We are stardust, we are extra beings coming from beyond, brought into the world by Mother Earth. We were however charmed by chaos and forced into virtual exile, we went and conquered the universe. Microcosms inside the macrocosm, we fly away in our spacecraft like comets, propulsed through hyperspace searching for the Matrice, in order to go back to harmony between beings and things. The quest for balance is a hard and infinite task, it is our absolute quest.
Category: Syncretics
a body’s heart // AU COEUR DU CORPS
The clitoris is the one human organ aiming only at pleasure. But what is feminine pleasure and how to access it ? Above all, allow you to have some rights : the right to define yourself in order to free yourself from the psychological and intellectual excision where society emprisons you, from religion and education. The right to achieve a better knowledge and acceptance of the feminine body in its multiplicity, proof of self-esteem and self-love, leading you to a connexion with your inner self, your intimate self, and therefore, with the Other.
Tropical Boreal // BOREALE TROPICALE
Every work of art produced by the human will is a product of dream and imagination. Talent, gift, creativity, work and tenacity transform the chimera into reality. But it is through the conscience of their place and role in the History of Men that Africans and Afro-descendants can take back their dreams and thoughts, conquer, go beyong themselves and project themselves : from fiction to reality, from the Earth to space conquest ! Reconcile science and spirituality…
A critique of Afrofuturism ?
“Nowadays deep seated issues of race, class, slavery etc. are mashing up with modern life and expectations of what life should be […] it’s refreshing 2 imagine a future where Afro culture/style exists in highest beauty without always connecting it to a painful past” Quoting tweets by @stormsaulter — “The imagination spurs creativity and scientific inquiry alike #afrofuturism […] triggers the imagination & helps many see beyond convention.” Quoting tweets by @ytashawomack.
Entre les lignes / Between the lines
Tearing yourself away from prejudice in order to go beyond appearances, looking for the light to reach Knowledge, getting out of ignorance and taking the measure of your power. Yes, you have to give yourself the means to reach an awareness that goes through the access of knowledge. Take your time, have the luxury to think and look for the information. Research and critic analysis of the past are necessary to comprehend our present and establish an inheritage that guarantees the building of our future : Sankôfa ! Back to the future !
What happened to diversity in fashion since “The Battle of Versailles” ?
The Battle of Versailles, coined by former WWD publisher John Fairchild, served as the beginning of American fashion as we know it today and became the catalyst for diverse runways that lasted nearly a decade. “[Designers] wanted entertainment and black models were associated with being able to really express themselves on the runway.” However, by the 1980s, “once entertainment was devalued, black models became less in demand.”
Expensive Luanda
“For the past two years, Luanda—not Tokyo, Moscow, or Hong Kong—has been named, by the global consulting firm Mercer, as the world’s most expensive city for expatriates. Luanda’s lure, and its treasure, is oil. […] In the past decade, tens of thousands of American and European employees of international oil conglomerates, fortified by generous cost-of-living allowances, have descended on Luanda. […] The country now produces 1.8 million barrels of oil a day; in Africa, only Nigeria produces and exports more. The boom has transformed a failed state into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.”
Unspoken Afrofuturists
In ‘The Shadows Took Shape’ exhibition catalog essay, Alondra Nelson wrote that “in the zeal for a liberatory detour, Afrofuturism [has come] to be more likely embodied by Sun Ra, George Clinton, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ralph Ellison, and ‘The Brother from Another Planet’” than by women like LaBelle, Ellen Gallagher, Laila Ali, Jewelle Gomez, and Nyota Uhura. [While] queerness (in the broadest sense) of past-future visionaries such as Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, and Nalo Hopkinson too often goes unappreciated as a central feature of black futurist aesthetics.
Anonymous Afrofuturists
“For better or for worse, I am often spoken of as the first African-American science fiction writer. But [among] the ranks of what is often referred to as proto-science fiction, there are a number of black writers. [M. P. Shiel, Martin Delany, Sutton E. Griggs, Edward Johnson…] I believe I first heard Harlan Ellison make the point that we know of dozens upon dozens of early pulp writers only as names […] we simply have no way of knowing [how many] were not blacks, Hispanics, women, native Americans, Asians, or whatever. Writing is like that.” Samuel R. Delany
Alva Bernadine : “I am one man subculture”
Alva Bernadine is a mysterious photographer for some, a fetichist for others… The artist from Grenada broke the feminine figure that we usually see in art and made his way into pop culture. Artists like Azealia Banks copy his work in her video «Yung Rapunxel »
Congo Kitoko!
“We like to think that nothing happened between classic art and post-independence modern art.” Contemporary creations as rarely seen in an exhibition, where music, sculpture, photography and comic books honor modern painting made in DRC, with Chief Commissioner André Magnin.