 Thank you very much. It's very exciting to be opening the first affirmation session here at GESAP and of course how could it not? We were planning to have TJ demos and we have TJ demos. We're incredibly happy but also Ola Lakan J. Fus and he's trapped in traffic because of the rain so what a better way to sense what the mess, what is the mess we're in and how much design, planning, preservation, it's needed here that that leaving these difficulties and and experiencing them and kind of challenging the format that we've been so much thinking about but I ask everyone to be patient and Ola Lakan is coming right and right and so we'll have him eventually at one point probably very wet super wet and I'm also very happy to have Felicity here Felicity Scott responding to TJ and LEC and and also the entire GESAP community being part of this and this is actually the first event that Barjan, if Pullman is curating and I've been also working with him but Barjan is the GESAP director of public events and exhibitions and the curator of the Arthur Rose Gallery following an amazing list of great work for the Arthur Rose Gallery we have Marwa Sita here that invented what architectural exhibitions are and very much help at GESAP to think what what we are and also Clarice Figueiredo who's helping here also and working with Barjan and on this. The title of today's session is Uncored Futurism and Futurism of Core for TJ and LEC means something different to just see think what is the evolution of the present. Futurism is a site where actually the powers and the structures of the present can be challenged and where actually the those that are different sides can gain a possibility to to have an agency to decide the next to come but also decide where histories can be redefined and where those that were hidden or marginalized from official and hegemonic histories can be brought back to visibility and allowed to be making the future and I think this is something that we it's deeply connected to what we stand for at a place like GESAP where we project and those projections are not just continuities of what exists but rather opportunities to reinvent and reload the past as a project that has to do with justice with activism and also way to challenge the present. I think this is a good starting point point for the affirmations and I want to say that affirmation actually we have Jack Halberstam here that will also be part of affirmations and affirmation also comes from the whole tradition of trans-activism and a way to affirm as a way to challenge also normativity and patriarchy and binarisms a way to affirm as a way also to redefine how societies and ecosystems are constructed. Affirmation is for us intrinsically connected also to making history to to write in theory to do in design to basically engage in with all the things that happen in this building and I want to say how important it is that we have this conversation with many different people it's not the conversation among peers I would say but about people that share engagement but that are coming from many different grounds we will have designers theorists will have people that are doing planning we will have activists coming people that are writing from many different perspectives and disciplines and people that are experimenting with very different approaches to basically watch them making of the reality that we're part of and how it can be challenged how can we be dissident to it and how can we project the next to come. I think this is also a conversation that we need to open to a large community and networks of people that we want to agree and disagree with and that's why the affirmations in the way that Barjan and myself have been working on this and many others is open to a cohort a planetary cohort we call it of people that have a road that road to to be part of this and send their ideas and I want to welcome this community and cohort of respondents of affirmation respondents that are now connected and that Clarice it's in connection with I think this is very important so we're talking to the future and with this is Columbia University graduate school of architecture planning and preservation my name is Andres and this again I'm dead at this point the dean of this school and and I'm happy to be sharing this with all of you there's actually one thing that I also want to to underscore is that everyone here probably it's been prepared to come here we share the text that you the chapter two of your of your book DJ we also shared and a list of links to videos that that can that leg is produced and that's crucial for us so we hopefully can agree and disagree with more detail or more nuance here and and with this I would like to open the session and I would like to welcome also to to to give the floor to Barjan who's going to introduce the speakers and the topic that we're doing today thank you very much for coming here all right welcome everyone to what is the inaugural session of affirmations and I want to not only welcome all of you present in the room but also all of us all of you who join us remotely on G Seps YouTube channel and in particular the members of our planetary cohorts of respondents who are joining us across many different time zones so good night good morning good afternoon or good evening to you and since I know that several actually of you are following us from cartoon I also want to mention that in light of the current situation in Sudan we follow it with concern and our thoughts are with you as we hope the situation will improve soon and my name is Barjan Polman and I'm the director of exhibitions and public programming here at G SEP and these past few months and we worked hard to develop a new format of talks ones that ones that open up the programming to a planetary horizontal cohort and one in which we invite multiple speakers per session around different themes the intention of the series which should really be seen in its totality or understood in its totality rather and is to develop a platform for discussions that are transdisciplinary engaged with all aspects of the built environment and crucially understand the built environment not through isolated or autonomous objects but rather as operating at the intersection of multiple networks ecosystems and scales and this would include I would argue the scale of time but perhaps more important and as the title suggests the series is also meant to affirm possibilities possibilities for ecosystems societies and worlds to come discuss through the built environment and as emerging from the ruins of manifold contemporary crisis possible futures that emerge from the cracks in the structures of power built on the interdependency of carbonization extractivism colonization racialization anthropocentrism inequality patriarchy and technocracy and for that reason we are particularly excited that Ollalacan Jaefus and TJ demos are joining us here today for our very first affirmation together with Felicity Scott because their work in manifold ways and directly engages with such alternative and possible futures now not to to be sure of ungrounded fissions but futures rather that are fundamentally rooted in various pasts futures not necessarily as distance but as alternative realities futures that in themselves as TJ mentions often in his book require the politicization politicization of time lack in a talk at the African Futures Institute in 2021 has called this afro surrealist co a temporal fictions critically unpacking the contradictions in the worlds he represents these are futures that are also as he calls them alternate pasts or retro futurist worlds TJ demos in his most recent book with the eponymous title discusses various possible futures under the rubric of radical futurism's fundamentally grounded in the traditions of the oppressed and radically rejecting the privileged access to hegemonic time these futurism's are discussed through a diversity of practices and the urgent need to articulate new forms of solidarity these in other words are futures that are disruptions a radicality that they must following following Angela Davis and Marx calls an ecology of connectedness that the situates across and I quote current afro futurism's indigenous and she connects futurism's queer and trans futurism's script futurism's Muslim and Gulf futurism's and so on and of quote it is within these and other futures that we want to situate our discussions in affirmations in the eight months to come starting tonight and we are incredibly excited to have lack and TJ demos lack soon TJ demos already here share the stage for a very first session I reading my notes now I see we'll start with a presentation by lack which is not true we'll start with a presentation by TJ demos but he will be followed by lack so I'll introduce like first who is joining us from from Brooklyn where he is based and trained as an architect with a B arc from Cornell University lacks work as an artist through numerous representational strategies and through a fundamentally transdisciplinary scope and this is crucial reimagines alternate worlds and societies at the nexus of the African diaspora technology architecture societies communities and ecosystems he has created multiple large-scale public installations over the past decade and the latest addition to which will be the recently approved monument for congresswoman Shirley Schissel which he designed together with Amanda Williams is now long list of exhibitions includes work being shown at the studio museum in Harlem the feature design museum the Guggenheim in Bilbao Spain and the Museum of Modern Art where his work is featured in the permanent collection the incredible installation a CE AP about the all African protoport which I believe he will discuss today gained him the silver lion at the most recent Venice architecture by annual so Lex talk will be preceded by a talk from from TJ demos who is the Patricia and Roland really endowed chair in art history in the department of vision of the history of art and visual culture at University of California Santa Cruz and he's also the founding director of the Center for creative ecologies and demos has written extensively on the intersection of contemporary art global politics and ecology and his book includes among others against the Anthropocene visual culture and environment today decolonizing nature contemporary art in the politics of ecology and return to the post colony specters of colonialism in contemporary art they must was chair and chief curator of the climate collective at the Museum of Art architecture and technology in Lisbon and his most recent book as I mentioned is radical futurisms ecologies of collapse chronopolitics and justice to come which is now out from Sternberg press and is the topic of today's conversation we're also incredibly happy that Felicity Scott will join us to first respond after lack and TJ's presentations and Felicity is professor of architecture here at GSEP the director of the PhD program in architecture history and theory and the co-director of the program in critical curatorial and conceptual practices in architecture she's the recipient of numerous awards and the founding co-editor of Grey Room her critical and historical work on countercultures alternate realities of sorts as well as in tracing the genealogies of political engagement with questions of techno scientific and environmental transformations across multiple disciplines which has done to numerous books such as architecture techno utopia worker on ant farm or outlaw territories makes it a perfect interlocutor for tonight's ever and I see like it's joining your high welcome but but that is not all as we