Dr Reynaldo Anderson | Tohu Magazine Conference
Channel: Tohu Magazine
Date: 2017-05-23

Tohu Magazine conference | Space is the Place:
Afrofuturism, Arabfuturism and the Search for New Dimensions

26 April, 2017 | Basis Art School, Herzlyia

An international conference surveying Afrofuturistic and Arabfuturistic expressions and looking into the possibilities of ethnofuturistic thought in Middle Eastern art and culture.

Dr Reynaldo Anderson | Dark Speculative Futurity and the Rise of Neo-Nationalism

The music and cultural production of the avant-garde bandleader Sun Ra emerged during the post-World War II years of technocratic innovation and anti-colonial and anti-racist struggle in North America. His body of work and other creative intellectuals would largely influence the emergence of Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is a concept originating from the African diaspora in North America, slowly being embraced by Africa, its larger diaspora, and by non-African adherents. It is now a transnational, diasporic, and cultural worldview that interrogates the past, present, and future in the humanities, sciences, and religion. Along with Afrofuturism, other contemporary futurity formations such as Arabfuturism and indigenous futurity are maturing  - emerging as a speculative locus of critical inquiry in the areas of alienation, racism, urbanization, resource depletion, technology, exploitation, bourgeois ideology, and Eurocentrism.

Dr. Reynaldo Anderson is as an Associate Professor of Communications and Chair of Humanities at Harris-Stowe State University in Saint Louis, Missouri; Chair of the Black Caucus of the National Communication Association (NCA); has worked for prison reform with C.U.R.E. International in Douala, Cameroon. Anderson recently co-curated the acclaimed exhibition Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of The Black Imagination, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York.  He is executive director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), co-editor of Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness (Lexington books, 2015), and editor of the forthcoming volume The Black Speculative Art Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design, to be released in 2017.

Introduction by Avi Lubin, co-founding editor of Tohu magazine

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