Afrofuturistic Voyages
In John Corbett’s writing, Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein, he explores the works and worlds of artists and musicians, Sun Ra, Lee Perry, and George Clinton. These artists use personal myth making, African diasporas, futuristic visions, and metaphors to break down the oppressive constraints of society and break into new realms. A common theme focused on in these artist's works is the sense of alienation and the extraterrestrial. Whether literal, as in Sun Ra’s case claiming he is from Saturn, or more figurative as with George Clinton's work, the idea of being not from this world is a central component of their personal mythologies and identities. Corbett talks about how this alienation is primarily the alienation from the dominant white center and power structures of life here on earth. However instead of alienation being an oppressive force, these artists use it as a place of creation.
Many of the Afrofuturist artists we have seen so far in class have employed ancient Egyptian aesthetics (as seen with Sun Ra) or African traditional motifs in their work. Manzel Bowman's artwork pulls from traditional African aesthetics and pairs these with futuristic space age technology. The juxtapositions of technology and tradition, of history and future, is a powerful way to help viewers reimagine how the future could look. There is a focus on otherworldliness and alternative spaces that exist in the vastness of space, set free from the limits here on earth.
In class, we talked about the phrase, "the histories of the future". To me, another way to think about this is to say "we are writing the history of the future each day". The focus being on the present, i.e. today. The world we are living in right now, will be in the history books in the future. By creating these futuristic visions, Afrofuturist's can help to enact change today. By showing the people of today visions of the future, we inevitably can consider things that we can do today to make that future a reality.
I agree with your last statement. We are living history today but we are also living the future and the present. Each day is a day to change history and the future.
ReplyDeleteYour final paragraph is very powerful! I like your interpretation that "we are writing the history of the future each day." Afrofuturism is therefore a mode for enacting change -- radical mythologies are a way of rewriting limiting identities. I also agree that by imagining a future through an Afrofuturist lens, it counters the expectations of contemporary white-capitalist society, offering new ways to think about our society now and years down the line. As you mentioned, if we write the history of the future each day, new ways to imagine the future can change the very trajectory of our future looking forward.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this comes from a different body of work, what you were saying in your last paragraph reminded me of an a quote from Elie Wiesel's version of the Golem, where the narrator says, "What can I say? I read the signs and I know how to interpret them; I am used to them. On the face of death... I sometimes read not the past but what the past breeds." In that sense, the circumstances of the future are written in the present, just as the circumstances in the present are bred by those that existed in the past. Likewise, many of the Afrofuturists pieces and writings that we've looked at have often centered around a break from the present course (whether that means the end of the world, the end of time, travel to an impossible place, etc.) in order to fulfill an alter-destiny that was otherwise impeded by the structures that exist today.
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