Moving on the Wires: This Week’s News and Posts

*Please DONATE to the blog! Any amount is appreciated! Either click on the donate button on the side or send donations to paypal via my email svfreebird87@gmail.com. Thank you! *”Don’t Blame Science Fiction for Hollywood’s Race Problem:” “And there’s a decent amount of it these days, because the post-millennial resurgence in Afrofuturism has been one of […]

Art of This World: City Trips

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the chance to see some out of this world art, so I’m sharing some of it. These are from the Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties exhibition that I saw at Brooklyn Museum: Barkley L. Hendricks’ “Icon for My Man Superman (Superman never saved any black […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Afronauts

Last Saturday, I went to to New Films/New Directors short film showcase, which included Frances Bodomo’s 14-minute film Afronauts. Based on the 1960s Zambian Space Program, which grade school teacher Edward Makuka Nkoloso set up and had amongst its crew a 17-year-old girl and two cats. In Bodomo’s film, albino model and actress, Diandra Forrest, stars […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Daví

It’s not that often today that I come to witness an artist who reminds me of some of my favorite musical artists and excites me because of the force of the creativity that they bring to their performance and musical work. One of them is artist, choreographer and DJ, Daví I first saw him at […]

Moving on the Wires: This Week’s News and Posts

*Please DONATE to my blog by clicking on the donate button at the side panel or send funds to my email svfreebird87@gmail.com. Any amount is appreciated! Thank you! *Feature about Dr. Sheena C. Howard on Black Girl Nerds: “Dr. Howard is author of the book Black Queer Identity Matrix (2014) and first author of the […]

Modern Griots Reviews: A Dream to Fly – The Bessie Coleman Story

This is for all the Diesel Funk fans out there and for Women’s History Month! What legacy are we leaving for others when we dare to dream our special dreams, despite all the limitations that face us or all the naysayers? That is what Madeline McCray aims to answer in her one-woman performance, A Dream […]

Moving on the Wires: This Week’s News and Posts

*Please DONATE to my blog! Any amount is appreciated! You can click the paypal button at the side panel or send it to my email svfreebird87@gmail.com through paypal. I was not able to do this post last week because my computer malfunctioned, so this is a combined post for the past two weeks. *If you […]

Modern Griots Recap: Li Sumpter, Greg Tate and Danny Simmons on Afrofuturism, Myth and “Image as Prophecy”

One of the final events for The Shadows Took Shape exhibition, which recently closed at the Studio Museum of Harlem, featured a conversation between mythologist Li Sumpter of Myth Media:21 Studios, cultural writer and musician Greg Tate and painter and curator Danny Simmons, in which they discussed afrofuturism, the apocalyptic, myth and archetypes. Li Sumpter […]

Blogging While Brown Changemakers: “God Is Change” – The Meaning Behind Futuristically Ancient

The quotation above is from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Here is a portion of the chant of the religion Earthseed in the novel: Why is the universe? To shape God. Why is God? To shape the universe. *** God is Change. God is Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. God is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay— […]

Modern Griots Recap: Sanford Biggers and Saul Williams in Conversation

Brooklyn Museum assistant curator Rujeko Hockley moderated a conversation at the Studio Museum last week with artists Sanford Biggers and Saul Williams and their relationship to afrofuturism. Here are some notes from the conversation: *Rujeko thinks of Afrofuturism as a process rather than a label, using it as a label may be too restrictive. But […]