Sun Ra

“There can’t be any conversation about futurism that does not include Sun Ra. While it was an energetic movement back in the 60s, to look at Sun Ra is neither an act of retrospection nor introspection, rather a kind of extrospection that looks at the notion of time with as much contempt as the dialectical slave holds for the master. With the term “Futurism” tangled up in webs of highly suspicious patriarchal or capitalistic values, which are both necessarily discriminatory modes of organising, where can we find another way of understanding the future? It is fine to dream of cybernetics and cloud-consciousness, but central to the discussion of this kind of posthumanist future must always remain the fundamental reclamation or reassessment of our collective “we”. Who is the “we” of the future? Who gets the bio-enhancements? Who is ultimately invited into YOUR futurism? In some ways, this is part of the role of Afrofuturism, to ensure that the “we” remains open..”