A couple of weeks ago, I attended Movies at Bryant Park with my friend Jane, who I interviewed in another post. On the train, we had a short discussion about film, photography, memory and the spookiness of it. One of the ideas we discussed was the belief that photography steals your soul. My answers reminded Jane […]
Read More The My-Stery: Haunted By the Record Part 1“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 TechnologyA 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 1Rockwell- Somebody’s Watching Me With the recent death of Rodney King, I wanted to reflect on the gaze or surveillance in our society and how it has manifested itself during this year so far. The gaze has implied that the bodies of others, like Black bodies, should always be under scrupulous examination because we are […]
Read More The My-Stery: The Gaze in 2012I was going to do a post on how all our creations are technology (and even we are in a sense technology), and how that applies to definitions of afrofuturism, but I will probably do later. First, I will like to reblog a post I read on tumblr from Moniquilliloquies about Indigenous American cultures and […]
Read More The My-Stery: Musing About Native SteampunkGza from the Wu-Tang Clan will be releasing records about outer space and the ocean. Will this be hip-hop’s version of Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants? Via Wall Street Journal “A Rapper Finds His Muse in the Stars” by Anna Louise Sussman “I thought, this is probably the longest spinning record […]
Read More Moving on the Wires: GZA Is Dropping Science… LiterallyTuesday was my last day of classes, so yesterday I decided to treat myself to a few of exhibitions. First, I went to the American Museum of Natural History to see “Beyond Planet Earth: the Future of Space Exploration.” Upon entering, we saw my favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, speaking in a video about the […]
Read More Cosmic Ghost at the Museum…During the past several years, quite a number of books and essays have come out about connections between African diasporic cultures, and computer and digital technology. For example, Ron Eglash wrote “African Fractals,” a book on the similarities between African fractal designs in such things as textiles and braids, and modern computer designs. Since he […]
Read More The My-Stery: The WebAstrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” This is his answer. Narration: TIME Magazine’s “10 Questions for Neil Degrasse Tyson”
Read More Otherworldly Videos: The Universe Is In UsBanneker, that is. The areas of science, engineering, technology and mathematics have been colonized for the past few centuries. Media and other institutions often highlight white inventors, scientists, mathematicians and engineers, but neglect the people of color who have made significant contributions to these areas pre-, during and after slavery and colonialism. Although Benjamin Banneker […]
Read More Modern Griots: It’s All About the Benjamins Baby
Sherese Francis 