"Africa is my Future" | 15. Bundeskongress Politische Bildung 2023 | bpb.de

Dr. Edna Bonhomme: One theoretical framework that helps to shape your artistic practice is Afrofuturism, which you have been feeling, thinking about, and working with over the past thirty years. How do you define Afrofuturism, and how has its history and current iteration shaped your curatorial and artistic work?

Ingrid LaFleur: I'm very open to multiple definitions of Afrofuturism. I have my working definition that helps to frame every single thing that I do basically. Afrofuturism is a way of discussing the black experience using speculative modalities like science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and horror. I explore the intersection of race, technology, and science. African and African diasporic cosmologies, legends, mythologies, and spiritual technology influence my work. I love to emphasise that Afrofuturism is non-linear in all its ways, and it is multi-dimensional. Moreover, Afrofuturism is intersectional and multi-disciplinary. The most crucial part of Afrofuturism is that it unapologetically centres the black body. And I think of that one point as a portal of liberation for everyone, regardless if a person is of African descent or not of African descent. It is essential to think about the Black body because of the pervasiveness of anti-blackness in this world. So many people of all backgrounds don't realise that anti-blackness is part of their consciousness and subconscious. Our world has been training humans for millennia to think of those who have darker skin as sub-human. Given this, Afrofuturism can help create a new relationship with blackness. For example, Afrofuturism allows people to embrace Black people as full humans who are producing a culture that, I believe, many people worldwide gravitate towards. Although Afrofuturism was coined in 1993, Afrofuturism always existed, meaning Black people have always been futurists; Black people have imagined alternate destinies beyond their present condition. During chattel slavery in the Americas, enslaved Black people perceived themselves and their progeny beyond their enslavement and imagined their freedom. I like the challenge of understanding the evolution of blackness through the lens of Afrofuturism because the theory keeps evolving.

In your installation Futurisms, an exhibition which you curated and which includes works by artists Jasmine Murrell, Saba Taj, Alisha Wormsley, Saks Afridi, and more. The work is not only concerned about making space for Afrofuturism, but you also provide ample space for this to incorporate Sci-fi Sufism and Muslim Futurism. What distinguishes Afrofuturism from sci-fi and Muslim futurism, and how did these artists speak with each other and engage in cross-cultural discourse?

As a curator, I focused more on their similarities than their differences. And for me, it was important for Afrofuturism to be in conversation with other future visioning practices. I love diversity, and I love to challenge myself. What I like about Afrofuturism, sci-fi futurism, Gulf Futurism and Muslim Futurism is that they all understand that some other entity has controlled the narrative around their bodies and cultures. They are crafting a new narrative for the present, the past and the future. They use futurism to activate aspects of the past and challenge what we were taught in schools. Afrofuturism created this pathway, and so many people were inspired by it. People who have been affected by chattel slavery and colonialism have been very futurist-minded because of all these disruptions telling us that we are not whole. These messages try to imprison us from the present and can keep us from achieving our dreams. Future visioning practices can pull us from the past and move us forward. That's why I love to travel. When I travel, I become an observer and want to learn from others. What I learned from this curatorial project of connecting different futures across Arab and African diasporas is how people survive, thrive and gain pleasure from our present moment. These strategies shape their futures.

In your artwork, Traveling to Turiya, a series from 2016, which references the work of African American jazz musician Alice Coltrane, you incorporate mixed media, that is, crystals, pyrite amethyst, and bismuth, which are meant to help the audience feel and think through healing methodologies, that is to say, you try to find ways to cleanse one’s body of intergenerational trauma. The sonic recording is an audio collage with African American artists and musicians who evoke self-love and enlightenment. How did you come to develop this sonic installation, and whom is this recording meant to be an affirmation for?

When I worked on that exhibition, I was learning about Alice Coltrane. She was a brilliant pianist originally from Detroit. Some people know she had a stabilising and healing force on John Coltrane. If not for Alice, we might not know of John as we know him today. Turiya, which I used in my exhibition title, refers to Hinduism's highest state of consciousness. Knowing about Alice Coltrane’s legacy and Hindu practice, I asked myself how I could get to Turiya. So I made over thirty pieces of sculptures which included crystals on wood. The wood pieces were of different shapes and sizes, and all the crystals had healing properties. Another aim of the artwork was to uplift and support progressive activists in Detroit. So I created the meditations that were included in the installation. The voices in the collage included phrases from African American writers, artists and creatives such as James Baldwin, Eartha Kitt, and Toni Morrison. I also included the African American science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Many people who admire Butler’s work have read her books, but those people don't realise how deep Octavia’s voice was. She had a voice, and I never get tired of hearing it. The artwork intends to be healing for everyone. I'm a black queer woman, so I will always do something on a collective level.