mentioned we also have a planet planetary cohort and in-person audience and the idea is that after Felicity's response when once we move here we will open it up to both the cohort and the audience and the cohort has submitted questions in advance of which Clarissa and myself we made we made a sort of selection and she is also manning what this is sort of affirmation station where on the webinar people can also ask questions so we'll post some of those as well I also want to thank you karma and a Lisa Nakamura who will also be assisting us tonight with facilitating the questions and with that I'll give the floor are you comfortable starting or yeah okay so then let's let's let's stick with the original plan yeah and and then we'll I give the floor to to like welcome okay you need this this mic we'll just advance to my presentation yes I want to thank you for inviting me to this wonderful panel I'm very excited about it and all of you for coming out today the protopian parallel so I'm going to discuss two projects that have almost opposing paradigmatic approaches to my speculative world-building aspect of my practice the first is the frozen neighborhoods which really imagines a kind of severe authoritarian response to a global climate crisis and how that sort of legislation that's enacted by the federal government ends up having this sort of massive regressive impact on marginalized communities as this tends to happen right and so it takes place in a kind of alternative timeline to our own legislation's enacted in 1972 I'm calling it 1x72 and the sort of accommodating imagery and installation sculpture experimental animation takes place roughly like 1995 so that is one aspect and I'm looking at sort of the response of one particular community Brooklyn New York to that the second one is a project that I and both of these are really ongoing works of my own I'd like you know it's it's interesting that I have such you know like I completely build up these worlds and then I have to really like fine-tune and distill them down for whatever venue they're showing in so I have to exercise like restraint and be careful and intentional about what I'm trying to articulate the second one is called the ACE AAP and that is African conservation efforts slash all Africa protoport and in this one it's the exact opposite I imagine what would happen if around the same time 1x72 in an alternate timeline it takes place on the continents of Africa but throughout the sort of African world the diaspora what would happen if shortly after these countries gained independence on the continents that the sort of extractive colonial forces were removed and a sort of thriving conservation global conservation effort took place so for the first one which was exhibited at MoMA in 2021 as part of the reconstructions exhibits we were 11 architects artists designers invited to sort of reimagine cities under the guys sort of reconstruction however that might manifest through our projects and I knew I wanted to do Brooklyn I've been a Brooklyn resident for about 23 years so I moved there shortly after graduating and I I sort of started with exercises during the height of the pandemic when we're all sort of grounded when we see the sort of infrastructures that we know haven't served us well begin to really crumble during the pandemic and again see its effect on sort of marginalized communities so I just spent a lot of time walking around in neighborhood taking photographs of like rooftops alleyways air gaps between buildings community gardens different yards places where I imagined we could sort of rebuild between the kind of architectural urban infrastructure so this is a view from my roof here where I thought of also preserving certain things that I'd seen to me is so much kind of part of the fabric of Brooklyn particularly the bodega's storefront churches subway infrastructure right preserving that those are sort of the things that begin to get sanitized and tidied up as these communities get rapidly gentrified so this is bodega ecohaven so it really draws on that kind of aesthetic but also really a rewilding of the neighborhood of the community and so this is also on the roof of my apartment looking back towards so there's things I'm thinking through just these are very much just sort of exercise almost playful visual exercises so this is like a rooftop marsh thinking about you know the lack of shade in certain communities a lack of public pools so this is like a freshwater marsh on the roof in the height of summer and again I start to introduce these sort of inventive but nonspecific agro tech so this is like an aeroponic aquaponic rooftop vertical produce farm with these sort of both manual and automated drones that could deliver this kind of produce throughout the neighborhood and this is a sort of like rainwater harvesting same thing drone delivery of fresh water throughout the neighborhood but really building this kind of you know these these sort of prosthetic architectural interventions into the you know the kind of urban architectural fabric of Brooklyn and then really kind of getting into the narrative more but they're very much a sort of visual exercise this is a scrap yard junk yard not too far from where I live as well where I thought then of you know which would be a kind of depot for these manual slash automated aeroponic aquaponic produce centers so these are just different views and you know the space between buildings just really sort of occupying all these kind of different spaces that fall outside of the kind of real estates you know constructive of how you know housing and stuff is operated and how people are displaced you know kind of reclaiming these sort of spaces so this is like a microclimate bubble farm the idea that flora and plants that are not native to Brooklyn or even northeast could be grown in these little microclimate bubbles and of course during the pandemic we weren't riding the trains we're kind of sitting still so what would that look like for the MTA and it moved into these first visual exercise then transformed into the frozen neighborhoods so I collaborated with a good friend and colleague of mine Maddie Vaughn so I went to Cornell with he's a historian and we sort of set up the premise for for this world right and again this kind of very authoritative legislation called the mobility credit system and the idea is that individuals families however you identify in your tax form determines how far how often how frequently you can travel what type of travel but we placed it at the kind of you know sort of fell under the free market trade so you were a lot of these mobility credits but you could sell them you could trade them you could do what you would excuse me with them and so the idea is that the rich bought up a lot of the mobile mobility credits you know wanting to maintain their sort of free-flowing traveling the glow parapetetic you know parapetetic lifestyle discursive lifestyle travel so again this is actually a friend and colleagues office building here but I started looking at these scenes throughout Brooklyn to build up and reimagine in this world and so the idea is that a lot of the neighborhoods on the perimeter are kind of in this flood zone so I'm creating you know building again drawing on a lot of the assets that I develop a lot of the sort of library of tech and greenery creating what this world looks like from 1x72 to 1x95 where a lot of these photo montages take place and so for the installation in MoMA as I mentioned I have this massive world in my mind but now I have a small slice of real estate to put it together and to then present it to an audience what am I thinking when I have when I just see a million different stories vignettes would have you so for me it's broken down into you know I have a series these photo montages I have three channel experimental animation to sort of fly through of this world these kind of sculptures architectural maquettes what have you and then a large scale or full scale sort of subway map which is one of the commercial and slash residential mailboxes that you see all throughout the neighborhood in Brooklyn so the idea is that these things are retrofit command there to create the new Brooklyn MTA map and so there's a seasonal occupancy map that you know points to all the different neighborhoods where there flood zones throughout the year so people have to migrate to the center and what have you in keeping with that aesthetic in that language of the bodega you know much of my practice is defined by my architectural education my undergrad architectural education and the idea that whatever my sort of narrative is I kind of remain consistent within the sort of parameters that I've set for myself so I took a picture of a bodega which is just up two blocks away from me and replaced all of their advertising and their signage in a language with information about my installation about the kind of advanced green technologies about the system like the interfaith seed bank which I imagine that the Hasidic and Muslim and Presbyterian storefront church communities have now organized to facilitate the sort of storing and the sharing and a distribution of seeds and what have you so this sort of community response to again these very regressive policies taking place not in a kind of a future right but really imagining this alternate timeline from the past that could have occurred given a set of these particular conditions and so here is what I'm calling the East New York substation TFN Clarity Code Room so again I've imagined that you know that the youth of this community who have a kind of aptitude for technology and coding are the ones who are creating all of the necessary software programming technology that drives everything in the community from you know the automated seed banks aquaponic farms and what have you freshwater systems the sort of hacking of the MTA and this is what the MTA looks like in this world now so it's transformed from the metropolitan transit transportation authority to the main threshold access so it's now a space for like social services church services global networks communication virtual travel gaming what have you and it's all sort of 24-hour service and so this 24-hour gateway kiosk you see on the left here is you'd have all of these hacked retrofit commercial mailboxes sprinkled throughout the neighborhood where you'll be made aware of what trains or what area providing services where and so also these kind of playful little sculptures so this is the aggregate dispersal samsara so it's kind of like the idea of the dandelion you you can program this to go land on a roof somewhere with an entire like profile of bio forestry plantings of what you may want to grow and it will unfold like a petal and you won't like you don't have to do anything so the idea that they responded with all of this incredible sort of proprietary technology somewhere between sort of dystopian conditions create not necessarily utopian world but protopian idea that I'm presenting the possibilities but also the inherent tensions people can't leave these communities so it's a sense you know drawing on the idea of the maroon communities you know where you're thriving in a sense but under harsh conditions and so there's a series of these montages incredibly detailed the interfaith plant sees grow grow blessings side grow blessings is again the sort of endeavor formed by the coming together of the acidic Muslim communities and in Presbyterian seventh day Adventist religious communities to sort of run the seed bank system the crown pro wetland intersection is again the flooding and a lot of the main arteries in Brooklyn are