Afrofuturism & Spatial Practices
w/ Natasha Ruwona
In September 2020, Natasha Thembiso Ruwona presented a new chapter of their ongoing research Afrofuturism + Spatial Practices that employs Afrofuturism as a tool for exploring and imagining the formation of new worlds. Originally created for Rhubaba Gallery & Studio’s No School! program, Natasha has further developed the performance lecture and this iteration features reflections that consider music, sound and technology as being a part of Black geographical landscapes, while exploring dreams and what it means to be a myth.
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona is a Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, researcher and curator. Their artistic practice is research based and investigates racialised spatialisation (in line with Black Feminist Geographies) via the processes of writing, digital art and performance.
Further references:
A list of materials based on references in Natasha Ruwona's lecture and the discussion that followed.
Videos:
Black to Techno, dir. Jenn Nkiru [view]
Space is the Place, written by Sun Ra, dir. John Coney
A Family Called Abrew, dir. Maureen Blackwood [view]
Black Atlantis, Ayesha Hameed [view]
Books:
In The Wake: On Being and Blackness, Christina Sharpe
Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book, Hortense Spillers
Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-modernity, Alexander G. Weheliye
Imagining the Black Female Body: Reconciling Image in Print and Visual Culture, Ed. Carol E. Henderson
Articles:
Sun Ra: Myth, Science, and Science Fiction, Päivi Väätänen [read]
Sun Ra in Egypt, Tom Bogaert [read]
The Belly of the World: A Note on Black Women’s Labors, Saidiya Hartman
Ellen Gallagher - Coral Cities, Drexcyia Research Lab
‘Africa As an Alien Future’: The Middle Passage, Ruth Mayer
Souls of the sea, Jackie Kay [read]
Radical imagination is a necessary, sustaining force of black activism, Savonne Anderson [read]
Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the. Middle Passage, Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley