When I was a cultural critic Mark Delhi Inventing the term “Afrofuturism” in 1994, he intended to apply it first and foremost to the writing of science fiction, but could only identify four African-American writers of the genre, and he Made me uneasy. “why” He asked, “Is there very few African-Americans writing science fiction? In this genre, close encounters with others, strangers in strange lands, are a concern for African-American novelists. Seems to be uniquely suitable for. “
Almost 20 years later, more black writers are writing science fiction, and many black artists in other disciplines such as jazz, funk, IDM, hip-hop, movies, painting, graffiti art, and comics are fantastic. A speculative theme in their work.
of course, Major new exhibits at the Auckland Museum Afrofuturism claims to have existed long before 1994. In “Mothership: A Voyage to Afrofuturism” Sanla When George Clinton Before the term existed, he was an afro futurist. The show also asks a bigger question: who qualifies for the label “Afro Futureist”?
Technology is the basis of Afro futurist thinking, and just as rethinking the future of collective blacks, “mothership” is essential to southern blacks who emigrated to Auckland in the 1910s and the decades that followed. Claims to have been an Afro Futureist. Why? These immigrants were drawn to the potential of technology work and their own “fundamental imagination.” .. .. Putting their faith at the end of their journey, hoping for a better life. According to the Afro Futureist, the exhibition says: An African-American woman from Georgia who attended college in the late 1800s and challenged the establishment of Jim Crow.
“The biggest part of Afrofuturism we wanted to ignite is that time is not linear,” he says. Essence Harden, Exhibition consulting curator. She spoke in a media preview of the exhibition last week. “Afrofuturism is the disruption of time and space, so what happened in 1919 is as relevant as what happened in 2019.”
However, because Afrofuturism is also a routine activity, such as posting on Twitter, the Afrofuturist movement is a “common” activity that may not reach the well-known achievements of Afrofuturists. Is built in. Black pantherThe 2018 Marvel Studios movie, which became a global phenomenon and gained new attention in the 1960s of Marvel Comics Cartoon of the same name..Yes, for “mothership” Dora Milaje It’s a costume for the 2018 movie, but the gender of the character is important.
“When we came up with it for this exhibition, it’s about black feminist epistemology — a way to generate knowledge for blacks about blacks,” says Harden. “We admit that it’s this big cosmology and we can’t do everything … To us, that black feminist epistemology seems to take the mundane really seriously. Looks like. Blacks who not only enjoy the time to rethink how and when to get joy and joy, but also have some degree of criticism. Undertake the daily activities of. ”
“Mothership” is powerful because it incorporates many powerful, inspiring, yet culturally relevant histories. The highlight of the exhibition is a replica of the mothership stage set. Congress-Funkadelic It will be used at that concert.Like the original Duplicate displayed The mothership on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC is a glowing spaceship-like gimmick that approaches passers-by.
However, Auckland’s exhibition mothership is also an interactive music portal where visitors can hear a long list of indelible songs curated by DJ Spooky. James Brown’s “The Impact of the Future of the World”, Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, Fela Kuti’s “Colonial Mentality”, and Sun Ra’s “Calling Planet Earth”. A mothership replica version of the Oakland Museum in California also includes a loop video showing Clinton and Parliament-Fan Caderick playing in 1976, and the group’s 1973 album, “Cosmic Slop, “That out-the-art (by Pedrobel) matched the group’s out-the-re music.
Thankfully, Sun Ra gets its own section of the exhibition, complete with album covers, publications (including part of a 1986 conversation with two Sun Ra researchers), and 1970s films. To do. Space is a place, Here Sun Ra implements his idea of creating a new planet for blacks.
“We work on the other side of the time,” Sun Ra said in the film. In this movie, Sun Ra is dressed in quasi-Egyptian / cosmology as he walks through overhead objects and one of his woodlands. Kind music played in the background. “We bring them here by teleporting the entire globe through isotope teleportation, trans-molecularization, and even music.”
Although Sun Ra, who died in 1993, was as “far” as possible as a musician, his thoughts on black culture, origin, and the future of blacks are other from his time, including science fiction writers. It was in line with the creative. Octavia E. Butler, “Mothership” also has my own section.