now given over to these sort of freshwater spaces where baptismers baptisms are occurring or just you know people enjoying swimming and then once again the East New York Gateway and the Franklin Avenue shuttle and these are all started from photographs I've taken just throughout my neighborhood are the basis for each of these that I then build up with this imagery so I'll let this run a very short I'll just see I'll let it run for a few minutes but it's just this sort of kind of nice easy easy listening jazz interlude fly through this world which is I think it ends November 15th or so the African conservation efforts the frozen neighborhoods was about being isolated being kind of cut off and what this this community is able to sort of create under those circumstances the African conservation effort in all Africa protopores almost the exact opposite taking place where the first elaborate fiction kind of begins in this 1x 72 alternate timeline and the idea being that again you know what I think of sort of science fiction as we understanding sort of the Western context it it sort of assumes this thing that we don't really look at right you don't really get to Star Trek if we're assuming that it's coming out of this timeline that we're in right although it's their own alternate timeline you don't really get to Star Trek without colonialism imperialism slave labor right the ships don't get powered without that kind of extractive technology so for me it's interesting to think of pivoting from again roughly the 60s when so many African countries gained independence and what if things like the sort of the underdevelopment the resource course curses all of the sort of oil rich you know natural resources rich countries what would happen if if instead of that path the path that we're on right now there was a kind of organized effort throughout the continent to look at sort of alternate systems that drew on you know a blend of both current and long-standing traditional knowledge systems of looking to create different forms of energy fuel and what have you so I imagine this world and also I'm coming out of out of you know even like it's almost a nostalgic project in a sense for me as well because I was born in Lego Nigeria my father is Yoruba my mom is black American from DC and so I left Nigeria when I was six years old but I traveled extensively transatlantic travel throughout my childhood back then you could put little kids on a plane by themselves so I was like for my brother seven we get put on the plane in Legos we land in JFK my uncle would pick us up and then either we'd stay at night or he put us on a plane to Reagan I don't know if I was called Reagan back then Reagan National or Dulles we did that a bunch of times and so I remember that era very vividly as kind of in a sense the end of the golden age of travel so a lot of airlines that we were flying at that time Pan Am British Caledonian KLM they no longer exist but that memory of being in these spaces and in Heathrow and you know JFK and such at that time drawing on that visual aesthetic as well so it's not like I'm reaching all the way back I'm starting in the 70s when there already is an enormous amount of Western influence already even in the architecture and the sort of styling the clothing the idea that you know the sort of modernist brutalist architecture figured heavily in like a nation building and identity for a lot of African countries so working with that aesthetic but imagining if there was this massive effort throughout the diaspora connecting you know kind of picking up the idea sort of Pan Africanism and I imagine that you know the sort of piece the resistance of that of the African conservation effort becomes this all-Africa protoport which are these sort of really massive zero emissions travel complexes but slash also research centers cultural centers what have you and so the project kind of looks through series of these proprietary technologies it's all algae power the discovery of algae and you know discovery of using algae for power and creating things like the sort of maglev mono rail system for like rapid overland travel and then the algal drift pool and sub orbital sort of launch track so a rocket less propulsion almost like a rail gun launch system so I just did these very detailed systems diagrams technological diagrams explaining this technology but really using the aesthetic of that era of like jet magazine of ebony magazine of air Africa that sort of look and feel of presenting not only the technology but the kind of employment the roles within that particular system so you know kind of working out the sort of rough technology of this sub orbital flight system and the characters involved from the launch coordinator to the straddle guide the one who sort of coordinates returning through earth's atmosphere landing what have you and in wetland marine research and so you know really building up the narrative again this world in my mind is so massive but I have to like drill it down right what am I trying to show what am I trying to talk about and so it culminates in the newest all-african proto port that takes place that is established in the Baratsi floodplain western Zambia specifically there because it's a floodplain so it's great opportunity for both kind of this this sort of hybrid system of when algal sun solar technology coming together but also kind of deeply connected sort of cultural history with the lozi people right so that's sort of where I'm kind of introducing introducing the sort of tensions of this world and I touch on it briefly and in the narrative but the idea of is this sort of massive expansionist you know all-african proto port is it at the expense of specific cultures and customs and what have you you know so hence the sort of prototopia and label the idea that it's still sticky and messy right and and there's still you know conflict within these systems so series of these sort of travel vignettes so this is the loading dock that brings both different flight operators and passengers through to like the sub-order bull departure lounge and the idea is that this Baratsi floodplain all-african proto port is the last is the latest of 12 proto ports so there's I can't remember all the name now but Havana Dar es Salaam Mombasa like sort of major port cities throughout the world Los Angeles, New York, Barranquilla Havana and what have you major port cities throughout the diaspora and the latest is not in a port city it's within the sort of again the sort of floodplain right but this would be like Los Angeles and so you have a family this is sort of like my most nostalgic one because when we weren't traveling alone we were traveling with my mother and my older brother so again you know this almost sort of like triumphant like global nationalist sort of imagery of all of the flags of the diaspora but then sort of refined through the colorway of the ACE right so there's that tension of a sort of African expansionist agenda versus kind of recognition of localized cultures and customs and so in figuring out how to present that in the Venice Biennale I you know I try and control everything I can possibly control you know built a model of the space designed everything laid everything out because I don't like having any surprises I wanted to look exactly as I imagine it design the furniture interestingly enough the furniture is oversized intentionally because I was traveling when I was six years old so I wanted every adult to have to scoop to the back and dangle their legs off of the seat and be a little child in this departure lounge so it's a sort of abstracted departure lounge they would be in this Baratsi all Africa protoport so this is the rendering and then this is the space so it's like as close as possible and you know I was thinking of things like the renovation of you know the TWA lounge and JFK and the idea that this is new technology so there'd be like little models and vitrines of the older protoport systems throughout this you know throughout this departure lounge space so you're kind of roughly in this in this world in this sort of really immersive tableau with a 20 foot tall LED video all that was a blend of a sort of video essay but also like a terminal departure window so you'd be looking out onto you know when you're at when you're in a departure lounge you're looking out onto the tarmac the apron baggage handlers and all of that so really kind of recreating that feeling presenting them up presenting the montages as they would be in you know sort of airport public art and again yeah the sort of technical illustration systems diagrams this massive kind of psychogeographic map that explains a suborbital technology and all of the different protoports in the travel times between them and in a series of these like really early studies again and that sort of aesthetic of like jet magazine air Africa looking at the employees of the all-African protoport so everything from the baggage handlers to the flight attendants to the pilots to the groundskeepers and what have you and again these sort of early models of like the monorail conductors the sort of marine technologists little yellow submarine and then this is kind of what it what it looks like with folks sort of occupying the space there and I don't know how we're doing on time the video I'll just let a little bit of play so like the split sort of like the vintage black map of the departure time cycling through you know different advertisements kind of video essay that explains a little bit about the movement and the great wave of independence imperialist infrastructures devoted to economic exploitation resource extraction and environmental degradation were rapidly dismantled this initiated a seismic shift in the continent's political trajectory that brought about the end of colonialism and the rapid dismantling of imperialist infrastructures as a result local environmental groups consolidated into what became known as the African conservation effort by applying indigenous knowledge to repair the damage caused by former colonial powers AC implemented an intense pursuit of alternate energy sources the newly formed organization would meet the challenge of this pursuit in the discovery of the almost limitless potential of algae a C scientists created genetically modified algae that minimized non-productive electric charge dissipation during photosynthesis they struck veritable gold and the practical application of this discovery would be far and wide reaching through cooperative work with scientists and innovators across the diaspora AC expanded its knowledge base bringing about a new era of collaboration their breakthroughs had far-reaching implications for energy production and distribution environmental conservation engineering material science and transportation logistics sub-orbital flight was a key advancement in transportation and logistics among the various forms of hyper travel these advancements were leveraged to strengthen relationship between the diaspora by proposing the development of massive research and travel complexes to be located off the coast of 12 host cities they became known as all Africa Protoports and they were considered freely associated sovereign domains all Africa Protoports are now a network of large sustainable research and travel come welcome everyone it's it's great to be here thanks to Andres and Bart for the invitation I mean it's it's an honor to present and share my work with you around my recent book project called radical futurisms I think there'll be lots of resonance with with Lex presentation and his work so I'll just jump right into this and I'm gonna present some