(upbeat electronic music) - Welcome to Afrofantastic, the transformative world of Afrofuturism.

My name is Julian Chamblis, and I'll be your host for this exploration of Black speculative practice.

Of course, you're asking what does that mean?

Well, whether you call it Afrofuturism, Black speculative practice, or the Black imaginary, from film to music to literature and social action, we are in the midst of a cultural moment.

This Afrofuturist conversation is fueled by Black people speculating about liberation and the future.

No one would blame you if you asked, how did we get here?

One milestone on the journey to this moment was the massive success of Marvel's "Black Panther" film in 2018.

For many people, that was their first introduction to Afrofuturism.

That film presented a world, not defined by European history and culture, but instead, a world that embraced a distinctly African flavor.

This cinematic vision offered a window on a world, where art and science were defined in a way that affirmed Black people and their culture.

Two years later, the trauma of Covid-19 prompted a search for tools that can protect and uplift a Black community ravaged by the pandemic.

In the midst of that crisis, people from all walks of life witnessed for the first time the social, political, and economic failures that African Americans experience every day.

Whatever label we use, the Black imaginary, the Afrofuture or Afrofantastic, the implication is that Black people are seeking a different path, one where greater care and equality are central to the world we live in.

The future vision they offer is complex because the problems they seek to overcome are profound.

While the current moment seems unique, in reality, our national story has long been linked to Black freedom.

For much of our history, Black struggles for civil rights have given important substance to our collective understanding of liberty.

Today, we benefit from those past actions all the time.

As we grapple with the changes in technology and culture we face today, a new generation of Black people and their allies are building on that tradition.

That is the world of the Afrofuture.

That is the world of Afrofantastic.

We traveled to New York City during Carnegie Hall's first ever Afrofuturism Festival.

Held across the city and virtually around the country, this event brought together Afrofuturist artists, scholars, and activists to provide the public a unique showcase of contemporary Afrofuturism.

As Tim Fielder, one of the featured artists, explains, "This is a turning point "for a public understanding of Afrofuturism."

- With Carnegie, that was like, that was the move, in the sense that that wasn't a gallery, that wasn't a two day event, that's a entire city, and then expanding to an entire planet with virtual technology.

Content produced over a two month period, the largest showcase of Afrofuturist modalities in history.

- While the festival marked a moment of wider cultural awareness, for organizers and participants, this is a crucial opportunity to speak to the public about what Afrofuturism is beyond "Black Panther."

We talked to members of the Curatorial Council about their definition of Afrofuturism, alongside Dr. Lonnie Brooks, one of the researchers attending the festival.

- I define Afrofuturism as the ability for people of African descent to locate themselves in time and space.

- I love defining Afrofuturism, let me say.

People can ask me a million and 10 times, and I will always give them the answer.

It'll be the same answer, but it will be an answer (laughs).

- What is written in history can be either reinterpreted, but that's pretty much done.

The present is contested, but the future is still somewhat open.

And to chart a path going into the future, you have to have a cultural compass to figure out how you're gonna get there.

- Afrofuturism is the way of looking at the future, or an alternate reality, but through a Black cultural lens or Black cultural lenses.

So and when I say Black, I mean people of the African diaspora, people in the continent, people in the United States, Brazil, the Caribbean, the UK, other parts of Europe, the continent of Africa itself, Australia, and elsewhere.

And I say that it's an artistic aesthetic.

You see it in music, you see it in dance, you see it in literature, but it's also a method and a practice.

If you think about a wheel and the heart of that wheel being Black cultures, and the different spokes, these intersecting spokes, being liberation, imagination, technology, and mysticism, I see all of them sort of intersecting, and I see that as foundationally being what Afrofuturism is.

- Yeah, for me, Afrofuturism is about leveraging our ancestral intelligence, what I call the real AI, into the future, the ancestral intelligence of the Black diaspora of our African ancestors.

I go back to an article by Kodwo Eshun, called "Further Considerations on Afrofuturism," where he quotes Toni Morrison about kind of a re-narratization, a re-storytelling of the middle passage, thinking of Black people coming from their home planet in West Africa, and with the latest of bondage and surveillance technologies, going on an interstellar journey across a vast ocean to where they arrive at an alien landscape, where they could be killed for practicing their religion, playing their music, speaking their languages, and that they, at that moment, faced with the erasure of their culture, had to innovate on the fly about who they were as a people.