Butler’s famous books include those from 1993 Fable of the sower And 1998s Parable of the talentFocuses on black women who create a new religion called Earthseed, who advocates living on other planets. The novel, which begins in 2024, envisions a planet in which civil and economic turmoil is imminent, and the fundamentalist US president launches the familiar slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Butler, who became the first science fiction writer to be named MacArthur Fellow in 1995, influenced other writers of both black and non-black generations.When Fable of the sower was Last year it became a graphic novel, where Naro Hopkinson Butler (and Samuel R. DelanyIt gave Hopkinson a literary path to follow. Butler also gave Hopkinson something more. She role-modeled how to manage strong emotions about social illness.
“Butler …” Described himself famously as “a combination of oil and water of pessimists, feminists, blacks, ex-Baptists, ambitions, laziness, anxiety, conviction, and motivation if I’m not careful.” Hopkinson writes. “Octavia once rejected pessimism and then became a sunny Polyanna. It was an urge she had to calm down over and over again. It was a dynamic and continuous act. It was a strict practice of staring at the worst evils of mankind and refusing to live negatively, but in the meantime, I remembered that mankind could also do great good, which made her fiction her fiction. That’s part of what made it so life-changing for our readers. “
This deliberate way of managing the hope, reality, and dreams of admitting pain but refusing to give it is also the centerpiece of Afrofuturism and the Oakland Museum of California exhibition.Many of the works are not involved in intact utopia, as in the eye-catching photographs of Oralecan Jayfoss. Shanti Megastructure: Makoko Canal When Shanti Megastructure: Makoko WaterfrontImagine the future skyline of Lagos, Nigeria, the birthplace of Jeyifous. There, wealthy Nigerians live on hills in waterways still crossed by underprivileged people.
Then there’s the deep and moving thing of David Huffman MLK, Trauma Note SeriesA picture of a group of African-American astronauts trying to leave a difficult past for people.of MLKOne trauma note has a poster with a sign of peace, when the other trauma note walks with something that could be a casket or arc. Right: A Messianic figure who appears to be leading the trauma note by appealing for divine intervention.
Opened on August 7, “Mothership” is the first major exhibit since the Oakland Museum in California reopened this summer after a one-year pandemic closure. Originally scheduled to open last year, “Mothership” is an exhibition that could be even bigger, resulting from seeing more sections, more art, and such thought-provoking things. There is more consideration for larger questions. show.
Example: Delhi, who coined the term Afrofuturism, is white. And the work from which the word came from Black for the futureFeaturing interviews with African-Americans Samuel Delaney, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose, Marika RoseHe is a senior lecturer in theology, religion, and philosophy at the University of Winchester, England, and is also a white man.
Rose There was a problem with Dery By asking a question in 2014, she says it contains unified assumptions. Also, in Delhi’s 1994 work, Delhi and Tate argued, as when Delhi asked, “Why didn’t the African-American community make more use of science fiction as a writer or reader?” He criticizes Delhi for imposing no points. Tate replied: “I don’t know if that’s always true.”
It’s definitely not true in 2021. The first artwork visitors see in “Mothership” is the work of Sydney Cain. Radio imaginationA scorching mural of dyes, chalk, graphite, and powdered metal, with spirits born from what Cain calls the Pond of Heaven.Spirits modeled after the main character of the Butlers Parable The series is set at the dark edge of space, but illuminated by the light visible to celestial bodies. Light gives them an aura of transcendence — that these spirits have been there all the time, even if the people on earth did not know it.Cain Call Radio imagination “A healing tool for the African diaspora people, trying to resurface the lost and stolen ancient and futurist African myths.”
Radio imaginationSo that is the essence of “motherhood”. Looking to the future, but honestly fixed in the past. There is no escape from the past, “motherhood” means. In addition, escaping is not necessary or desirable. The exhibition suggests that it is necessary to accept and regain the past. That’s what Afrofuturism does. It is speculation whether people of the past will accept this now ubiquitous term. But they will almost certainly agree with people like Butler who have done their best to move forward and look absolutely into the future.
“Motherhood: A Voyage to Afrofuturism”
Auckland’s Auckland Museum, 1000 Oak Street, Auckland until February 27th. $ 12- $ 21, 510-318-8400, museumca.org.
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