material from the book drawn from different sections as you'll see and I look forward to the conversation afterwards with his compelling contribution to indigenous futurism the trans and did you queer artist TJ cut hands reclamation from 2018 documents what's to come and I'm gonna show some clips from this work and whenever possible I've identified the the URL where you can actually go and see it most of the work is open access premised upon a mass settler exodus to Mars in the near future the short video portrays a broken abandoned earth left to indigenous indigenous peoples who freed of extractive devastation toxic racism repressive heteronormativity and the endless wars and violence of capitalist property relations subsequently begin the work of post-colonial environmental restoration delivered through familiar documentary tropes the piece showcases interviewees like you see here discussing their newfound lives with contextualized footage of dystopian landscapes presented in the evidentiary mode with a handheld cameras reality effects its futurism unleashes radical formal possibilities in decolonizing time that is reversing conventional documentaries ties to pastness projecting the that which has been into the what's to come and it generates forces of creation beyond the mimetic doubling of reified and colonial realities it thereby lays an explosive charge in the present through performative imagination rendering the future as disruption that much more probable I was scared that they had done so much to this planet that there'd be no way for us to fix it it's a lot cleaner yeah it's a lot cleaner like it smells good here Nate it smells like nature it smells like we're making a difference here we've cleaned a lot of this area up this is what we do we clean up things we make sure the area is safe for barefoot walking pretty much and this is just one of our bids we have we filled up approximately 500,000 full-time job is cleaning up up these pukes we see some garbage you pick it up that's what everybody does around here here documentary figures is the creative practice of what I termed chrono politics designating the politics of time as much as the time of politics both implying there's nothing natural or inevitable about how we organize temporality or when we engage in politics as such documentary provides a technology for revealing portals into future's alternative to the now recalling arondati Roy's description of the recent pandemic conjuncture where structural breakdown discloses new found opportunities for a creative transformation of what's yet to be passing through that portal we can cast a barrier of eternity between the barbarism of the present and the justice of the hereafter the stakes are indeed enormous we're caught in a situation in which time has been colonized racialized and economized generating what black quantum futurism the Afrofuturist collected based in Philadelphia term the temporal ghettos of racial capitalism where the master's clockwork universe unevenly distribute spatio temporal mobility agency and determination justice material inequality reigns we succumb to the endless present of capital's calculative machinery seemingly rendering resistance pointless time operationalized as such recalls what jasper poor terms prehensive futurity a chronology that inevitable eyes is a desired unfolding as she writes we cannot get out of the present because we're tethered to the desired future past present and future feel somewhat feudal as descriptions of temporal distinctions conventional documentary tends to reify that time trap cut hands reclamation a decolonization of time as much as of space poignantly contests dominant dominant approaches to time including techno libertarians prehensive futurity and it's colonization of land the economy and the infosphere of communications as much as of temporality it's as if it's vision of what's to come is a foregone conclusion as when the billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk in response to charges of complicity in the 2019 anti-democratic political takeover in Bolivia in part to secure lithium reserves for global markets including for his own Tesla cars and SpaceX project later tweeted we will coo whoever we want deal with it performing the hegemonic futurity to which we're all tethered musk pushes extractive colonial capitalism into any and all territories including outer space as well as into infinity and thankfully in 2020 Eva Morales's mass party reversed that lithium coo on the frontiers of green capitalism that new green coloniality entails destroying the lands waters and life chances and frontline communities worldwide producing a class a growing class of the indebted the vulnerable and disenfranchised subjected to all manner of police violence incarceration and growing deaths of despair on top of mounting climate disasters existential insecurity and pandemic emergency given the resulting desperation our forlorn present has triggered blunt expressions of time resistance like Alicia Wormsley's there are black people in the future placed in halting all white all cap white letters on a black billboard in Detroit as well as on various artistic objects and sculptural pieces installations and in films Wormsley's revolt against being de-futured elaborated in a proleptic tense of the present impending a chronopolitics of prefiguration resonates with the ongoing battles over public monuments and their removals these highlight the otherwise suppressed violence of colonialism and slavery and their contested aftermath past and present conflicts over heritage inextricable from the very social production of the future which also indexes the stakes of documentary today who has the right to produce the future radical futurisms the subject of my recent book have arisen in recent years to assert this right articulated through speculative visions of times to come as witnessed internationally in the formation of creative practices pledged to decolonize the not yet these rescue open potentiality from the grips of capitalism's algorithmic capture it's technogenic determinations and its biosecurities of control building on the precedents of Afrofuturisms of decades past when black sci-fi and musical experimentation projected an emancipated technological presence in years ahead as fictionally dramatized and historicized in black audio film collectives film the last angel of history of 1996 these practices now generate new configurations of documentary and aesthetic practice more broadly in multiple sectors including those of indigenous futurisms trans and queer futurisms and multi species and socialist futurisms and more radical futurisms remake time they derail temporal trajectories from present tracks casting the what's to come into the undetermined not yet as modalities of chrono politics they de-essentialize indeed normalized time operationalizing it's becoming this anew in the formation of other worlds reanimating suppressed pasts as much as inventing potential futures opposing the sequestering of the political within narrow confines such as electoral seasons or parliamentary debates radical futurisms resituate and expand times operation as contestable reinventable and multiply structured futurism's radical character is structurally analytical rather than liberal reformist an anti-systemic or anti-capitalist its interventions transformative and generative radical futurism's cast the future as disruption as Frederick Jameson termed it in his words as a radical and systemic break with even that predicted and colonized future which is simply a prolongation of our capitalist present or in another approach radical simply means grasping things at their roots as Angela Davis has observed echoing marks reaching not only a structural depth of analysis but an ecology of connectedness to past and present struggles to the links between them and to the land itself to the earth and its rhizomatic web of life again cut hands video and its embedding of futurity in decolonized land back is exemplary reaching down into the emancipated muddy soil which is newly garden and up into the real liberated atmosphere free of aircraft and affecting everything in between radical futurism's crystallized in and through localized practices and ambitiously scale up transnational formations increasingly the challenge today in order to oppose global capitalist hegemony and replace it with something else radical futurism's posit the future as disruption as structurally opposed to the enforced capitalist temporality of corporate globality its anti political technocracy its market fundamentalism its predictive algorithmic recommendations its technogenic accelerations its politics reduced to policing its luxury commodity production its colonial extractivism and another formulation anti systemic radical futurism's resolve colonial and racial capitalism into decolonial anti racist eco socialism or even degrowth communism futurism's are radical because they grow out of the tradition of the oppressed to invoke the resonant phrase of Walter Benjamin articulated in another historical moment of anti fascist emergency indeed it can only be so it's there and only there that we learn that the emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule there that we must thread together the many apocalypses past present and future understanding them as related and mutually informing if differentiated but not as accidental new or discreet it's there that the future becomes radical and anti oppressive struggles responding to past and present violence and their associated traumas guide the coming liberation even while it acknowledges the unrepairable and unforgettable the unassimilable not all violence can be healed if we're not afraid to adopt a revolutionary stance if indeed we wish to be radical in our quest for change Angela Davis reminds us then we must get to the roots of our oppression black quantum futurism's chronopolitics materialized video assemblages and photomontages that unleash the force of radical reversibility they target time zones that keep racialized bodies locked in oppressive cells fortified by all manner of temporal encasements racialized projections of unchanging pasts presences of indolence and criminality de-futured voids from these they break out as with their 2019 video black space agency training video overlapping where overlapping images blur into illegibility and shapes mirror and mutate mimicking soundscapes filled with echoes and reverberations all emanating from a deep psychic space of traumatic collective memory in the afterlife of slavery and in the recent past of housing segregation and this is a short clip foregrounded in the experimental music of BQF member Kame Ayewa also known as more mother sonic elements perform like their visual analogs is so many renegade elements oftentimes ripped from appropriated sources of violence some are sourced from deadly encounters with anti-black police brutality as with the sound piece the afterlife of events time distortion from 2016 with its torturous audio mixed with brutalist electronica representing Sandra Bland's violent arrest by police in Texas before her suspicious death or murder in jail they write by quantum futurism we believe that astrological events are reversed and act retro causally from the cosmic future to influence present events that will be subsequently written on the fabric of the past by light and sound such as a recipe for futurism's transformative power in the present with black space space agency and associated collages BQF graphs the techno optimism of past space travel dramatized in astronaut iconography and mirrored helmets reflecting black