Colored Girls Hustle (Taja Lindley and Jessica Valoris) – “Afro Aliens” Donate to their Colored Girls Hustle Hard mixtape fundraiser!