And then, with the imposition of Christianity, taking Christian hymnals and transforming them into spirituals was really a profound moment to me, in terms of, because they had to think about the future, a future that was uncolonized, to give them some measure of hope and some option of redemption from their existence.

- While thinking about history is one key element of Afrofuturism, many of the participants of the Carnegie Hall Festival are committed to moving beyond the traumas of the past.

These participants seek to define Blackness and the Black experience in a hopeful light that embraces a brighter future.

Creatives like Dedren Sneed typify this approach.

- I think I would define Afrofuturism as a space of agency, authority, and ownership.

I think it's just something that's built off of the legacy that we get from our ancestors, from the stories of those told and all the stories that are untold.

- There are many different definitions for what Afrofuturism is.

What I have had to learn over time is that my definition of Afrofuturism, which is simply Black sci-fi.

Black science fiction, that's what Afrofuturism is to me, because that's where my focus point is.

For others, it's a holistic way of living.

It's housing law, it's a political mindset, it's a cultural aesthetic, so it had a deeper meaning than it meant for me, as all my life.

I have had to open up my mind to what Afrofuturism means 'cause it means a lot for a different group of people.

It's not monolithic, the meaning of what it means.

For me, Negroes and spaceships.

- Thinkin' about Afrofuturism beyond science fiction sparks questions about how ideas prompt action.

In that process, academics and artists have offered new ways to think about the present, the past, and the future.

They are asking fundamental questions about how past action shape our current understanding.

They are asking, what does it take to make a better future?

To better understand these conversations, we spoke with Dr. Stanford Carpenter and Dr. Kinitra Brooks, both are academics with long histories of writing and teaching about Afrofuturism.

Carpenter's work with the festival took place at the Chicago History Museum.

Brooks participated in panels held at the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture in New York City.

Each institution supported the Carnegie Festival with live events and virtual presentations.

- When we're involved in something that's Afrofuturist, we know that we're there, but how would we define it?

For me, it's as much about the future as it is about the past and the present.

It's very much about decentering Whiteness and about recentering how we might look at Blackness as it moves through time, and I think that that's important to think in terms of also being about what we center.

- I think of Afrofuturism as a theory of time, in which the past, present, and future are conflated together, and they operate as one.

And I think it's a question for Black folks of discovering, recovering the past, what was lost during enslavement, what was lost during the middle passage, as well as assessing and deciding what we want to take forward, because as we operate in the present, we must admit that some things need to be left in the past, and that's okay.

But once we make that assessment, we decide how we want to move into the future and create better worlds, better realities, and move towards our own liberation.

- The transformative world Afrofuturists envision are often made real through artistic expression.

An Afrofuturist aesthetic inspires and transforms.

Those ideas were on display at the festival.

Can you tell me a little bit about what motivates you as a friendly neighborhood, super villain?

- Well, in a society where capitalism, imperialism, and bad behavior, insensitivity, and lack of compassion is considered heroic, compassion and kindness will be the villain.

And in this case, I'm the villain (laughs).

Afrofuturism, for me, is a space in which we can describe, articulate, and explore our imagination.

It depends in which space you're articulating Afrofuturism because I believe Afrofuturism is explored differently by its cosmonaut, its imaginaut, a person that travels and explores the imagination.

In this case, it's the Black diaspora, the imagination that we, as Black people, have formed and forged in the United States and now, all over the world.

- And I see that the most in my relationship with my daughter.

She lives in a world, where dad flies across the country to talk about comics.

She lives in a world, where her idea of somebody who writes important books is Ytasha Womack.

- Our Planet was a myth.

- I wrote a book called "Rayla 2212" in the midst of writing my book "Afrofuturism," and writing this story about a character, who lives on Planet Hope 200 years into our future.

She lives on a utopian world that turned upside down, and she had to fly these missing astronauts, who were stuck in different spaces and times.

Some were in East Africa in the ancient times, some were in 1970s America, some were in future Chicago, but when she brought all of those people together, she learned more about herself.

- I grew up on science fiction too, reading Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and "The Foundation Trilogy," and in that particular novel, it's all about looking at the future and psychohistory of this man called Hari Seldon, who can predict the future of the Galactic Empire, thousands of years into the future.

So for me, I have a very eclectic background.