faces onto newspaper clips reporting unfulfilled urban housing justice dreams resonating with the goals of BQF's community futures lab in north Philadelphia where another member Rashida Philip Phillips works as a housing rights lawyer their cultivation of space agency is then juridical political and geographical as much as aesthetic and temporal indeed the challenge is how to constolate their pulsating lights and sounds to gain the future they want ripped from the contradictions of racialized inequalities and resource allocation as their video quotes Martin Luther King Jr. perhaps more valid today than in 1966 where he said there is a striking absurdity and committing billions to reach the moon where no people live when while the densely populated slums are allocated minus miniscule appropriations or the work of Gil Scott Herron also comes to mind those uneven geographies are also upended in Cuthan's reclamation resonating with the world was the resounding world historical project of decolonization as demanded by indigenous formations like idle no more and more recently the red nation for them decolonization represents the abolition of dominant economic arrangements and sociopolitical systems organized around extraction and exploitation bringing to an end more than 500 years of colonial history and making way for future collective emancipation the videos performative power constructs its subjective viewership as such as an emancipated people to come on land evacuated of oppressors which bears on how solidarity might operate today particularly in settler colonial territories like North America including in documentary practice in a now in their now classic essay Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang have argued that non-native solidarity with indigenous emancipation must avoid what they term settler moves to innocence or goodwill ally gestures that practice the metaphorization of decolonization by denying its essential meaning the return of land and sovereignty to indigenous peoples without anchoring superficial gestures in that latters radical meaning metaphorizing acts which facily extend decolonization to this or that whether decolonizing the university or decolonizing sexuality as necessary as those also are they problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity and rescue settler futurity ultimately for tuck and yang settler accomplices can only accept an ethic of incommensurability when it comes to solidarity relinquishing they say settler futurity abandoning the hope that settlers may one day be commensurable to native peoples which in turn requires an understanding of uncommonality that uncoalesces coalition politics accepting uncommonality leaves us recourse to alternatives like those presented in radical black praxis dedicated to the under commons and a permanent fugitivity as elaborated by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney where the refusal of property and possession of land as much as conventional subjectivities is the ethical truth of emancipated social experience and the only possible horizon for decolonial solidarity that's exactly what cut hands radical futurism offers to non-indigenous viewers like myself via documentary form a subjective non-place dispossession and permanent fugitivity and this precisely because the decolonized what's to come is devoid of settler colonialism's oppressive subjects with the video non-indigenous viewers experience their own disappearance they become accomplices in the abolishing of whiteness as a structure of racial division and colonial oppression that said one might argue additionally or conversely and that's what I try to develop in the book that demortem metal de metaphorizing decolonization shouldn't end in the uncoalescing of coalition politics but rather reveal new forms of solidarity on that basis indeed there's an urgent need for such alliances now more than ever given present hyper partisanship social media atomization and ethno-nationalist reaction in order to build collective power to disrupt the constancy of colonial capitalist violence that harms us all if differentially socially politically and economically writing from yet another radical indigenous perspective nick estes of the red nation argues that indigenous futurity is and must be universal it isn't just for indigenous people it's essential for the very existence of life on the planet what's required is a social revolution that turns back the forces of destruction uniting indigenous and non-indigenous people in common struggle against capitalism and colonialism and in the book I'm drawing on some of the work of max tomba including this recent book insurgent universality where he discusses some of the theoretical possibilities of this notion of an insurgent universality which is very different from prior problematic euro-american forms of paradoxical universalisms so when instead of uncoalescing alliances of difference another option is unifying in support of identities abolition at least in its current constructions which documentary might also a bet at this speculative limit is infinity minus infinity the otolith groups 2019 film linking racial capitalism with the colonial genocide perpetrated during the anthropocene's beginnings in the 16th century conquest of the Americas let me play a brief clip of their film the invasion of Europeans in the Americas resulted in a massive genocide of the indigenous population leading to a decline from 54 million people to approximately 6 million this led to a massive reduction in farming and the regeneration of forests and carbon uptake leading to an observed decline in Antarctic ice cores the CO2 in the atmosphere their very expansive history builds further to the hostile environment more recently a British immigration policy especially that affecting the windrush generation of migrants living both in the afterlife of slavery to invoke CD a Hartmann's term and in the postcolonial wake of empire the windrush generation referring to Caribbean Islanders arriving in the United Kingdom between 1948 and 1971 only to have their residency status questioned and even their citizenship rejected decades later by British xenophobic migration policies this has been a huge scandal in Britain in the last 10 years the film cinematic allegory traces these complex historical networks as mediated by performance and dance recital and historical truth-telling by figures who appear as trans temporal deities with them the videographs what the artists call a choreo poetics approximating an aesthetic form of collective speech inspired by the black arts movement poet and playwright and to zaki shangai the script drawn from diverse sources including the writings of Jamaican poet Una Marson Martinique and philosopher and poet Edward glissand the Brazilian sociologist Denise Ferrera de Silva and British geographer Catherine Yusuf one central character appears many-headed as if an Indo-futurist trope signaling multiple realities a future of many futures in a time-splitting act of metaphysical and even cosmopolitical import with Ferrera de Silva the artists speculate about a blackness beyond capture an infinity beyond infinity in the place of the subjectivity long denied those of the African diaspora by European Enlightenment modernity documentary is consequently keyed to the future indeterminate to the ultimately uncaptureable zone of the decolonized fugitive Ferrera de Silva discusses blackness is anti-matter as negative life that is life that has negative value and is instrumentalized historically by Europe's universal measure in defining whiteness as its counterpoint and the height of self-actualizing reason that reason has been fortified by racial opposition gained through colonization and enslavement with all of the sociological economic and representational violences that were causing consequence of that inequality including a long history of documentary anthropology from its negative use value to white reason and the dialectics of race blackness in Ferrera de Silva's deconstruction opens onto indeterminacy topologically connected to the infinite and uncontainable which is approximated in infinity minus infinity by turning the ears eyes and fingernails of figures into corporeal portals to other worlds this is accomplished through a kind of biopolitical montage in which bodily orifices and surfaces provide screens of layered videos within videos revealing ever-new scenes from the racial capitalist scene that is the geological epoch shaped by colonial capital offering a more precise descriptor than the Anthropocene examining my parts for all glories of the future you will find traces of compressed within the cells of the whole defining a documentary of allegorical immensity the film's voice over culminates by speculating about an eventual future resolve of liberation to be achieved only when those myths have been incorporated one into another and recognized as constituent parts of the before and afterlife of slavery and the never-ending colonial project reverberating with cut-hands reclamation as well as bqf's layered chronopolitics the autolith groups videos performative documentary proposes something like an abolitionist double negative both catalyzing one a disidentification not only from white supremacy but from the very logic of racial difference and to compelling the nullification of the very systems the legal and economic institutions the techno social and educational infrastructure the effective and aesthetic practices that have reproduced it historically and into the present it's only appropriate then that the autolith group in seeking to grant aesthetic form to this complex movement of a deeply historical futurism find recourse in the imagery of two black holes colliding creatively adopting a recent computer simulation from the California Institute of Technology that shows that awesome astronomical event detected for the first time ever by the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory roughly 30 times the mass of the Sun each of these black holes constitutes a gravitational singularity wherein space time curves infinitely the film operates than I argue I suggest in the book in the space time between those two black holes after a past of unforgivable debt in the afterlife of slavery and facing a future filled with indeterminacy beyond reified difference it's many portals reveal and not yet of radical disruption from a history that must be obliterated but never forgotten at its best speculative aesthetics unleashes cosmopolitan force and provides the building blocks the forms events affects and poetics of new worlds the challenge remains to organize the social movements to bring them into actuality that's that's it thank you okay so I'm actually so much going to offer a response as I am a set of questions or maybe sort of prompts to hopefully get the two of you talking to each other yeah this is sort of my game plan here and and without you know sort of collecting your projects maybe to try to find some intersections to get to get you in some type of dialogue but first I wanted to thank you both for the presentations but also for your larger bodies of work which I think are important on so many fronts as sort of evident from to really did present today and I wanted to to let's say maybe I am going to without collapsing hopefully but speak to the ways in which in different in different senses the your project or presentations at least traced out sort of improbable and I want to come back to them improbable and what role that plays in refusing something like an instrumental logic we'll come back to this the ways in which you're what you presented trace