🚀 A Portal into Afrofuturism
We highlight the Black utopia work of Intelligent Mischief.
“Neither a mantra nor a movement, Afrofuturism is a critical perspective that opens up inquiry into the many overlaps between technoculture and black diasporic histories.” -Alondra Nelson, currently the Deputy Director for Science and Society for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and founder of the Afrofuturism listserv in 1998.
In observation of Black Heritage Month, we dedicate this issue of the newsletter to the exploration and practice of Afrofuturism, a framework for art and thought about imagined and alternative Black experiences, especially in the growing cultural digital space.
Afrofuturism was first coined by the cultural critic Mark Dery in his 1994 essay, “Black to the Future” to define “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture.” Yet the basis for the term percolated as far back as the 1950s in the writings of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man that told of changing science and societal conditions affecting African-American futures or in the cosmic experimental sounds of jazz composer Sun Ra.
The Afrofuturist movement — at the intersection of art, science, and technology — reimagines a Black future through science fiction metaphors and technocultural production to enlighten and entertain. While mainstream examples of Afrofuturism include the Black Panther film, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and Octavia Butler’s science fiction novel, Kindred, we are most interested in the work of our colleagues in the digital space, organizations like The Guild of Future Architects, Afrotectopia, PowrPlnt, and many more who are reimagining technoculture.
Today, we highlight the work of Intelligent Mischief, a Brooklyn-based creative studio and design lab co-founded by Aisha Shillingford and Terry Marshall (above) focused on the Black imagination to shape the future. (Full disclosure: I am a mentor-in-residence at New Inc’s Cultural Futures track where I first met Intelligent Mischief.) Their work with cultural institutions is anchored between physical IRL social impact and in creating digital Black utopias through hackathons, Zoom workshops, and online interactivity. They use tech as a surreal tool to build out interactive digital worlds of possibilities.
Shillingford said, “We're really curious about the ability of interactive technology to create immersive experiences because we feel that part of imagination is believing that something is possible. For some people, certain things are not possible because they've never seen it. We want to use technology as a proxy to transport folks into an immersive experience of that future world.”
NationX, the latest digital project that the studio conceived, is a multi-platform immersive story world based on a fictional 700-year-old Maroon society of African and Taino indigenous people who were never enslaved and found shelter on a Caribbean island that’s hidden by a downburst. In following the sci-fi story, in the modern day, NationX maintains their secret society but sends agents disguised as club DJs out into our world to recruit people back through the portal to NationX. Intelligent Mischief fashioned a 24-hour portal, or interactive website, as a rave with DJs spinning music like a real club, online rooms for convening, and pop-up audio vignettes. The project was announced through wall projections in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Oakland and more than 2,000 participants logged on from 31 countries.
As a user, when you logged onto nationx.world, you would be welcomed by a streaming video on the main page. The live-streamed programming included guided meditation, a tarot card reader, and someone performing a monologue around how to roll papers for an herb native to the island. The overall feeling was that of timed peep-shows in Amsterdam — you click around to find one you like. A partygoer could call up the tarot reader for a personalized session but that session would also be live-streamed for the community to hear. In chat rooms, partygoers could meet new people and learn more about the secret society and its prophecy. NationX was written to be a fantasy club experience, an homage to club life, an ode to the Black body, and a welcoming respite during the pandemic.
“Our primary use of technology has been information dissemination,”says Marshall. “We use social media, filmmaking production, and various forms of media. As the tech advances, it allows you to get your message further out or even changes the aesthetics of the art form.”
Intelligent Mischief has observed how young people have learned lateral, less hierarchical, ways of life because of technology and social media. The new generation of users like getting ideas and information from anyone, not just from experts. Based on these observations, the studio is committed to creating a network of liberated digital zones. Shillingford said that they are inspired by Afro indigenous cosmologies, and how they are inherently networked. In “The Idea of a Borderless World” an essay published in the South African magazine the Chronic, there are no boundaries or borders between the material world and the metaphysical, between the past, present, and future. Shillingford says from the essay, she culled, “Humans are all networked. We’re networks to other beings and other life forms. Life exists in networks, circles, and cycles.”
In the future and in keeping with Afrofuturist themes, Intelligent Mischief plans to build an off-planet experience to explore ideas of sanctuary and safety. Shillingford says, “Utopic thinking of oppressed communities is different than utopic thinking of 16th century white people. It's a totally different context and to see how that work relates to policy and strategy. We are so firmly in the story, building worlds, building space, but our concern is actually social transformation.”
-Marina Garcia-Vasquez
Follow Intelligent Mischief on Twitter @IntelMischief and learn more on their site.
New_ Public: How would you describe your work to your grandmother?
Aisha Shillingford and Terry Marshall: Helping Black folks create beautiful stories about the future.
In 10 years time, what will your work look like?
Connecting a vast network of people and creative hubs in multiple cities and countries. A multi-platform media, art and entertainment studio making films, TV shows, immersive installations, etc.
Which newsletter is worth a subscription?
The Future Party and Insight by Zeynep Tufecki
If you were to publish a book on any topic, what would be the title?
Beautiful Struggle
Is there an online community that feels good to be a part of?
BUFU (By Us For Us/CLOUD 9) a beautiful POC-centered community for collaborative skill sharing and support. Ethel's Club, a Black-led, POC-centered wellness and creative club.
If you could design a digital space, what would it look/feel like?
A mix of the space we created, NationX, and a place where you could drop in and watch movies together, listen to tunes together, like a digital club where you could pop on anytime and find your friends. Low pressure, different activities to choose from, feeling togetherness. No performativity. Easeful togetherness.
What inspires you about the future of community?
A collective yearning for a more just, more democratic, more liveable, more beautiful world, for connection, a desire to design well-being for everyone, a sincere commitment to embodied networks of care.
Whose work do you find inspiring on building better communities?
The folks developing community fridges. Bed-Stuy Strong and other forms of mutual aid networks.
Learn more about Afrofuturism:
Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha Womack is a novel that introduces readers to the burgeoning artists creating Afrofuturist works and the history of innovators in the past. (Lawrence Hill Books)
Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism by Alex Zamalin dares to speculate a future beyond white supremacy and offers powerful visions by Black utopian artists and thinkers. (Columbia University Press)
Infinitum by Tim Fielder is a graphic novel that follows the rise and fall of the great African kingdoms, world wars, and socio-technological upheavals of the 20th and 21st century and beyond. (HarperCollins)
An interview with Alondra Nelson who started the Afrofuturism listserv in 1998. (Believer Magazine)
“Space is the Place: Afrofuturism on Film” is a series of 30+ films to stream online curated by Ashley Clark. (The Criterion Channel)
The essay “Afrofuturism: Ayashis’ Amateki” by Mohale Mashigo, from her new collection of short stories, Intruders. (The Johannesburg Review of Books)
"Afrofuturist comics are a means of staking a racially inclusive claim on a multitude of futures. 'And just because it’s about a Black subject doesn’t mean it’s just for Black people,' @JIJennings said. 'These stories are for everyone.'” nytimes.com/2021/02/07/boo… #afrofuturism
❤️🧡💛💚💜💙🖤🤍🤎 In celebration of today, we want to conjure Rachel Coldicut’s provocation: Can we occupy technology with love? Can we? How?
❤️🧡💛💚💜💙🖤🤍🤎Mixing free improvisation into digital spaces,
The New_ Public team
Civic Signals is a partnership between the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas, Austin, and the National Conference on Citizenship, and was incubated by New America.