I'm Black/Jewish/Native American, and for me, being able to see people in the future who look like me was really important.

- Just to give some context, the environment we're presently in, just for the record, is one in which Afrofuturism, which is the term that we've all chosen to use, whether you like it or not, is now ascending into a mainstream space.

The first time it's been truly mainstream on a global scale.

- The link between imagination and activism is central to Afrofuturism.

Artists can imagine liberation and create that world on film and the page.

Today, scholars, scientists, and activists, inspired by Afrofuturism, are using those same visions as models for rethinking action.

Understanding how the translation of these imagined spaces into real action might be achieved and what benefits they offer are powerful effects of the culture of Afrofuturism.

- There are still folks who don't understand the depth and complexities of Afrofuturism.

There are still folks who think it's only about "Black Panther" and Black folks in space, without recognizing that there is an intellectual, a political, a social, a communal undercurrent that girds the movement itself and that keeps things moving forward.

- I feel like a lot of this stuff should be empowering us to be better people, not being a different sense of a person.

- Nothing that we wanna see happens in our community, does not happen unless the community is mobilized properly.

It empowers all of them towards whatever the objective is in terms of what they want.

- I'm so proud that I live in Oakland because that's the home of the Black Panther Party.

That's the home of where the "Black Panther" film was envisioned, right, and I'll just never forget seeing the "Black Panther" film for the first time and seeing Oakland on the screen.

And I was in the community showing of the "Black Panther" at the Grand Theater, Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, and we just went wild.

It was just like seeing ourselves portrayed on the screen.

- The first time I saw the movie, it was as part of an event by a comic shop, and I was a speaker at the event, and I had a big conversation with the audience.

Second time I saw it was in San Antonio.

And again, that was another thing, where it was like I was moderating a group of people who were talking about it.

And I remember just watching that, thinking to myself, what would it have been like for me to have seen this with my mom and my dad?

What type of conversations would we have had?

- I think so much of Afrofuturist thought and Afrofuturist actions and pedagogies and arts and creativity comes, it starts from within.

And I do not only wanna locate it there, because it's very much a communicative, like a community aspect, there's just so much of it that is collective, but there's really just the imagination, just the idea of being able to say, "I can see a way out, I can see a way forward, "I can see a future for myself."

I think that is so innately true for so many people, especially, as descendants of the transatlantic slave trade, especially, the descendants of so much brutality in this country, that hope is just something that's so innate almost and so much, something that instilled within all of us.

Like, we always want to move forward.

We always want to be here, see ourselves growing, nurturing, individually, but also collectively in a community.

- Well, when they tell Black people, "Pull yourself up by your boot straps or something."

We've been doin' that forever.

We've had these visions for centuries, and that, for me, is Afrofuturism.

And that's just kind of reminding ourselves of that, leveraging that, reminding ourselves that we are part of the future.

We're not just part of the future.

We have made the future.

- Afrofuturism offers a blueprint for celebrating Black culture and creativity in new ways, taking advantage of technology to link Black cultures around the world.

Groups like Ise-Da a digital art platform, highlights how technology is central to giving voice to Black culture on its own terms in the 21st century.

- For Black communities and many communities really, the art focuses on what people are doing in their day-to-day and how communities engage with art, to really look at Afrofuturism and how it's discussed, like in our communities, how people are envisioning it in communities.

Maybe works may not be involved in the fine art industry, but how are the different ways on many different levels are artists exploring Black speculation and envisioning our futures?

- I believe Afrofuturism has given us an umbrella to work under, and as I mentioned prior, Afrofuturism encompasses many spaces.

And in those many spaces, we're finally able to have conversations with each other that is engaging both tomorrow, yesterday, and today.

And in this trinity of action, we're able to come to a variety of conclusions that might benefit us today and tomorrow and heal the wounds and pains of the past.

- Afrofuturism is a vehicle for people from many different disciplines to celebrate Blackness and reject the burdens of the past.

What they share is a vision of inclusion and safety.

- The Black diaspora had to become futurist in its orientation to survive, to thrive, to envision something beyond the state of slavery, so I think there's so many stories there, where among the slaves, there are poets and scientists and folks who had other aspirations that were more than just slaves in their minds but were seeing visions of something better.

- The reason I am promoting Afrofuturism now is to, in conversation with the community, develop a compass towards what our interests are going forward.

- It takes tremendous internal thought and strength and just the belief that you can actually see yourself in the future.

