Ingrid LaFleur, an influential Afrofuturist speaker and curator based in Johannesburg, South Africa, will be part of the panel discussion, Future and Futures After Now, in Belmont on October 30.
She will be the guest of the mas band, Vulgar Fraction.
Afrofuturism is a multi-disciplinary aesthetic and intellectual movement that seeks to connect the pasts and futures of people of African heritage, a media release said.
[caption id="attachment_1042315" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Chantal Esdelle -[/caption]
Joining LaFleur as speakers will be musician and composer Chantal Esdelle, art scholar and curator Dr Marsha Pearce, and Ifa Babalao Araba Ọlatunji Somorin. Media personality Ardene Sirjoo will moderate the panel.
Robert Young, designer and co-founder of the fashion house, The Cloth, and bandleader of Vulgar Fraction, said he was moved to host the discussion, in part to mark LaFleur’s first visit to Trinidad and Tobago, and in part because he has been contemplating his own future and the future of his work, the release said.
[caption id="attachment_1042313" align="alignnone" width="801"] Dr Marsha Pearce -[/caption]
“People say that I’m Afrofuturist because I’m projecting our existence and our thinking about future worlds,” Young said in the release.
Young's band has annually explored themes such as the impact of environmentalism; racial inequity, and TT’s histories of resistance. He has collaborated with artist Ayana V Jackson, whose work is underpinned with LaFleur’s theoretical work.
Young said that these and other influences have helped “distil some of my thinking about ancestors, about the sacred, about projecting futures” and the role of ancestors, once-living people who are “now understanding deep connections to the planes we understand or don’t understand, the presence of seen and unseen beings, the non-life –rocks and stones, water, fire, all those things that people use as sacred tools, that they have a reverence for and connection to; if you were to ask about the future using that position what would they come up with?”
He is intrigued by the possibilities of employing “ancestral messaging to envision a future for yourself using the traditional spirituality of your ancestors or yourself, using technologies of science that exist now; using trends and foresighting to map a future for yourself or for the world, for a project, or for an idea, or for a community; using design as a tool of solving a problem that is holistic.”
Future and Futures After Now begins at 7 pm, 24 Erthig Road, Belmont. It is free and open to the public.
More info: WhatsApp 774-9368.
The post Ingrid LaFleur to speak on Afrofuturism appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
