september-2018

68 / HERITAGE / Afrofuturism
HERITAGE / 69
Cyrus Kabiru’s futuristic
eyewear, which is on
display at Zeitz MOCCA
“It doesn’t cross people’s minds that they’re
capable of accomplishing these things”
CONTEMPORARY AFROFUTURISTS
Other far-out thinkers include
African-American musicians Missy
Elliott and Kelis – outliers in the mid-90s
and 2000s with progressive music and
experimental videos – and singer Solange,
who’s known as much for her music as for
her brazen sartorial choices: her stage
costumes draw inspiration from cosmology.
In April, Solange directed Metatronia,
an interdisciplinary performance piece
that featured dance and sculpture. She
describes it as an exploration of, “The
process, and mapping of creation”.
Janelle Monáe has adopted an artist
manifesto and discography that spans the
full gamut of Afrofuturism. A 46-minute
film – dubbed an “emotion picture” –
accompanied her new album, Dirty
Computer. The film is set in a totalitarian
near future where citizens are referred to
as computers and forced into a process
of debugging and reprogramming. It
makes overt commentary on the fate of
marginalised groups.
This ability to use layered futuristic
visual storytelling to pass social commentary
is evident in the work of other
Afrofuturists, such as US-based Kenyan
multimedia artist, Wangechi Mutu, who
creates collages and art installations
that are an interplay between truth and
fiction. Her focus tends to be on the
female form and the impact of racism,
nationalism and sexism on it.
US-based digital artist and illustrator
Manzel Bowman – “Artxman” – produces
artworks that merge African people with
Egyptian gods within an interstellar
narrative. “I want to remind people of
African descent that we have our own
religion, beliefs, and deities that have
been removed from us over the span of
history,” he says.
Kenyan digital artist, Jacque Njeri,
sought to transform a known culture and
its popular iconography. Her MaaSci
series put the Maasai people, Kenyan
pastoralists, in the cosmos. They ride
spaceships, coolly perch on meteors or
don traditional regalia over spacesuits.
“I like to put items in a different environment
where audiences don’t expect
them to be; especially regarding progress,
science and knowledge,” she says.
It doesn’t cross people’s minds that
they’re capable of accomplishing these
things.”
THE FUTURE IS NOW
In his essay, Dery asked, “Can a
community whose past has been deliberately
rubbed out, and whose energies
have subsequently been consumed by the
search for legible traces of its history,
imagine possible futures?” Well, possible
futures have not only been imagined;
they have also become reality. Arnaldo
Tamayo Méndez and Guion Bluford are
among the first astronauts of Africandescent
to travel to space and many have
gone beyond the stars since then. Nigeria,
South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, Algeria
and Kenya have launched satellites into
orbit. There are plans to have a Nigerian
on the moon by 2030. There’s a bit of
time to improve on the valiant attempt in
1964 by Zambian high-school teacher,
Edward Mukuka Nkoloso. He wanted to
beat the US and the Soviet Union to the
lunar orb, but his tools did not match his
ambition. He retains a place in history,
however, next to all the black folks imagining
incredible futures and better pasts.
Delaney, in his powerful responses
to Dery’s questions, explains how black
people in general had not been turned
on to sci-fi, which was why so few black
sci-fi authors existed in the mid-90s.
Perhaps Black Panther’s stunning box
office success will now change all that.
And maybe, one day, we will look back
on Black to the Future as proof that it
only takes a few of us to make the world
a better place: one Sun Ra spoke about
when he said, “I have a potent degree of
love that is so unwise in one world that it
is wisdom in another.”
One Hundred
Lavish Months
of Bushwhack by
Wangechi Mutu.