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BLACK QUANTUM FUTURISM
January 25, 2019 @ 6:00 pm– April 20, 2019 @ 5:00 pm EST
ON THE EDGE OF THE BUSH / A LONG WALK INTO THE UNKNOWN
Opening January 25, 2019, 7–9pm
Conversation between Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother) and Ineil Quaran at 7:30pm
On view through April 20, 2019, Tue–Sat, 12–5pm
Free and open to the public
How can one examine the unknown? How is this unknown shaped by its temporal realities? How does one resist, recover, when facing the erasure of memory? This may involve a reinvestigation and uncovering of hidden histories, and a hacking into future histories where they have already been erased.
Utilizing collage, video, text, and sound installations, this exhibition by Philadelphia-based Black Quantum Futurism (Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother, and Rasheedah Phillips aka The Afrofuturist Affair) draws from quantum physics, speculative fiction, and Black/Afro-diasporan cultural traditions of observing time and space. The works aim to break free into the unknown futures of past selves, and to honor the ritual casualties and philosophies of Black ancestry, culture, and spirit.
Join us at Squeaky Wheel on Friday, January 25th at 7pm for the opening reception of the exhibition and a conversation with Moor Mother at 7:30pm.
Public Programs
February 9, 2–5pm | Futurism Now: Limitless Hope through Speculative Fiction: Discussion and Creative Writing Workshop
April 5, 7pm | Worldline ⃝ Timeline: Screening of John Akomfrah’s The Last Angel of History, and work by Dana McKnight and Amanda Strong
Bios of the artists and contributors
Black Quantum Futurism is an interdisciplinary creative practice between Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips that weaves quantum physics, afrofuturism, and Afrodiasporic concepts of time, ritual, text, and sound to present innovative works and tools offering practical ways to escape negative temporal loops, oppression vortexes, and the digital matrix. BQF has created a number of community-based projects, performances, experimental music projects, installations, workshops, books, short films, zines, including the award-winning Community Futures Lab. BQF Collective is a 2018 Solitude x ZKM Web Resident, 2017 Center for Emerging Visual Artists Fellow, a 2017 Pew Fellow, 2016 A Blade of Grass Fellow, and a 2015 artist-in-residence at West Philadelphia Neighborhood Time Exchange. The Collective has presented, exhibited, or performed at Red Bull Arts NY, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, Philadelphia Art Museum Perelman Building, MOMA PS1, Bergen Kunsthall, Le Gaite Lyrique, MOFO Festival, and more. BQF Collective frequently collaborates with other Black Futurists Joy KMT, Irreversible Entanglements, Thomas Stanley, and Metropolarity to produce literature, present workshops, lectures, and performances.
Ineil Quaran is an afro-futurist multidisciplinary artist and ghetto organizer born in Buffalo, NY and raised in the Kenfield/Langfield Projects. Through his fine art and multimedia collages he recreates memories and dreamscapes incorporating themes of self-preservation, Black celebration, imagination, and grief. He developed his skill by blocking-out neighborhood sidewalks with chalk drawings and studying digital tutorials. Institutionally he attended Buffalo Academy of Visual Performing Arts and briefly, Villa Maria College majoring in animation. Growing up Ineil indulged in: Walt Disney animations, climbing trees, the epics of ancient religions and folklore, anime, early 2000’s hip hop and R&B, science fiction adventure, and his gullah/geechee heritage.
In 2014 he co-owned, graphic design business and zine distributor, VENT. Soon after in 2015 he co-founded D.O.P.E. Collective (Dismantling Oppressive Patterns for Empowerment), a Black youth-led anti-oppressive arts organization that aims to strengthen local resources for creative and exploited communities which resists through art forms and arts movements considered: white-washed, extreme, stigmatized, political, and/or experimental.
Ineil Quaran is now developing work for his first solo art show and is continuing to cultivate resources supporting the East Side, melaninated creatives, and all the black and brown *QTs!
Banner image courtesy of Black Quantum Futurism.
