{"id":648,"date":"2016-03-30T14:09:46","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T13:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/?p=648"},"modified":"2017-05-01T13:02:07","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T12:02:07","slug":"thoughts-on-the-afrofuturist-influence-on-afrosartorialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/thoughts-on-the-afrofuturist-influence-on-afrosartorialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on the Afrofuturist influence on Afrosartorialism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>In particular, Havlin notes\u00a0the correspondence between the afrofuturist concept\u00a0of non-linear time\u00a0and the knowledge\u00a0that\u00a0space contains\u00a0multiple geographies\u00a0of dwelling and belonging. This is one way of pointing to the\u00a0relevance of diasporic consciousness for cultural production\u00a0rooted in\u00a0non-normative\u00a0embodiment<\/strong> \u2013 an <em>otherworldly<\/em> embodiment that\u00a0\u201crearticulate[s] the body that has been dissected, that has been mutated and that has been made to perform\u201d. This consciousness of the metamorphic body\u00a0forges a \u201cnew self-defined visual identity\u201d,\u00a0setting an aesthetic agenda that pursues\u00a0ornamentation and impersonation as political acts.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1222\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-1991-grace-jones.jpg\" alt=\"1-1991-grace-jones\" width=\"760\" height=\"494\" \/><\/p>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">Grace Jones for Vogue, 1991<\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Garments are a core element of\u00a0Afrofuturist\u00a0self-invention. In fact, they\u00a0enable it, <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>becoming an active part of the creative\/transformative process. <\/strong>In West Africa, for those Egungun priests who invoke the departed spirits, the self disappears in the wearing of the sacred garment; one becomes a vessel for spirit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Havlin cites African-American singers <strong>Grace Jones, Betty Davis, and Janelle Mon\u00e1e<\/strong> as the movement\u2019s iconic ambassadors for their ability to create alternative personalities that mix\u00a0mysticism\u00a0and space-age technology. Their\u00a0fit\u00a0bodies dressed in\u00a0sharp silhouettes, glam outfits that enhance their skin colour, moving against\u00a0avant-garde scenographic props, make up\u00a0the signature look of the Afrofuturist woman, whose brand of entertainment is infused with African spirituality.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1223\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/18ykdr0rcreu3jpg.jpg\" alt=\"18ykdr0rcreu3jpg\" width=\"760\" height=\"428\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Afrofuturism, therefore, needs dress\u00a0to activate\u00a0embodied post-humanism and practice\u00a0the visual activism that complements the performance. Havlin focuses\u00a0on the most immediate\u00a0futurist allure of Jones, Davis, and\u00a0Mon\u00e1e\u2019s style, mentioning\u00a0their<strong> \u201ccyber punk\u201d and \u201cpart glam\u201d attire. These\u00a0garments capture and emit\u00a0the affective charge of the reinvented body in a sartorial performance that electrifies the audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1224\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/b89e0aa9c5d78b10c7eb087dca97b267-720x1024.jpg\" alt=\"b89e0aa9c5d78b10c7eb087dca97b267\" width=\"760\" height=\"1081\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>But\u00a0what is even more interesting about the Afrofuturist\u00a0look is that its\u00a0aesthetic register persists and is immediately recognisable<\/strong> even in the absence of\u00a0cyberpunk and spiritual references. Steven Shaviro has the perfect words to describe the aesthetic resilience of Afrofuturism. Writing about Grace Jones in<em> Post-Cinematic Affect<\/em> (2010), he notes that\u00a0her \u201ciconic singularity\u00a0\u2026\u00a0<em>marks<\/em> the screen\u201d keeping \u201cits material self-retention through all its fluid transformations\u201d (13-14, his italics).<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Jones\u2019s imaged body is not a figure in implied space, but an electronic signal. [\u2026] The screen works as a material support <em>for<\/em> this signal\/image. [\u2026] construct[ing] a relational space (16-17, his italics).<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2706\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone caption-big\" style=\"text-align: justify;\" data-shortcode=\"caption\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/h5>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-654\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/gracejonesjeanpg.jpg\" alt=\"gracejonesjeanpg\" width=\"768\" height=\"432\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/gracejonesjeanpg.jpg 768w, http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/gracejonesjeanpg-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/h5>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">Iconic Grace Jones<\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Make-up and clothes (or lack thereof), stiletto heels and drag attire, are\u00a0essential to her inversion of racial\/gender signifiers,\u00a0and\u00a0otherwordly spectacularisation of her body. <strong>\u201cShe embodies her own extreme objectification, her packaging as a saleable commodity\u201d<\/strong> (Shaviro 21).