Live via Zoom

ADMISSION:
Admission is free. 

RSVP

DESCRIPTION:
Black Quantum Futurism (BQF) is a multidisciplinary collaboration between Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips exploring the intersections of futurism, creative media, DIY-aesthetics, and activism in marginalized communities through an alternative temporal lens. The USC community is invited to join BQF in an intimate, live, virtual event to explore the history of linear time constructs, notions of the future, and its contrast to indigenous African traditions of space, time, and the future.

Building on their CPT Reversal exhibition at REDCAT, BQF will discuss such cultural movements as Afrofuturism and DIY theories as black quantum futurism, and their use as practical tools for exploring reality and shaping past and future narratives. Following the conversation, they will lead an activity on creating quantum event maps.

Prior to this virtual event, attendees are encouraged to visit Black Quantum Futurism: CPT Reversal, on view at the REDCAT Gallery through March 5. REDCAT is located inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex at 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.

Bios:
Camae Ayewa is a national and international touring musician, composer, poet, visual artist, curator, professor of composition at USC Thornton School of Music, and co-founder of Black Quantum Futurism theory and practice. Her work uses Afrofuturism as a narrative tool, recognizing its ability to empower marginalized Black and In digeous people, and acting as an agitator in shaping Afrodiasporan past and future narratives. As a solo artist, Ayewa lives outside of genre with experience with fringe and avant-garde sonic landscapes such as industrial, electronic, noise, punk, and hip hop. Ayewa has released three solo albums as Moor Mother: the critically acclaimed Fetish Bones (2016), Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes (2019), and the free jazz musical Circuit City (2020). She is a Pew Fellow, Knight Foundation Art and Technology fellow, A Blade of Grass Fellow, Leeway Transformation Award, Foundations for Contemporary Arts Fellow, Moog Sound Lab Resident,Wysing Arts Resident, and her work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and The Kitchen. Past Commissions in 2019-20 include Roskilde Festival, Western Front, Vancouver Jazz Festival, Berlin Jazz Festival, LeGuess who Festival, Tusk Festival, Serpentine Gallery, ICA london, Manifesta 13, Glastonbury Festival, Supersense Festival, Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Rasheedah Phillips is a queer housing advocate, parent, writer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural producer who uses web-based projects, glitch art, zines, short film, archival practices, experimental non-fiction, speculative fiction, printmaking, performance, social practice, installation, and creative research to explore the construct of time, temporalities, and community futurisms through a Black futurist cultural lens and experience. Phillips' writing and artwork has appeared in The Funambulist Magazine, Black Futures book, e-flux Architecture, Flash Art Magazine, Philadelphia Inquirer, Recess Arts, and more. Phillips is the founder of The AfroFuturist Affair, founding member of Metropolarity Queer Speculative Fiction Collective, co-founder of Black Quantum Futurism, co-creator of the award winning Community Futures Lab, and creator of the Black Women Temporal Portal and Black Time Belt projects. Recognized as a national expert in housing policy, Phillips is a 2016 graduate of Shriver Center Racial Justice Institute, 2018 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity, and 2021 PolicyLink Ambassador for Health Equity. As part of BQF and as a solo artist, Phillips has been awarded a CERN Artists Residency, Vera List Center Fellowship, A Blade of Grass Fellowship, Velocity Fund Fellowship, among others, and has exhibited, presented at, been in residence, and performed at Institute of Contemporary Art London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Serpentine Gallery, Red Bull Arts, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Akademie Solitude, Manifesta 13 Biennale, and more.

This event is part of a three-part series titled “As If: Reimagining Futures,” celebrating media artists who are committed to alternative modes of imagining the future; rooted in non-white, non-Western frameworks; and refuse the ongoing quotidian violence of contemporary American life.

Related event:
Roving Studio Triptych with Artist Kite
Saturday, February 26, 2022, at 1 p.m.
Live via Zoom
For more info, click HERE.

Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by Holly Willis and Elizabeth Ramsey (Cinematic Arts).