Writer, musician, and producer Greg Tate speaks at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center on Sept. 15, 2012 as part of the Contemporary Talks series. Tate reads from his manifesto Kalahari Hopscotch, or Notes Toward a 20 Volume History of Black Science and Afrofuturism followed by a Q&A session which includes him mentioning Storyboard P. Here […]
Read More What Is Afrofuturism? Part 14: Greg TatePumzi director, Wanuri Kahui gives a TEDxNairobi lecture about Afrofuturism from different African perspectives.
Read More What Is Afrofuturism? Part 13: Wanuri Kahui“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” – Frank Zappa Since my blog does cover the African diaspora through both Afrofuturist and Afrosurrealist lens, I wanted to bring Afrosurrealism more into the picture. Afrosurrealism does not have as much articles on it as Afrofuturism does, but I want to show the connections between […]
Read More The AfroFuturist / AfroSurrealist Connection: The Visionary As SpectacleAbove is a conversation I recently listened to about escapism in Afrofuturism from Native Thinghood. The conversation stirred my thoughts about the concept of escapism. For I see escapism, or better escape, as having two sides, as with anything else in life. Yes, escapism can be a way of not dealing with the problems of […]
Read More The My-Stery: Let Me Ride Part 2 — Escape and EscapismKing Britt is a Grammy-nominated electronic composer, musician and DJ. He is currently part of The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage’s music program, Noise From the 18th Floor. His curated playlist is Cosmic Culture: A Sonic Journey Into Afrofuturism, which includes music from the past, present and future of afrofuturism. Britt also premieres his […]
Read More Modern Griots: King Britt“Because the mask is your face, the face is a mask, so I’m thinking of the face as a mask because of the way I see faces is coming from an African vision of the mask which is the thing that we carry around with us, it is our presentation, it’s our front, it’s our […]
Read More What Is Afrofuturism? Part 12: The Mask As TechnologyCosmic Yoruba wrote a piece on Afrofuturism from various African perspectives. Read an excerpt of “’We’ve Been to the Moon and Back:’ Afro-futurism in Music” and the rest at This Is Africa: Although Afro-futurism doesn’t have one clear-cut definition, for the purpose of this article we’ll go with the one that defines it as a […]
Read More What Is Afrofuturism? Part 11: Cosmic YorubaA few weeks ago, Melissa Harris Perry gave a segment on her show about the political, economic and historical significance of transportation in the United States. Transportation for Black communities, as well as other marginalized communities, historically have been modes of displacement and transcendence, and the lack of transportation for these communities has meant entrapment. […]
Read More The My-Stery: Let Me Ride Part 1The SIUE (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) Black Studies program has a blog dedicated to various topics, including Afrofuturism. Below is their collection of posts on the topic: A Notebook on Afrofuturism Mark Dery coined the term “afrofuturism” in 1993, and during the late 1990s, Alondra Nelson began shaping a wide-ranging series of conversations that developed […]
Read More Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: SIUE NotebookBelow is Mo Barbosa’s introduction and the rest of Themba-Nixon‘s keynote speech, “Certain Blacks: Future Frames from the Liberated Zone” from the Design Studio for Social Intervention’s Black History Month Series: Makani Themba is clear black water into which our dreams of ourselves plunge and are rejuvenated, beautiful and full of humanity. Trails of wisdom dust […]
Read More What Is Afrofuturism? Part 11: Makani Themba-Nixon’s Black Future
Sherese Francis 