\u00a0Through\u00a0sartorial means, Jones makes metamorphosis attractive\u00a0and desirable. At the same time, by turning herself into an object, she attains abstraction, moving \u201cbeyond identification\u201d (22), concludes Shaviro. <strong>Thus Jones effectively\u00a0creates her own visual brand, bringing the\u00a0Afrofuturist agenda of visual colonisation to a new level.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This ability to reach out of the picture, imbuing the black\u00a0body with vibrations and an all-around non-subjective affective charge of transformation is\u00a0also\u00a0what the Afrosartorial\u00a0aesthetic pursues, albeit to ambiguous\u00a0effects.\u00a0Fashion photography in Africa and non-African designers who\u00a0feature\u00a0African models in their lookbooks often rely on\u00a0a visual register that iconises\u00a0skin colour and certain bodily features, set against staged backgrounds, producing what look like pictorial renderings of a generic \u201cAfricanness\u201d. This is perhaps the most common and shared visual\u00a0representation of African fashion found on social and print media today.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Notable examples of the trend include a recent collaboration between the South African designer Marianne Fassler and photographer Paul Samuels, described as a tribute to\u00a0\u201cexoticism, relaxation and the brand\u2019s unapologetic approach to maximalism\u201d.<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-655\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/mfassler_paulsamuels_007-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"mfassler_paulsamuels_007\" width=\"488\" height=\"731\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/mfassler_paulsamuels_007-683x1024.jpg 683w, http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/mfassler_paulsamuels_007-200x300.jpg 200w, http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/mfassler_paulsamuels_007.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 488px) 100vw, 488px\" \/><\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-656 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/mfassler_paulsamuels_006-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"mfassler_paulsamuels_006\" width=\"487\" height=\"731\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/mfassler_paulsamuels_006-683x1024.jpg 683w, http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/mfassler_paulsamuels_006-200x300.jpg 200w, http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/mfassler_paulsamuels_006.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 487px) 100vw, 487px\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">Credits : Photography by Paul Samuels \/ Creative Direction by Rich Mnisi and Ben Eagle \/ MUA by Marilyn du Preez \/ Model: Hauwa Dauda @ ICE JHB \/ Assistant: Siphesihle Zondo<\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-657\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/lupita-nyongo-by-erik-madigan-heck-for-the-guardian-900x1200-768x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"lupita-nyongo-by-erik-madigan-heck-for-the-guardian-900x1200\" width=\"513\" height=\"684\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/lupita-nyongo-by-erik-madigan-heck-for-the-guardian-900x1200.jpeg 768w, http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/lupita-nyongo-by-erik-madigan-heck-for-the-guardian-900x1200-225x300.jpeg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 513px) 100vw, 513px\" \/><\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-658\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/lupita-nyongo-erik-madigan-heck-for-new-york-magazine-4-695x1024.jpg\" alt=\"lupita-nyongo-erik-madigan-heck-for-new-york-magazine-4\" width=\"464\" height=\"684\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/lupita-nyongo-erik-madigan-heck-for-new-york-magazine-4-695x1024.jpg 695w, http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/lupita-nyongo-erik-madigan-heck-for-new-york-magazine-4-204x300.jpg 204w, http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/lupita-nyongo-erik-madigan-heck-for-new-york-magazine-4.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 464px) 100vw, 464px\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">Erik Madigan Heck\u2019s \u201cchromogenic\u201d shots of Lupita Nyong\u2019o for the <em>Guardian.<\/em><\/h5>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1229\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Capture-d\u2019e\u0301cran-2016-03-30-a\u0300-14.53.20.png\" alt=\"Capture d\u2019e\u0301cran 2016-03-30 a\u0300 14.53.20\" width=\"311\" height=\"522\" \/><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1228\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Capture-d\u2019e\u0301cran-2016-03-30-a\u0300-14.46.07.png\" alt=\"Capture d\u2019e\u0301cran 2016-03-30 a\u0300 14.46.07\" width=\"326\" height=\"522\" \/><\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1227\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Capture-d\u2019e\u0301cran-2016-03-30-a\u0300-14.46.24.png\" alt=\"Capture d\u2019e\u0301cran 2016-03-30 a\u0300 14.46.24\" width=\"334\" height=\"522\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">Mazel John\u2019s first lookbook inspired by a woman\u00a0who is\u00a0\u201cgobally aware, culturally curious, a successful pioneer in her field, and fashion foward, unafraid to stand out and be seen.