In 2017, you ran for the mayor of Detroit, Michigan, the largest city in the state of Michigan but also a city that is known as the automobile capital of the world and for its distinctive Motown music sound from the 1960s and the birth of techno music, a musical genre that is popular in Berlin, Germany. Given the city's rich history as a cultural and political hub, how did your cultural practices and real-world politics related inform your desire to run for mayor of the city of Detroit?

I was born and raised in Detroit in 1977, ten years after the 1967 rebellion. That is to say, ten years after the height of the Civil Rights movement. This meant that I came of age after this momentous period. During my childhood, the city of Detroit had burnt down buildings or abandoned buildings. Many people decided to flee the city, and most of the people who left were white Americans. Detroit is a Black city; that is to say, over 80% of Detroit residents are African American. For many years, I lived in other cities, including Atlanta. However, when I moved back to Detroit, I knew I was returning to a highly complex city. I wanted to be part of its transformation. In getting to know my city, I started teaching. I didn't realise that one doesn’t know what's going on within a city until one spends time with the children of that city. When I moved back to Detroit, the city had more fires than Los Angeles and New York. As a substitute teacher who went from school to school, I saw in every single class that there were children with third-degree burns. Seeing the result of the city fires and how that impacted the children of Detroit became a physical manifestation of a statistic. This made me wonder how children can learn after the trauma that they've experienced. This wasn't easy. Another issue was that water shutoffs were happening at homes. This meant that children were coming to school with dirty clothes. Finally, the city of Detroit was experiencing high levels of foreclosures on homes which meant that some students did not have stable housing. The Black children of Detroit will forever be my inspiration, and I will forever work for them no matter what I do. Because I was concerned, I decided to go to the social justice community and started to learn that they were working on solutions. Like them, I believe that water should be a right and that no one should have to pay for water. When I decided to run for mayor, I wasn't thinking about being an Afrofuturist, but I organised like a curator. I invited the community to my political office and held co-creation sessions. We created a space for everyone to talk about politics with an open vision. Because sixty-four per cent of people in Detroit live in poverty, I wanted to implement a universal basic income for everyone in Detroit. This would have meant that residents get $2,000 monthly to help cover all the basics, the utilities, and rent. If this had passed, poverty would have been addressed, and residents could start thinking about thriving.

In 2016, the Senegalese scholar Felwine Sarr published the book Afrotopia. He called for a vibrant meditation and poetic call for the African utopian philosophy of self-invention for the twenty-first century, whereby African became the site of creative potential, economic growth and production. The book was meant to carve a political and intellectual space whereby African epistemologies and technologies were embraced, and climate crisis, as we know it, no longer existed. How do you define utopia and what would it demand to achieve this politically and artistically?

I believe utopias can exist within dystopia. If I learned anything from the city of Detroit, I learned that. A utopia and an apocalypse can happen in the same place. Nevertheless, utopia is an individual thing. It's based on your reality and vision. I think that's why it isn't effortless to create a utopia on a collective level. Someone's utopia could be someone's dystopia. Someone's dystopia can be someone's utopia. For example, when one thinks about slavery, some were utterly contained and enslaved, living in a dystopia, and some people enslaved lived in a utopia. Unfortunately, we will always be able to identify dystopia because that's how we're trained and socialised to do it. And as a result, we gravitate towards dystopia. Nevertheless, I'm not a victim and refuse to be a victim. I have complete control over my life. Africa is my utopia. That doesn't mean Africa is perfect; I'm just saying it's my utopia. Whenever I'm on the African continent, I am home. I feel great. I'm excited about all the innovation and tech in Africa. I go to Africa to learn and bring that knowledge back to Detroit. As Africa becomes more robust, I believe the African diaspora strengthens. And what's even more exciting is the visibility of Africans in the diaspora. People of the African diaspora move through culture. And so most of our resistance, as Black people, comes through our culture. The dream is to bring the people of the African continent together. I think it's possible and very hopeful for everybody else in the diaspora.

Finally, what are you working on now?

After focusing so many years on learning about technology, I wanted to understand artificial intelligence better. I became interested in the methods for mapping the future because I knew that marginalised communities are only sometimes aware of what's happening or being planned for us. As such, I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Houston for foresight, to learn the methodologies that futurists use to research the future. I am a formerly trained futurist as well. I've decided to create my methodology that combines all of the information, experiences, and knowledge I've been learning since 2010. We all have the potential to develop a future consciousness, which is one step towards liberation.