‘BLACK TO THE FUTURE: REVIVAL ON THE RIVER’ — A Day of Afrofuturism
gets killed just for being black” (to quote novelist Angie Thomas), Afrofuturism promises a future in which Africans and African-Americans are not just present but central.
“When people hear that term, they get a sense of what is possible,” Thomas said.
Robinson defined Afrofuturism as “a mechanism” — inspired in part by science, technology and engineering — that “focuses our efforts to imagine and create better tomorrows.” He said his art — which combines Pop wit, comic-book dynamism and the cosmic sense of wonder of a Hubble telescope transmission — uses Afrofuturistic themes to visualize “black-occupied spaces” in a “colonial-free future.”
Examples of Afrofuturism can be found most easily in the work of nationally known artists. In movie theaters, there’s “The Black Panther” and director
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 21 Art Village Gallery, 410 S. Main St. Tickets: $5-$20. Visit eventbrite.com for tickets and more information.
Ava DuVernay’s “black woman-ified” (to quote The New York Times) adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time.” In music, the pop recordings, videos and fashions of such artists as Missy Elliott and Janelle Monáe incorporate Afrofuturistic elements.
However, Memphis creators also have embraced the style and philosophy. Hip-hop artist Marco Pavé’s collaboration with Opera Memphis, “Welcome to Grc Lnd 2030,” imagines a future in which a new yellow fever epidemic decimates the black population.
Meanwhile, Memphis-born Jessi Jumanji (real name: Jessica Lofton), whose website appends the label “Afrofuturist Artist” to her name, creates digital “Afrofuturism collages” that merge “historical findings and galactic imagery.” The results include pictures of African tribal warriors perched atop NASA photographs of planets, as well as such viral sensations as Jumanji’s Mona Lisa-inspired portrait of rapper Cardi B.
Although lacking a label, Afrofuturism as recognized today more or less originated in the late 1950s and continued into the 1960s and ‘70s and beyond, with the acclaimed science fiction of black “New Wave” writer Samuel R. Delany (whose race was unknown to most of his readers); the work of Octavia E. Butler, whose 1979 novel “Kindred” involved time travel to the antebellum South; the “interstellar” jazz of Sun Ra (whose albums included “We Travel the Spaceways” and “The Nubians of Plutonia“); the “cosmic slop” of Parliament/Funkadelic; the addition of black characters to comic books and sci-fi and adventure television programs; and the emergence of post-civil rights philosophers, activists, critics and other intellectuals who recognized technology as a tool of both oppression and resistance.
Reynaldo Anderson, chair of the Humanities Department at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, said the current wave of Afrofuturism — which he calls “Afrofuturism 2.0” — has largely developed via “the emergence of social media, where people could build networks and exchange relationships, ideas and art.”
He said President Trump’s recent comment that Haiti and African nations were “(expletive) countries” helped illustrate why people all over the world are embracing Afrofuturistic concepts, even if they are unfamiliar with the the term. “Black Panther,” for example, represents a proud rebuke of Trump’s insult.
“‘Panther’ is kind of like a mashup of Afrofuturism 2.0, in terms of metaphysics, technology, history, aesthetics, social science, and theoretical and applied science,” said Anderson, who will be in Memphis for the “Black to the Future” event. (He’ll have copies of his nonfiction books, which include “Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness,” and “Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent.”)
Another “Black to the Future” participant will be John Cooley, 48, owner of Fanboy Entertainment. Cooley is a Memphis comic-book creator whose titles — including “Warrior Breed” and “Rise of the Golden Dragon” — feature “multiracial and multicultural” casts.
He said his idea of Afrofuturism is to imagine a better world than our own.
“The abject violence against black men — the shoot first, ask questions later attitude —that happens in the real world does not happen in the comics that I write,” Cooley said. “It just doesn’t happen.”
Thomas — who studied with Octavia Butler at the famous Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle — pointed out that Memphis will mark the 200th anniversary of its founding in May 2019.
“What kind of bicentennial plans do we have?” she asked, echoing the “Where Do We Go from Here?” question.
“What does the future look like for us? Where do we want to be in the next 200 years? I haven’t heard anyone from the city government talking about that, but I feel like the Afrofuturists are people who are already having that conversation.”