Wanderings around in afrofuturism

afrofuturism: is an emergent literary and cultural aesthetic that combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in order to critique not only the present-day dilemmas of people of color, but also to revise, interrogate, and re-examine the historical events of the past. Wikipedia

i.I was surfing around last night (you know, doing some creative r&d) recovering from an incredibly luscious weekend of camping in Pescadero, where I had gotten into a deep conversation about Octavia Butler.. and stumbled upon yet another piece of the afrofuturism meme I have been tripping out on recently.
Octavia Butler is probably my favorite Sci-Fi fantasy writer EVER, having written about several different sci-fi "worlds" that explore social justice themes around race, class, gender and sexuality including; The Patternist series(telepathic ability), Xenogenesis trilogy(alien/human bonding), Parable of the Sower series(empathist ability)and the stand alone, Fledgling (vampiric).
The Xenogensis Trilogy (now called Lilith's Brood) has to be my favorite of her works. An exploration of human/alien intimacy, sort of pinging on the vein of Heinlin's polyamorous trip in Stranger in a Strange Land. I totally remember finding a 1st edition hard cover with a perfect dust jacket on the free book rack at the old American Legion bar in the Summer of '97. (Does anyone else remember this place..on 21st and K...just before it went through its transformation into the gay friendly, Club 21?)

Anyway, the cover was great...a super cheezy alien drawing all 'shuged' up to a black woman. I remember some early versions of these books being printed with cover's that had white character images, even though Butler's protaganists' were largely people of color. A glaring example of institutional racism within the Sci-Fi publishing world during her early years. I searched Google Images* and Amazon..but could not find any examples of this until I went to AbeBooks. I wonder what Octavia said when she saw covers like this...what an affront.

ii.
Another artist listed in the Wiki collection of Afrofuturist's was Jimi Hendrix. This reminded me of a YouTube posting I found recently of Jimi being interviewed by Dick Cavett**. Damn, he was an eloquent and mystical cat. I had never heard him express on his concept of the electric church before. Totally rad. And double-rad that I can even find this interview, I heart technology. I am pretty sure Jimi would have dug YouTube....as the Digable Planets would likely have noted if they had a afrofuturistic time machine.

iii.
I did not recognize the name Renee Cox from the list of afrofuturist artists so I went and found her gallery shots and the Yo Mama portrait from '93 totally stood out. I think this must have been on an inside cover issue of Ms. magazine from that year 'cause I totally remember it. Her point of view is 'in your face' brilliance, she gives you no room to hide from it's meaning. You can really see, over the course of her body of work, a metamorphosis from maidenhood into womanhood as well. Right now I am especially diggin' her super hero series, Raje (Rage?). Its both hilarious and powered by a reclamation of black imagery. Something I bet Octavia could get behind.

iv.
After viewing the Raje series and exploring her Wiki more thoroughly it did not surprise me that she had done some work with Spike Lee, having designed the School Daze movie poster. I just rewatched this last month with Kristian, who had never seen it. This flick is a real gem (blew my mind when I saw it on cable as a 10th grader), one of Spike's earliest films ('88) and though it has a few underlying fantasy/futuristic elements Spike is not listed as an afrofuturist director on the Wiki list.

However, like some sort of afrofuturistic 6 degrees of separation, Larry Fishburne*** holds a lead role in School Daze and he was of course the megacool character Morpheus in The Matrix movies. As an afrofuturistic powerhouse Morpheus was totally reminiscent of Octavia Butler's book cover for Clay's Arc ..and this makes me wonder what she thought of this likeness?

more wanderings to come later...


* During my image research I came across the jazz musician Nicole Mitchell who in 2008 released a tribute to Octavia Butler titled the Xenogenesis Suite. The cover is the title image for this blog entry. I also created a Pandora station for her and listened to it while I blogged this post. Mind blowing....
** Woah! Dick Cavett reminds me of Steven Cobert!*** Larry Fishburne is a new CSI in the original CSI Vegas TV series and is currently producing a movie based on the Paulo Coelho book, The Alchemist. A novel/novelist with a strong sense of magical realism.