out improbable of sort of ambivalent futures I also want to speak to the ambivalence and the politics of that ambivalence and the ways in which you use use these figures to both mark out the contours in the present of violent colonial and anti-black histories and and also sort of seek in different ways to to shadow the techniques or the techniques of power that those histories of body and perpetuated to the present yeah so this this act of recovery or return or prize or refunctioning that that operates in different ways and and so there's an amount to put trees of imagination you know both in Lakes work and in the practices that TJ draws upon as a writer to think with and in solidarity with and and we can come back to these figures of solidarity which is so key to to the book and it's framing and there's also a profound haunting by those histories and by the violence of the present that sort of courses through the work that you presented and and I want to sort of try to to to think about how your work you know on the one hand both of the projects I think refuses a too simple tier loss yet precisely the tier loss of progress the the narrative of technology leading necessarily to a better world all of those those legacies of Western enlightenment models that that facilitated so much of the colonial machinery so I wanted to to to think so come back to this but you know I wanted to to think with how you manage to keep those ambivalences alive and sometimes that looks like a sort of dystopian element or or in in TJ's case you sort of you know actively insist on the on the acknowledgement and channeling yet refusing amnesia in favor of channeling those violences into the present which is not to say allowing that yeah I mean in order to refuse but I want to come back to this so actually I'm gonna be all over the place I've got my notes and then I've got all these side notes from your presentation so I'm gonna make some detours here but one of you know to come back to this this figure of a tillers you know I was struck when I read the chapter that that you shared with us the figure of of the not yet yeah of the not yet future so in the in the sort of in the in the future that that is offering a figure of not yet it's a distinct not yet not yet obviously from the late colonial not yet that that was a sort of endless deferral of something like you know full sovereignty or yes of actualization and and I and it struck me that that in your in your use of the figure of not yet I mean I started to wonder whether this was a ironic continuity of a figure like not yet or if it I mean like how the not yet figured in relationship to the refusal of teal us yet I mean these are you know I'm going here I mean the not yet is a dismantling of of the sort of what you're calling a sort of prefiguration or of the inevitability of the narrative of the future that's built into the colonial and neocolonial machinery yeah so it's a way of resisting something like a too easy realization of the present and yet it does that by appropriating another colonial tool yeah a colonial temporary yet and I and I'm trying to get a sense of how these tensions are are taking risks yeah well taking knowing risks or yeah taking risks that that understand that there's there's yeah no sort of simple resolution into a new temple framework and actually I'm I know I'm getting a little lost here but but so if we have one and Lex retrofuturist world building and then the other I said you know TJ's interest in refusing amnesia and marking out this corner politics of a yet to be that's also a not yet yeah I guess that's the sort of tension I'm trying to draw out that I'm what I want you to maybe both speak about first is is the role of sort of residual residual dystopias within the fiturities that you're that you're gesturing towards yeah something like the inescapability of yeah both of traces of anti-black and you know colonial violence and and I think you know like to come back to the the end of the we didn't quite see the end of the video but this is incredible moment where where you know you you know point out that that imminent within any teal off of modernization whether born of African technologies and algae or yeah they're Western imaginary is something like a neo-colonial imperative yeah that forms of life will be lost and dismantled in the the modernity scripted by yeah African nations in the 1970s yes so there's always this type of temporal topology that's complicated that not any refract back on on histories whether they be of the 70s of the present is it much the future but but but do so without any clean resolution and I'm just trying to see if you can talk about this sort of ethical political work that that yeah that these recoveries not only of something like a you know utopian future yeah a liberated future a properly decolonized future but but a future that remains in in in a struggle with that that machine some sense so maybe and actually I'm going to ask a slightly different question that well maybe it was just where I was going with all of this which would be something like can we see the different temporal topologies that you're marking out in the work which have intersections and similarities but also differences can we see them as as parallel or is antithetical are they shared or are they distinct are they I mean they're obviously doing different types of work but they seem to be yeah sharing concerns I guess for one of a better formulation something sense so yeah the dystopia question the the the complicated temporal logics that refuse it too easy telos which is a you know telos of progress of Western epistemic framework but at the same time don't entirely escape from it's logic yeah well I would say you know I had two quotes for each of my projects and for the frozen neighborhood ones it was a Greg take quote that I can remember this specifically but it went something like being black American as a sci-fi experiment yeah something to that effect and that's where I'm operating from in pretty much in both scenarios is that in sort of I guess contrast to a lot of Western science fiction which is almost just kind of cosplaying oppression whether it's like the maze runner hands made tails or what have you these are things that are part of our actual reality right science fiction does it takes issues contemporary issues it exacerbates them and then it projects them into a kind of far-flung future and imagines how these conditions might be resolved in those futures and what is sacrificed through resolving those particular things and that is almost the basis of like the entirety of Western sci-fi right is is is kind of a sort of play acting which you know black folks folks in the global south have actually experienced so much of what I'm thinking through when I'm doing my world-building and why it's still entrenched in in these you know very specific realities is that it's it's kind of like a living continuous salvage punk right we whether it's music culture food all manner right of how we both as as kind of freed and enslaved folks about the diaspora colonized imperial realities on the continent elsewhere throughout the global south is a responding to this some I'm still working within that framework and in the tradition of science fiction I'm exacerbating it and coming up with my own very specific narratives around it the draw on things that we contend with and have contend with and continue to contend with and I feel and it's interesting I guess that now in this reality with you know things like Roe versus Wade being rolled back right the kind of other folks get to sort of you know get a sense of what this has been like you know what I mean and that terror has been brought home a little bit more so it's more kind of present but it's I think it's just a way of of I myself navigating through I think this has been part of our part of our lived experience our historical experience our trajectory in this world and so I'm creating scenarios it really sort of articulate that say a lot of this is a you know a lot of this day-to-day is science fiction you know the fact that that that you know black American and now with Afro beats clean those like almost a dominant global culture right of what we've made out of these particular circumstances so there's there's that aspect and there's also again you know my father's and I Jan I'm your boss my sort of culture and there's the sense of time is cyclical it's not so binary in that this is the future and this is the past they both kind of you know the past reverberates throughout the future and these cycles and these kind of echoes that travel forward and similarly with a feedback loop they kind of travel back and so this sort of at least kind of your about cosmological belief belief cyclical perception is that all of it is happening and has happened right and so in thinking through where I want to place my sort of imagine worlds it is a sort of futurism but it's in the play you know me to these these trajectories it's it's not that these are set points you know is that we kind of rotate and revolve through through these things just very small way of I guess thinking about yeah like futurity and what it means or at least trying to reconcile that there is always such a disconnect right in the way and in the West we often think about all of these things we think about the things we can draw on to affect the messed it you know colonialism and capitalism and white supremacy has made of the entire world you know I mean so yeah I think that's that's kind of my my sort of response or my way of thinking through thinking through that thanks Felicity for that the comment there's so much there and what you said already but it a lot resonates with some of those things that I were I was trying to think through in the book for sure specifically this idea of what you picked up on in terms not yet the complexity of that term which wants to do all sorts of things and raises a lot of contradictions and tensions as well it's one that I'm thinking about with along with a number of the artists that I'm working on specifically you on a style a Dutch artist that I didn't talk about this evening but I write about later in the book and Jean-Evan Heswick another Dutch artist were using this phrase in thinking about a future emancipation because they're aware of exactly that problem that you're pointing to which is that or the way they think about it the way I think about it as well is that you know we can't ultimately know or determine what that emancipated future will be given our positionality in a present that's deeply traumatized and filled with histories and experiences of violence so it's it's what the Nigerian-American philosopher Ola Femme Tywo calls the identity problem and he talks about this in relationship to exactly this without using the word not yet but speaking about how you know those of us who are in the present can't ultimately know what liberation or emancipation would be in the future because that will be experienced by subjects other than ourselves and there will be a futurology which would fall into the trap of all of the different narratives of the late 1960s that we're doing precisely what you're trying to dismantle so it would come across a different sort of epistemic yeah exactly and that progressive this teleology that you're pointing to is is for sure the problem so I'm trying and I think along with a lot of the artists that I'm writing about I'm trying to I'm struggling with this because on the one hand it seems like it's clear given histories of oppression what emancipation will include what it will not be there's like a negative aspect to this like