WEBVTT

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My talk

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[is] about Afrofuturism and the African.

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Afrofuturism is considered
what speculative fiction,

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myths, legends, science fiction,

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and the stories of that genre
are to African Americans,

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Africa, Africa of the Diaspora,
and black people in general.

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What Denenge Akpem refers it to is
what blackness looks like in the future,

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real or imagined.

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Now, the history of Afrofuturism
comes from America

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and was first coined
by a man called Mark Dery.

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When he started
talking about Afrofuturism,

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he talked about the idea of literature--

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so the books
that Octavia Butler would write

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and things like that--

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but then it also moved
into a new region, of music,

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so we would have people
like Sun Ra and George Clinton--

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but for me, especially Sun Ra because
he has a special place in my heart.

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He believed that he came
from the planet Saturn

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and came to Earth to spread
the message of love and peace.

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Like in his movie "Space Is the Place"

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he introduces the idea of alien

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to black people in America.

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But that was very specifically
about African Americans,

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and I wanted to find a place
for Afrofuturism in Africa.

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The first place that that led me
to is Mount Kenya, obviously,

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where the god of Mount Kenya lives
according to the Kikuyu tradition.

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So Mwene Nyaga is seated
on top of this mountain,

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and he introduced our Adam and Eve,
Gikuyu and Mumbi,

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and from that we're descendants
of the nine children.

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But even before the idea
of the myth of Gikuyu and Mumbi,

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the idea of Afrofuturism,

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or legends, and myths, and stories
were told to me by my mother.

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She is a great storyteller
as well as a pediatrician

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so I'd have to say that her stories
were truly science fiction, truly.

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(Laughter)

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I remember her telling me stories
about the way if I ate the pumpkin,

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my hair would grow.

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Or if... --
which is strange --

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if I attach leeches to my nipples,
my breasts would grow.

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And also...

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I did it.

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(Laughter)

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And also she would talk about the way
that in the Kikuyu tradition,

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if you circle the Mugumo tree seven times,

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you would change sex.

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Growing up, obviously,
past my mother's stories,

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I began to read stories of my own,
and they were inevitably filled

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with the ogre and the young girl
who wandered off into the forest,

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and what would happen
if she wandered off into the forest,

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and how she would meet this horrible ogre

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because she departed
from the ways of the society.

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That's also when I met Ben Okri,
and the idea of the spirit child,

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and the idea of using spiritualism
or mythical realism within storytelling.

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That, for me, is also
a link to Afrofuturism.

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But what really,
really inspired me about Ben Okri

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was his ability to merge seamlessly
the idea of the spirit world and fiction,

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and the idea that we live in a continent

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that is so closely linked
to the spirit world

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that we use it
in a very everyday sort of way.

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That is true
when we come to witch doctors,

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sangoma, or people who deal
with the spiritual realms.

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It's also true of genies of the coast,

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and I don't even know how many of you
have gone to Mombasa or Zanzibar,

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but I know from personal experience

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there was a cat that followed me
for five kilometers,

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or every time I turned around it was there
and I could have sworn it was a genie.

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I'm positive about it.

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In fact, I have friends
who attest to the fact as well.

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So Afrofuturism has always been
part of our culture, part of us.

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But more interestingly, it has been part
of the history of West Africa.

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West Africa believe --
especially in Mali,

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there is a nation
of people called the Dogon--

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and the Dogon people believe

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that they were told
about a planet called Sirius B

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before it was discovered
by Western scientists.

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They were told of this planet

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by a race of amphibian-like aliens

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who came in from the ocean

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and told them, not only about the planet

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but also about the rotation of the planet
and how it worked in space.

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Some of the cave drawings, like these,

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showed the amphibian creatures
at the bottom of the people,

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or the people who came
to speak to them about this planet.

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Then, later on, it was discovered.

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So they had the knowledge in 1930,

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but it wasn't until the 70s
that the actual planet was seen.

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If that isn't curious science fiction,

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history, I don't know what is.

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But also from South Africa,
we have people like Credo Mutwa

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who believes there is
a reptilian race of people

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whose bloodline extends
into modern day royalty

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and modern day business people

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and is what, I guess, theorists
would call The Illuminati.

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So we've established that fact--
fact or fiction--

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myths have always existed
very, very closely to us,

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but there's been a growing need
for the idea of Afrofuturism,

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and I'd have to ask why?

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And when talking about it,
I talked about it to a friend of mine,

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and he said,
"Africans are inherently futuristic,

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given the sheer capriciousness
of our present situation."

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That was my friend Michael Odhiambo
who reckons he's very clever.

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Then there was a writer called
David William Cohen who says,

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"The struggle of man against power

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is the struggle of man
against forgetting."

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This makes a lot of sense

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because it's been suggested
that Afrofuturism, as a genre, is growing

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because as Africans,
or as descendants of Africa,

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we've never had a space or a voice
within our own history.

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We've never had a chance
to talk about our own history;

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it's always been written by other people.

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Now, because we don't have
a link to our own history

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or because we didn't have
a grasp on our own history,

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we're using Afrofuturism
to stake a place in the future

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so we can strongly identify
ourselves in the future.

