Afrofuturism

African diaspora visions of the future date back to black science fiction works such as Pauline Hopkin's Of One Blood (1902) and W.E.B. DuBois' The Comet (1920). In 1972, jazz artist Sun Ra popularized his mash-up of space aliens and ancient Egyptians, followed by similar themes in the work of artists such as Grace Jones and Parliament Funkadelic. During the 1980s, hip-hop artists like Rammellzee created a new cyborg approach, with the merging of weird found objects into a kind of exoskeleton. Most recently AfroFuturism has influenced the fashion world through artists such as Lina Iris Viktor, and musician Onyx Ashanti. Ashanti has used 3D printing and accelerometers to turn cyborg technologies into techniques for musical improvisation. For more information about AfroFuturism, visit the CSDT > Culture > AfroFuturism tabs on the CSDT site.