Afropresentism: “Time -Traveling Desire and Reservoir Knowledge” in the #DigitalDiaspora

 “Facing devastation again and again, Black folks need in and for each other becomes both time-traveling desire and reservoir knowledge”. This assertion by Jessica Marie Johnson and Mark Anthony Neal serves as the departure point for this keynote presentation which explores the Afropresentist practices of Black diasporic creatives on social media. First defined in 2017 by Neema Githere as “a digital genre fusing archival, documentary, and fine arts on and through new media in the expression of an Afrofuturist lived reality”, Afropresentism has since come to encompass a broader spectrum of embodied practices both on and off-line. This keynote invites attendees along a non-linear journey investigating how Afropresentism challenges and alchemizes the complexities of modern-day digital enmeshment. 

Neema Githere is a guerrilla theorist and curator hailing from Nairobi, Kenya whose work explores indigenous cybernetics and love as a method of transportation. Their experimental practice termed ‘data healing’ seeks to illuminate the links between technology, nature and spirituality to investigate how working from this intersection can combat the data trauma – a term coined by Olivia M. Ross – that saturates our virtual worlds. Other projects of theirs include Afropresentism – a term they coined in 2017 to articulate digital diasporic cultural production in the here and now – and Radical Love Consciousness, a collective that focuses on re-indigenization through grassroots learning networks.

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Live closed captioning in English will be available on Zoom for this event.

Whisper translation from English to French will be available for all events with 24 hours notice unless already provided; please email info@qpirgmcgill.org to request. // La traduction chuchotée de l’anglais vers le français sera disponible sur demande avec 24 heurs de pré-avis; envoyez un courriel à info@qpirgmcgill.org.