Black Quantum Futurism. ‘Just About Time’

As part the 2022’s edition of the LOOP Festival, dedicated to exploring the multiple folds of time, this programme gathers together a series of video works made by Black Quantum Futurism (BQF) between 2017 and 2021. Based in Philadelphia (US), BQF is an interdisciplinary creative practice between Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips that, by way of different languages and media, proposes new interpretations of time and space, thus, questioning the constraints of linear time. 

PROGRAMME: 

Time Travel Experiments, 2017 (9min 30sec)

This video presents DIY time travel experiments from an embedded time travel manual in the speculative fiction book Recurrence Plot (and Other Time Travel Tales), written and published by Rasheedah Phillips. Depicted time travel experiments employ the concept of Black Grandmother Paradoxes, which emphasize matrilineal or matri-curvature timelines that are feminine and communally-generated, where the future emerges into the past by way of omens, prophecies, and symbols, while the past is a space of open possibility, speculation, and active revision by multiple generations of people situated in the relative future. The video has been written and directed by BQF, shot and edited by Bob Sweeney. 

Black Space Agency Training Video, 2018 (4min 9sec)

On the occasion of the 50 year anniversary of the enactment of the United States Fair Housing Act, Black Space Agency Training Video explores the chronopolitical imaginaries of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements during the space race, particularly as it unfolded in North Philadelphia in 1968.  The series follows the pattern of entanglements in the fight for affordable and fair housing, displacement/space/land grabs, and gentrification for a better understanding of its present day implications on Black spatial-temporal autonomy.

All Time is Local, 2019 (5 min) 

Like politics and the weather, all time is local. Considering time’s intimate relationship to space and locality, this project continues the work of BQF in recovering and amplifying historical memory of autonomous Black communal space-times in North Philadelphia, meditating on the complex, contested temporal and spatial legacies of historical, liberatory Black futurist projects based primarily in North Philly -such as Progress Aerospace Enterprises, Zion Gardens, and Berean Institute.

Write No History, 2021 (15min 34sec)

Write No History is a short, speculative three-panel film featuring found and archival footage of The Temporal Disruptors, members of an ancient Secret Society of Black scientists, healers, and  writers, spread out across time in the relative past/present/future at one of their meeting lodges, the Hatfield House in Philadelphia, performing quantum time capsule burying and unearthing rituals to transport quantum time capsules containing tools, maps, clocks, and codes as a technology to hack colonized timelines. Write No History is directed and produced by BQF with filmmaker Bob Sweeney. Featured Temporal Disruptors include: Dominque Matti, Iresha Picot, Marcelline Mandeng, Vernon Jordan III, Angel Edwards, Vitche-Boul Ra, Sheena Clay, Camae Ayewa, Alex Farr, Rodnie King, and Riot Dent.