in Lex's work in a way the photographs of current day Brooklyn with all the stuff that we can read in those images in terms of austerity neoliberalism privatization security compared to the the beautiful color in green images that that he produced in all as an alternative to that so there's a negative a really striking negative moment as well as a positive one but the danger with the positivity with the positive content is that we don't want to over determine the future and produce a plan as if we can know what that would be so there's a necessary provisional aspect to futurism and all in all the cases like in the the indigenous filmmaker TJ Cudham that I talked about like that video is it's really it's an amazing work and partly one thing that I love about it is the lo-fi character of it and and that's I think very much on purpose and it gives a sense of that that provisional rehearsal for a potential vision of the future it's not determined it's not precise it's not overproduced and that speaks volumes about a resistance to defining in advance what emancipation exactly will look like yeah so it's a sort of it resonates with the portfolio but it's not exactly the same but yeah it's having that same sort of sympathy I mean I maybe two other small questions but what I wanted to jump here in jumping here and pick up on this question of how you one couple something like an image of the future from a from a plan or something like that and the Dean you know alluded to the fact that what architects do is they you're wearing an architecture school hey they make projects they project for the the discipline is an inherently discipline of futurity and and yet it's largely often one of scripting and there's been any number of histories that that that you know try to uncouple or trouble or trouble that or or that render architecture let's say out of sync with the present in the sense of the violence of capital I mean so you know there's ways of thinking the ruptures of those temporalities or forms of disobedience and and refusal but I I this is maybe a question for like I I I very struck not only by your history as a as an architect and as a designer yeah or your description of yourself as a as having a design practices and an art practice or a designer and an artist and in watching you present the the the Brooklyn project which is great Brooklyn looks much better you're right it's like definitely an improvement I was wondering how you think those two practices together and and because there's a way in which the the model of a you know a future without a plan or future without a T-laws or a future that that harbors an imaginary that's a matter of a tree and a claim a political claim and an affirmation to come back to the title it it's a it's still harbors an ethic that you know is not determinist or instrumentalizing and yet it seeks change yeah and I and I and I wouldn't want and I'm not trying to distinguish art from architecture well I am maybe but I'm just trying to understand how how we think these disciplines together and and and this is a reductive narrative of your presentation but but you know knowing the film having watched the film the film seems so firmly an art practice yeah the both of them the fly through the gestures and I'm not saying architects don't produce animations on these but it seemed to to have to to operate with a set of institutional discursive coordinates that were in the art world and and the other parts of the presentation you know seemed seemed to be engaging or you know seemed to be targeting architecture or something like that and I maybe I'm misreading that but I'm really curious to hear how we think that nexus of art and architecture in your work and and maybe you know if I was to make a connection to TJ's work how to think the the relationship of an artistic practice to a project or something like that yeah like how we how we think these without coupling them in a determinist way or in a in a in a utopian way in thinking about artistic practices as if they somehow escape capitalist you know formations and you know don't also channel a similar field of yeah technical social political racial forces so does that make sense so yeah I mean is there a distinction to be made here or I mean you use an and you know design and artist yeah I just try absolutely that's that's funny that is the that is the I guess the most I guess longest running challenge of my practice of sitting here in venues like this and showing the work and something like the Venice Biennale or the MoMA and then showing it showing my kind of you know projects it's somewhere like the kitchen or more of a sort of white box space right there's there's sort of you know I'm I'm I'm operating within the kind of fundamental understanding of architecture by the broader audience is that it presents solutions to problems or that it that it that it should do that you know and it's especially if you're deploying the conventions of of an architectural practice and its modes of visual representation of drawing of model of site plan of photo montage of rendering falls within the sort of marketability so I do draw on that in sense and in terms of the polish in terms of the finality of the images right you make the decision of where they fall on the scale of dystopian and you stop it or not but they're clean there's a tidiness to it right and so for me it's been very interesting to you know over time kind of respond to the feedback that I've gotten depending on where I'm showing this work part of why I do use the conventions of sort of visual artist representation not only that it's you know part of my educational background but precisely because it does draw on that kind of aspect of like marketing and tidiness and reaching an audience and for this kind of particular demographic and in a way to sort of upend that there's projects I produce that are they're not solutions they're at best kind of improbable architecture right or very bad architecture you know I always tell the anecdote when I presented my shanty mega structures for Lagos Nigeria to Lego you know to students at Unilag and Lagos school you know Lagos architecture school one young woman got up she was so mad she was literally just shaking with anger that I'm creating ruin porn for the consumption of Western media you know I mean reveling in this kind of aesthetic of informal settlements Makoko using that language to create it and it's it's it's always for me incredibly fascinating because it was it was imagined it was presented I remember in CNN Africa could this be the new skyline for Lagos you know and so there was issue with that being reinforcing of stereotypes right but then another student said well why is this negative this is you know inventive local materials it's about community and what have you that's the aspect of of again the the touchiness of how architecture architecture capital A bill is considered right you're supposed to particularly when creating architecture that engages with the African continent so much of it is NGO paternalistic base you gotta do a school you've got to do a hell you can't you know what I mean so there there hasn't there there isn't much to sort of draw on outside of that and so then navigating the art world is something very fascinating as well a lot of the stuff that I do is digital but it's not digital in a way that it looks clearly digital so then it becomes difficult to market what what is the value of this artwork right and and you know how do we make it saleable for collectors or where does it fall within can and you know where do we place it right so there's these two kind of aspects that I find myself navigating as a black artist architect then there's the larger aspect of often in the artwork that the work must be contributing so if the architecture is if an architecture world it's that this project must be solving a problem otherwise it's reinforcing stereotypes or otherwise it's useless you know in the art world it's because you're a black artist is it edgy you know what I mean is it is it challenging things is it it can't simply be sort of abstraction for abstract sakes I have to weave in these particular narratives so it's very interesting for me to consider you know operating within both of these spaces and with all of the expectations that come with the work and what it looks like and how I articulate it and I've been known to articulate it differently for one venue it's switched it up for another venue because in a way that's the art as well the way I'm talking about it you know I mean the way I'm presenting it and you know also it's it's something that's constantly evolving that I have to reconcile with you know legitimate criticisms about the work you know is it is this you know not necessarily reinforcing but is it drawing on certain things what are the particular blind spots and I'll just wrap that up to say that ultimately I you know when speaking about an architecture I'm trying to you know really consider the value of of of the fact that because the sort of general imaginaries that architecture is you know resolving issues when in reality it's very often times reverse like reinforcing the worst aspects of it yeah at every level at the educational level at the way the kind of disconnect between professional practice in education the exploitative nature of internships of aggrandizing the individual and all the you know I mean so you know why not consider you know more sort of fluid amorphous around the improbable you know to come back to your term I mean the yeah it's doing so much important work I think and you know responds also where you end on the chapter of saying that you know that basically neoliberalism turns the possible into the probable you know it scripts that future through engineering particular disposition that that that you know it's precisely why the alternative futures that you know you recover would never take place that you know we know the game is fixed and so and so that the improbable seems like a really good gesture to interrupt that instrumentalizing logic and sorry I didn't mean to answer my own question do I have time for one more question are we sure we move I mean we it's about out of space and space I'm okay we should go to the audience yeah let's let's do one because I think since we have this large cohort that my roles as a sort of channeling I will talk over dinner about your yeah or after so are there any questions from the audience I think the game is I'm taking I'm fielding questions from the audience and you're you're the point person for the planetary cohort yes yeah we'll start with the planetary cohort I can I can join I'll join a few together because they sort of jump on on many of the things that were already said before which in a large part many of the questions were about representation which I think is important also given a context of the school to discuss here so for example Anna Halleck asks do you find it visually possible and I guess this is for lack do you find it visually possible to speculate about possible past while tracing back to the times before the industrial revolution and its further further development of aesthetics what if we would anchor futurisms before the capital is seen and how this or utopian would it be to encounter visual essays and speculative pictures of a possible past like this without the machine-looking development of technology as we know it now and and similarly Laura del Pino asks how can we transform or adapt the space making techniques or the techniques of space making I guess so relevant in this school that tend to be classical and Western influenced often into tools for inclusivity