Afrofuturism: Revisions Towards a Place in Modernity – Artists’ Film & Video Screening

No advance ticketing. Places will be issued on a first-come first-served basis.

Neïl Beloufa | Sanford Biggers | Rico Gatson | The Otolith Group | Philip Mallory Jones

Curated by Mother Tongue in partnership with the Africa In Motion Film Festival 2012

Responding to the theme of the Africa In Motion Film Festival 2012, 'Modern Africa', Mother Tongue has guest curated a two-part artists' film and video programme thematically focused on Afrofuturism; its aesthetic, intents and chronological development since its inception in the 1970s, on both sides of the Atlantic. The first event was a screening of John Akomfrah's The Last Angel of History which took place at the Edinburgh Filmhouse on 26 October. The second installment of the Afrofuturism project will take place at CCA on Friday 23 November in the form of an artists' film and video programme. Participating artists include Neïl Beloufa, Sanford Biggers, Rico Gatson, The Otolith Group and Philip Mallory Jones.

An essay on Afrofuturism, written by Mother Tongue, will be made freely available at the CCA Glasgow event.

Afrofuturism exists as a predilection for black artists, musicians, writers and critics, looking to the future in times when any future seems impossible. Perhaps because of the period in which the movement began (following the decline of the Black Power movement and demise of independence euphoria on the post-colonial African continent), the specificity of its futurism is that, rather than being naively celebratory, it instead incorporates both utopian and dystopian visions. It was, and is, part of a larger conscious and subconscious process of constructing counter-mythologies, a response to aspirations for a place in modernity so long denied to non-white ethnicities. This implies both its significance for the present and allows us to consider early Afrofuturist works as revisionist, inserting the black diaspora into the history of science and technology from which they had been largely omitted. 

Mother Tongue would like to thank CuratorLab Stockholm, CCA Glasgow and Africa In Motion 2012 for their support of the programme.

Further details can be found at:
www.mothertongue.se
www.africa-in-motion.org.uk

Image: 'Shake' Sanford Biggers (2011)
Two-channel color video with sound. trt 16min. Image courtesy of the artist.