That you are going to be there, even if whatever has happened in the past has been so hard, or even if what's happening in the present is challenging, that you can still imagine a way out.

And so when I think of Afrofuturism, I always think of Harriet Tubman, as one of my first Afrofuturist people who could see a way forward.

I think of Ida B.

Wells, I think of Sojourner Truth.

I think of all these amazing heroic figures, who were also just ordinary people who were like, I see better for all of us.

I see better for myself, and I'm going to work towards that.

And even if I don't get to be a part of that future where everything is better, I'm gonna work for it, because the next generation will carry that vision forward.

- There's a path to a shared future and a freedom that they don't have to wait.

There's a peril in waiting for permission in the way that we tell our stories, particularly, when they've been marginalized and underrepresented for so long.

And I feel like that's been a traditional trope in entertainment, that we've had to wait for somebody to break through, but I think with where we are right now, we don't, there's no waiting.

- Welcome to Blackspace.

We are a Afrofuturism digital maker space, based right here in downtown Durham, North Carolina.

- I try to tell people that we are not here to sharecrop our dreams, right, we are here to be of ourselves and connect and collaborate.

And there's a reason for your story and that technology, creativity, and a sense of our shared community in the diaspora.

- Black folks' futures and futurism within Black communities is something that we all need to participate in, that we all have skin in the game, and so we should be and we are as inclusive as possible.

And there are so many futures that Black folks need to be concerned with, not just Black feminist futures, the futures of Black children, Black trans futures, Black queer futures, all of these intersections of identities, because Black people come in so many complex shapes, colors, ideas, personalities.

We need to account for everyone as much as possible, and everyone needs to be involved in this conversation.

- For these Afrofuturists, this moment of celebration marks a tremendous accomplishment, as something largely defined by a small group gains global traction.

Nonetheless, what comes next is far from settled.

The Carnegie Hall Festival has many meanings for these participants, summing up a legacy of activism, but also charting a new vision for the future.

- It's a milestone, and we have to build on that.

And especially, kind of building across, where the Black Speculative Arts Movement is being embraced by different countries in Africa, from South Africa to Cameroon to Nigeria and Ghana, to build on that achievement, to bring and discuss the future of the Black diaspora in Africa in perspective.

So, Reynaldo, I understand, likes to call it Afrofuturism 3.0, that we've had the anthology called "Afrofuturism 2.0," but bringing it to and discussing this with African peoples then creates a whole other thing, Afrofuturism 3.0, and what they might create from it too.

- The kinda moment we're in right now, it represents the end and the beginning.

And what I mean by that, what's going on at this moment, particularly, with the Carnegie Festival, it represents the end of what was kinda started several years ago when we went to Paris.

And it was during that time that I was introduced to Ytasha Womack at the time, where I remember I sent her my paper that I produced in Paris when she was trying to wrap up her book on Afrofuturism.

- Well, Carnegie Hall is known for showcasing the best and the best of global culture, so in highlighting Afrofuturism, they see it as a high art form.

They value creators in that space and wanna showcase it to larger audiences.

- I think it's a bit of a game changer.

It can be disconcerting, because we've worked in the underground for so long, and to suddenly become the center of attention like this, I hope it is not something that's simply a flash in a pan, that attention.

But I also have confidence that this is a movement that will continue to go on and continue to do good work whether we have the attention or not.

- I think the Schomburg Center is a critical place for Afrofuturism and a huge site for where that work has been done and will be done.

And so, being a part of this festival, being a part of the Carnegie Halls Afrofuture Festival just seems fitting for us.

- I think that what Carnegie Hall is more interesting in a pandemic moment than it would've been in a pre-pandemic moment.

All of a sudden, now we're doing all this stuff virtually, and it makes sense.

They have done something that Afrofuturism talks about, which is transcending space.

- So as you can see, the world of the Afrofantastic is one where thinkers, artists, and community members are coming together to create a compelling new vision of the future, one that embraces Black people and Black culture in a way that previously did not happen.

Does that mean that the Afrofuture has no place for White people or the Afrofuture is inherently oppositional?

I don't think so.

One of the things that all these people share in their visions for Afrofuturism is a more inclusive space that helps and nurtures everyone.

That's the important thing to remember about the Afrofuture, it's for everyone.

(easy electronic music) (chimes ring)