(frenetic music)
(applause)
My talk,
about Afrofuturism and the African.
Afrofuturism is considered what speculative fiction,
myths, legends, science fiction,
and the stories of that genre are to African Americans,
Africa, Africa of the Diaspora, and black people in general.
What (inaudible) refers it to is what blackness looks like in the future,
real or imagined.
Now, the history of Afrofuturism comes from America
and was first coined by a man called Mark Dery
and when he started talking about Afrofuturism
he talks about the idea of literature,
so the books that Octavia Butler would write
and things like that,
but then it also moved into a new region of music
so we would have people like Sun Ra and George Clinton
but for me, especially Sun Ra because he has a special place in my heart,
He believed that he came from the planet Saturn
and came to earth to spread the message of love and peace.
Like in his movie, "Space is the Place"
he introduces the idea of "alien"
to black people in America.
But that was very specifically about African Americans
and I wanted to find a place for Afrofuturism in Africa.
The first place that that led me to is Mount Kenya, obviously,
where the god of Mount Kenya lives according to the Kikuyu tradition
so Mwene Nyaga is seated on top of this mountain
and he introduced ourAdam and Eve, Gikuyu and Mumbi,
and from that were descendants of the nine children.
But even before the idea of the myth of Gikuyu and Mumbi,
the idea of Afrofuturism or legends and myths
and stories that were told to me by my mother
and she is a great storyteller as well as a pediatrician
so I'd have to say that her stories were truly science fiction, truly.
(laughter)
I remember her telling me stories about the way if I ate the pumpkin,
my hair would grow.
Or if --which is strange-- if I attach leeches to my nipples,
my breasts would grow.
And also... I did it.
(laughter)
And also, she would talk about the way
that in the Kikuru tradition, if you circle the Mugumo tree seven times,
you would change sex.
Growing up, obviously, past my mother's stories,
I began to read stories of my own and they were inevitably filled
with the ogre and the young girl who wandered off into the forest
and what would happen if she wandered off into the forest
and how she would meet this terrible ogre
because she departed from the ways of the society.
That's also when I met Ben Okri and the idea of the spirit child
and the idea of using spiritualism or mythical realism within storytelling.
That, for me, is also a link to Afrofuturism.
But what really inspired me about Ben Okri
was his ability to merge seamlessly the idea of the spirit world and fiction.
And the idea that we live in a continent
that is so closely linked to the spirit world
that we use it in a very everyday sort of way
and that is true when we come to witch doctors,
sangoma, or people who deal with the spiritual realms.
It's also true of genies of the coast
and I don't even know how many of you have gone to Mombasa or Zanzibar,
but I know from personal experience
there was a cat that followed me for five kilometers,
or every time I turned around it was there
and I could have sworn it was a genie.
I'm positive about it.
In fact, I have friends who attest to the fact as well.
So Afrofuturism has always been part of our culture, part of us.
But more interestingly, it has been part of the history of West Africa.
Now, West Africa is believed, especially in money,
there is a nation of people called the Dogan
and the Dogan people believe that they were told
about a planet called Ceres B
before it was discovered by Western scientists.
They were told of this planet by a race of amphibian-like aliens
who came in from the ocean
and told them, not only about a planet,
but also about the rotation of the planet
and how it worked in space.
Some of the cave drawings, like these,
showed the amphibian creatures at the bottom of the people,
or the people who came to speak to them about this planet.
Then, later on, it was discovered, so they had the knowledge in 1930
but it wasn't until the '70s that the actual planet was seen.
If that isn't curious science fiction,
history, I don't know what is.
But also from South Africa we have people like Credo Mutwa
who believes there is a reptilian race of people
whose bloodline extends into modern day royalty
and modern day business people
and is what, I guess, theorists would call the Illuminati.
So we've established that fact-- fact or fiction.
Myths have always existed very, very closely to us,
but there's been a growing need for the idea of Afrofuturism
and I'd have to ask why?
And when talking about it, I talked about it to a friend of mine,
and he said, "Africans are inherently futuristic,
given the sheer capriciousness of our present situation."
That was my friend Michael