Performance - A Counter-Cultural Dance

Many performance artists also contributed to the Afrofuturist movement. The late artist Rammellzee (who passed away in 2010) began his career in graffiti and rap, appearing on the 1983 hip-hop classic “Beat Bop.” But it was his performance art, a cyborg exoskeleton of weird found objects, merging cultural references like animal skins with high tech prostheses, that put his mark on art history.

Other examples of Afrofuturist influences in hip-hop have faded into the background. The origins of breakdance from moves like "the robot" are now so much a part of the culture they are invisible, but at the time they stood out as much as Rammellzee's leopard-skin cyber-sculpture.