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Mark Dery argues
that the younger generation

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have used technology
as a way to insert themselves

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into both a real and imagined landscape

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to physically assert
their presence in the present

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and to make it clear they intend
to stake their claim in the future.

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So because we can't reclaim our history,

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we are now trying
to project our own future.

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Of course, in projecting our own future,
we have to ask where are we doing it?

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In what spaces are we doing that?

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In Kenya, we're doing it in music,

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and we have some
of my favorite musicians here as well,

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but just a band have, to me,
demonstrated Afrofuturism

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in their own music,

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especially in one
of their latest songs Huff+Puff.

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They say, "Give me five,
it's good to be alive.

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The sky seems so far away.

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Hope you know we've been
to the moon and back.

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Be sure that nothing's
going to hold us back."

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So we know that we are larger than life.

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We know that we are larger than Earth,

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we know we are larger than the cosmos,

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and that is reflected
in our work and in our music.

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Around the continent, obviously,

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there's people like Nnedi Okorafor

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who wrote a book called "Who Fears Death".

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And this is a matte painting
done by Ivonne Wende, a Kenyan,

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about the book "Who Fears Death".

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In "Who Fears Death" what Nnedi does

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is that she uses the idea
of manipulating technology,

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as we know it,

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to understand where we are

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or to be able to grasp our environment.

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And as Africans, we do that all the time.

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We use technology that has been used
outside of our space

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or that was invented
outside of our own spaces

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and use it in our own ways.

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What Nnedi Okarafor does
in "Who Fears Death"

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is that she creates
these particular machines

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called water catcher stations,

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and they absorb all [the water from]
the atmosphere around them

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so that people can take baths,
can have clean drinking water,

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[inaudible] and so forth.

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That's the fictional side of it.

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But in practice, how are Kenyans
using Afrofuturism?

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I have to say I would refer
to AfriGadget, the website

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that has a plethora of different people
doing very inventive, and for me,

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very futuristic things, including
a young 13-year-old called Richard Turere,

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and what he did is that he created
a way to run a flashlight invention,

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run off a car battery,

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to keep predators away
from his family's property.

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That to me is a very Afrofuturist sense
of using technology,

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but in a very rustic way,
in a way that makes sense to us.

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In my film "Pumzi" I used
the idea of technology,

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and this is a picture
of what we call self-powered generator;

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and there would be these people
running on treadmills

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and they would generate electricity
in order to power where they lived.

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I thought I was being very imaginative
until I googled it.

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(Laughter)

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And I wasn't so much.

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Self-powered generators do exist.

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They do, there are ways of using
kinetic energy to power stations.

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It's not completely
in practice at the moment,

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but it's an idea of the ways
that we can use technology

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in a very Afrofuturist setting

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to be able to run our everyday things.

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There's obviously nowhere
we can talk about the future

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without talking about technology.

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In "Pumzi", I also talk about
the idea of communication,

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and I know from my own experience

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that I would be sitting
across the table from a friend

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and we would tweet each other.

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Now we have learned to communicate
in 140 characters or less.

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Even when I'm talking about the things
that are happening in my life,

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I'll use a hashtag, as if it were
part of the sentence.

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In "Pumzi", what I did
is I created this idea --

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and we'll see it in a second --

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about how we use different layers
of technology in order to communicate

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and the thought process of that

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is that we're looking
for more efficient ways of communicating

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rather than finding emotive ways
of communicating.

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For me, what is most important
and what I've found from making "Pumzi"

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is that the idea of Afrofuturism
worked the best for me

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because I'm able to extrapolate on ideas,
and thoughts, and feelings I have

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about the way the world is running

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without offending people
or without being too heavy-handed.

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For me, what "Pumzi" was
was a reflection of society,

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and it's set 35 years after the Water War,

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and where everybody lives inside because
they've been told the outside is dead,

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until one character, Asher,
wakes up from a dream --

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which is not allowed,

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because everybody is supposed
to be taking dream suppressants --

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and she finds a seed that she then plants,
and it starts to grow.

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But in a world where the outside is dead,

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and her being the curator
of a virtual natural museum --

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and that's the only place
you have access to nature --

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she had to find, to fight a way
outside of herself

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to be able to prove that life exists.

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That's "Pumzi".

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But my metaphor for "Pumzi"
is about life and sacrifice,

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and the fact that we ourselves
have to mother Mother Nature.

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We have to make sacrifices
in order to live in this one,

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and we have to know that our own behaviors
will affect generations to come.

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As a storyteller
in the tradition of the Kikuyu,

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my job is to be a seer,
not just a historian

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and to be able like Moreau
who predicted the coming of white people

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as if they were colorful butterflies
or the train in the sense of the way

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that he saw a snake with smoke
coming out of its head

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to be able to say:

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there is more to life than we see
and listen to the storytellers.

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They also have a voice,
and their voice is important.

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So, I leave you with a clip from "Pumzi",

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and this is just an indication
of the possibilities of the human mind,

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the possibilities of Afrofuturism,

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and how Afrofuturism
relates to us as Africans.

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(Applause) (Cheers)