\u201d<\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Traces of Afrofuturism can be found in all of these pictures, particularly in the way they render\u00a0racialised embodiment as visual stylisation<\/strong>, lifting the models from any recognizable context to more easily turn them into icons of a cosmopolitan style \u2013 a style where\u00a0vibrant and bold hues signify, in the words of Victoria Rovine \u201d a vivid if nonspecific sense of temporality\u201d (2015, unpaginated). This temporal sensibility, once again, references the historical awareness of the Afrofuturist who makes her past of uprootedness and migration productive of new identities.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>However, the Afrosartorial aesthetic all too often erases history in favour of geography, abstracting context and erasing the background to project on it a biased\u00a0expectation of mobility as the ultimate means of emancipation.<\/strong> While there is nothing wrong\u00a0in acknowledging that\u00a0Africans are\u00a0cosmopolitan citizens, this signification of the glamorous African body is problematic as it erases any element of identity and identification from the pictures \u2013 the same elements that designers incessantly cite as the added value of their collections.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>The power of fashion as storytelling could and should be better foregrounded. Fashion brands \u2013 big and small, acclaimed and emerging ones, \u2013\u00a0\u00a0are at the forefront of a creative revolution that can upend monolithic\u00a0visions of progress.<\/strong> Many designers have already\u00a0taken advantage of their visibility to\u00a0comment upon and indeed offer customers and audiences an inclusive vision of cosmopolitanism that makes room for multiple histories of movement and transition, rather than reproduce the utopia of linear progress that equates expatriation with success.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1226\" src=\"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ajak-deng2.jpg\" alt=\"ajak-deng2\" width=\"760\" height=\"1007\" \/><\/p>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">Model Ajak Deng photographed by Julia Noni for <em>Obsession Magazine. <\/em>(same as for the cover picture)<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">What of the migrants that leave their home countries to work in the garment factories of Ethiopia or Kenya? What of the aspiring designers who employ women who have fled their villages in search of a better life elsewhere? Africans have always been cosmopolitan citizens, but often cosmopolitanism has been imposed on them with unexpected consequences for the evolution of sartorial and aesthetic sensibilities on the continent and in the diaspora. <strong>Perhaps designers could make an effort to not stick with just one visual register and experiment with different ways to celebrate the iconic beauty of their designs and the models who promote them, making room for creative reinventions of\u00a0local and global histories of Afrodiasporic mobility.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">For more infos or details :<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/afrosartorialism.wordpress.com\/\">Afrosartorialism<\/a>, Enrica Picarelli&#8217;s blog<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Rovine, V. L. (2015), <em>African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovation, and Ideas you Can Wear<\/em>, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2015.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Shaviro, S. (2010), \u201cPost-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, <em>Boarding Gate<\/em> and <em>Southland Tales<\/em>\u201c, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.film-philosophy.com\/index.php\/f-p\/article\/view\/220&amp;gt\">Film-Philosophy<\/a>, 14.1.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Laura Havlin&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.anothermag.com\/fashion-beauty\/7791\/a-history-of-female-afrofuturist-fashion\">article<\/a> in <i>AnOther Magazine<\/i> (september).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Marianne Fassler &amp; Paul Samuels collaboration <a href=\"http:\/\/10and5.com\/2015\/11\/12\/eye-candy-a-vibrant-lookbook-for-marianne-fasslers-2015-resort-collection\/\">Lookbook<\/a> .<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Mazel Johns&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.notjustalabel.com\/designer\/mazel-john\">Lookbook<\/a> on afro-cosmopolitanism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An article by Laura Havlin that appeared in AnOther Magazine back in September is a good source to get acquainted with the afrofuturist aesthetic and to point to its influence on afrosartorial trends. (N.D.L.R. : This article first appeared on &#8220;Afrosartorialism&#8221;, Enrica Picarelli&#8217;s research blog, on 29 December 2015)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,27],"tags":[37,34,33],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blackboard","category-essay","tag-black-swag-empowerment","tag-black-future-art","tag-afrofuturism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":664,"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blackstothefuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}