in a capitalist society and I think that made me also think about TJ's point in the book where he which I don't think you talked about so much but at one point in the book you talk about aesthetics as solidarity or solidarity as aesthetics in relation for example to I was also thinking the nation-building aesthetics that were important in the second work you discussed and related to that just to trump in a couple more Catherine O'Rourke is asking what the status of the nation state is in these works in these possible futures what role if any do governments or international collective bodies play in a healing future and similarly both Ginger Nolan and Harshaht Rysoni asks about monuments maybe to end there in relation to the to the nation state as well the role of monuments ginger asked I wondered if the two authors might want to share some reflections on the role of monuments in relations to histories and futures I mean I know that already came up a little bit in the presentations as well sorry there's a lot but yeah to bring in a lot from from the cohort to be fair since we're running out of time yeah okay yeah thanks for those questions let's see the idea of aesthetics is solidarity maybe I'll pick up on that because that becomes important and connects to some of the things that Felicity was talking about before so yeah I'm trying to to think about this in terms of how forms of experience can be a place of ultimately struggle not just in relationship to forms of emancipation but also in relation to the present so how can we rethink aesthetics as a site not of what it is in some ways classically defined as a place of like purposelessness within like a European philosophical tradition but actually a site of world-building as a something that can be performative in the act that's something that I'm trying to get at in terms of this phrase solidarity is also an important term that I bring up in the book it's it's not something that you find often discussed or or practiced within the artistic context these days especially as the art world is just so instrumentalized and geared toward reaffirming and and disciplining forms of competitive individualism like this is just so you know determinative within artistic practice so what does solidarity even mean within that context if we're trying to dedicate ourselves to not only criticizing the present but realize alternative alternative scenarios whether they're retrofuturist or whether they're future possibilities so there's a large discussion in the book around how solidarity might be engaged as a form of political relationality that is I think and I ultimately argue really desperately needed if we're to commit to actually transforming conditions in the present if we're truly faced and I think we are with conditions of emergency and I had a quick passage in my presentation about the need to connect different kinds of formations of emergencies or think apocalypses together with that said still within our present we really face an immense challenge in terms of what's happening today in terms of just the socio-environmental catastrophe that is before us so how can we turn aesthetics into a form of solidarity as a site of struggle that's not just and this would be a place to go back to your question about connecting different spheres of activity not just art and architecture but also social movements or forms of struggle like how can we not how can we not just be placated by the aesthetic seductions within the framework of a gallery situation but actually work toward realizing and transforming material social conditions so again I didn't present that this aspect of the book tonight but that's the second half that I really come around to to saying and it speaks to my own frustrations as someone who writes about art that often you end up with you know reaffirming the declarations of emancipatory ambitions but what does it mean to like actually face the commodification of those visions within highly institutionalized artistic contexts and what does it mean to break out from those contexts and actually work in a social context through social movement struggle against these conditions of oppression so I look at different artistic slash act of this practices in the second half of the book it's from practices like like like yonestals or strike mama within the context of new york decolonize this place also in in new york and there's lots elsewhere but what you know what does it mean to as decolonize this place argues what does it mean to strike art not in order to attack or negate artistic creativity but actually to liberate it from the conditions of its capitalist commercialized institutionalization like this is stuff that i'm trying to get at so aesthetics is a form of solidarity um i find is um is practiced in all sorts of ways but not often discussed within especially academic or even your museum or curatorial discussions maybe it's it's too it's too threatening it's it's too like actual like in the world political challenge and an actual struggle but i think it's that's really crucial and it would be ultimately i found halfway through the book i was myself frustrated with some of the claims that i was making about the utopian possibilities of emancipation and the need to come around and ask difficult questions like what's keeping us from this and what do we need to do to overcome these systems of oppression i'm scanning do we have any questions from any questions up here yeah i think there are two questions right there thank you for the discussion and the wonderful presentations i had one question maybe a follow-up on the aesthetics comment it looks like the site of resistance for the critique of future is very much the visual domain the ocular the scopic domain in both of your practices even though you alluded on the the role of aesthetics that is a bit beyond the the visual paradigms i'm i'm just wondering what you think about the cultural logic of late capitalism which relies a lot on this image-making paradigms and is there a risk or a danger on reproducing or resisting critiquing capitalism with its own currency you know is there is is there is there a future critique that can lie outside of the visual uh which you know may may may produce a different kind of critique yeah i think um and i think it goes back to your question of you know how do we um demonstrate solidarity in a real practical sense real practical sense when we're navigating these systems in these institutions which as we know um i guess simultaneously like grant you a platform but also undermine the radical like the radicality of what you're trying to achieve and it connects to what you're saying about that visual right um that that it is like that the visual is so incredibly seductive that it can be marketed that it can be co-opted that it then can be repackaged and it can serve as its own sort of um you know self-destructive agency which i think which is why um the tj cut hand right which which is such an important um thing that you said about the lo-fi quality of it right it defies that it but it defies the kind of finish and the polish which is incredibly attractive to the um incredibly attractive to the system you know to the institution um and also resists that finally resists saying that we have resolved this here and it allows it to be a um a like self-replicating evolving kind of thing and i think there in potentially lies the idea of where solidarity can can can find itself in that kind of hand over fist informal exchange that's cross-disciplinary multi-disciplinary where we're not gatekeeping um the sort of opportunities we have in a way to fundamentally circumnavigate that gatekeeping is to have it not be as readily appealing to those who can say oh i can take this and i and then it comes back then to the visual is so seductive even when it's not right even when there's an ugliness to it like i said like i was you know challenged for sort of ruin porn right for a particular kind of look um i i think about that at all i think about you know soundscapes the haptic the touch the feel you know where else can we explore um you know these spaces where we're trying to resist and i don't have the answer to it because i operate so much in that kind of visual feel i've worked a little bit in sound with uh by collaboration with them po you know what i mean like say you know like that like the ability to really draw on that but i think that's so incredibly and deeply underexplored precisely because it's not seductive to the institutions and there is our personal ambition and trajectory tied up in a lot of what we're doing that's the reality of it you know what i mean so this is what we have to contend with you know um but no that's a really great question oh man that just put so much pressure on my question now no i was just um i just wanted to draw out the references to uh to spaceships and like you know you bought up star wars and it's you know it's channeling of colonial and capitalist histories and and obviously the all-african post-port in um uh and the iteration is is is based in western zambia which is presumably a reference to the affronauts as well and and you know the whole history of um of i i mean i've got notes about sunroof and other afrofuturisms and um but it it started also that the superfutures haunt collective also dreamt of building a spaceship and uh and you also mentioned the black space agency at the bqf and and what i sort of wanted to draw out here um actually two things i i wanted to ask like a question about um this beautiful gesture not of going to outer space um but to using outer space tech to using the possibility of launching rockets to create a connection across a diaspora community which is like almost like the total opposite of what the the the most science fiction sort of um um space rocket projects do and but i also wanted to put it into the connection or something that i'm obsessed with right now which is all these projects from right after 1972 from the early to mid 1970s of um earth free ports and spaceports and like the otra initiative in what was then zaire the democratic republic of the congo that that under rubric of offering um offering uh you know satellite connectivity to to african countries and possibly other third world countries was was a you know private capitalist initiative that was you know simultaneously trying to battle the us and the ariani rocket that the french were launching and the soviet space program and and so the ways in which the the sort of african fraternity that that is um uh you know mutu of course had all sorts of reasons for for allowing a german corporation west german corporation to lease a hundred thousand square kilometers like you know size of half of west germany um uh to to launch missiles but but there's like it's just such a symptomatic moment of that you know tense sort of optimism and an incredible inscription within like a sort of you know rise of neocolonial logics and that immediate wake of yeah of independence across africa so i just sort of couldn't like help asking like how to how to think all the the continuity of the liberatory you know possibility of outer space you know in the work of san raha and others with with actual history that um yeah that he's playing out at this moment and it's like so i mean i know it's a classic trip of african futurism but it's also it's such a complicated one yeah it's like and and your work again the the refunctioning you know of the outer space travel from going to mars to to um yeah going to the caribbean it's like you know so fantastic i think like really really interesting as a sorry it's maybe it's not a question is it