UNDERCOVER AFROFUTURISM (2/2)

Last year in october, we subtitled Sun Ra’s unique ‘Space is the Place’ in French. It was about time we share it with you ! / Though, as we are the talkative type it is also the opportunity to share with you few thoughts we developed on a speech in Johannesburg at the occasion of Black Portraitures III Conferences (november 2016).

UNDERCOVER AFROFUTURISM (1/2)

Last year in october, we subtitled Sun Ra’s unique ‘Space is the Place’ in French. It was about time we share it with you ! / Though, as we are the talkative type it is also the opportunity to share with you few thoughts we developed on a speech in Johannesburg at the occasion of Black Portraitures III Conferences (november 2016).

3 steps to Afrofuturism: EXPANSION(S)

SF and other fantasy genres are no longer counter-cultures, as they lost their alternative and sometimes subversive nature. However, sustainable development brings the future closer and urges us to change the present, the here and now. Knowledge & practices also expend, as well as styles & references that changed the notion of margins (dematerialized spaces, virtual communities etc.). AFROFUTURISM thus engages in a global, creative change full of actions. From the point of view of people who were outcast for centuries and have incarnated alterity, afrofuturism more than ever addresses the whole world. Inclusive and frentic, heterogeneous and free, trans (meaning « going through »), it invites us to perform the world.

3 steps to Afrofuturism: CONCEPTUALISATION

Afrofuturism’s relation to fiction and even sometimes science-fiction helped it come forward. It is more than a way to esape, as it offers alternatives to a present that we have no grasp on and that can deprive us from our existence. It is the advent of using new imaginaries as critical tools to question the world in order to come up with new narrations of History. Afrofuturism is full of authors who present new — more or less radical but always new — representations of the world in order to think of, imagine and concretize another version of the world. Beyond dreams, Afrofuturism becomes a prospective methodology.

3 steps to Afrofuturism: INCARNATION

Afrofuturism is first a matter of individual paths. Between personal fantacies, provocation and leadership, it comes from strong and free-minded characters, and its mission is to give everyone enough courage to free themselves and to define themselves. Afrofuturism plays with common or imposed laws and habits, it writes its own mythology and manifesto. Musicians have benefitted from the popularity of « black music » to broadcast their eclectic, impossible and dense message. Afrofuturism is then an original and auto-determined way of life : it is the strength of the myth.

Indigenous epistemologies and ‘bad design’ by Mukhtara Yusuf

Mukhtara Yusuf is a cultural activist of Nigerian Yoruba origin who explores identity making in a post-colonial context through Afrofuturist art. Her media of choice include printwork and collage, but she is especially committed to fashion and jewelry design. To her, dress articulates the unfinished business of self-making as a “3rd culture kid” of the diaspora.

The wearable afro-cosmology of Selly Raby Kane

A man and woman dance to the hypnotic rhythm of synthesized drums and distorted singing, their stomping feet raising clouds of dust from barren earth, their upper limbs drawing elliptic figures against a backdrop of nebulous galaxies. In this depthless void where stars pulsate from the exposed heart of colored clusters, the lone dancers twist under the invisible pressure of the hammering sound. In gravity-defying gymnastics they move under a fluorescent ray of blue light that beams down from the eye of a nebula. They are being summoned. A ladder appears leading somewhere, nowhere. Is this dystopia or utopia? The scene gives no hint as to its history, whether the characters are welcoming or resisting the call.

Thoughts on the Afrofuturist influence on Afrosartorialism

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 “Afrosartorialism”, Enrica Picarelli’s research blog, on 29 December 2015)

Art by Krigga : Balance your equations

“My interest in collage really came to be when I immersed myself in studying alchemy. The idea of taking prima materia and transmuting it into something brand new grabbed me. I was always captivated by the collage aesthetic, and it was a natural talent for me. What really moved me was the lack of black faces and bodies in this particular expression. ” Krigga