Event overview
Black Atlantis is a live audio-visual essay that looks at possible afterlives of the Black Atlantic: in contemporary illegalized migration at sea, in oceanic environments, through Afrofuturistic dancefloors and soundsystems, and in outer space.
Black Atlantis combines two conversations - afrofuturism and the anthropocene. It takes as point of departure Drexciya, the late 20th century electronic music duo from Detroit, and their creation of a sonic, fictional world. Through liner notes and track titles, Drexciya take the Black Atlantic below the water with their imaginary of an Atlantis comprised of former slaves who have adapted to living underwater.
NOTE: 6.30pm START
Bio
Ayesha Hameed’s work explores contemporary borders and migration, critical race theory, Walter Benjamin, and visual cultures of the Black Atlantic. Her work has been performed or exhibited at ICA London (2015), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2014), at The Chimurenga Library at the Showroom, London (2015), Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, Oxford (2015), Edinburgh College of Art (2015), Kunstraum Niederoesterreich Vienna (2015), Pavillion, Leeds in 2015 and at Homeworks Space Program, Beirut in 2016.
Publications include contributions to Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth (Sternberg Press 2014), We Travelled The Spaceways (Duke University Press forthcoming 2017), Unsound/Undead (Univocal, Forthcoming 2017); and books including Visual Cultures as Time Travel (with Henriette Gunkel Sternberg, forthcoming 2017), Futures and Fictions (co-edited with Simon O’Sullivan and Henriette Gunkel forthcoming 2017).
Hameed is currently the Joint Programme Leader in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, London, and formerly a Research Fellow with Forensic Architecture at the Centre for Research Architecture.
Source Material
Drexciya The Quest CD. Detroit: Submerge Records, 1997.
Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Ed. Hannah Arendt, Tr. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. 253-64.
Dipesh Chakrabarty “The Climate of History: Four Theses ” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 197-222.
Paul Gilroy Black Atlantic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Chapter 1
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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17 Oct 2016 | 6:30pm - 8:30pm |
Accessibility
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