Afrofuturism, Technology & Fiction

This talk traces the genealogy of Captain Eko currently in her “sonographic” novel incarnation as a collaboration with artist Heidi Sincuba. Episode 1 Sound Clash single screen version to be shown. Through image and music the talk describes a long-term research process involving several media: filmmaking research and academic research, model making and sound art installations to the current sonographic novel form. The themes explored throughout are the dynamic processes of thinking, feeling, making and presenting though sounding. Further to practice-as-research, the issues raised include fiction-as-research. With Captain Eko this calls for an exploration of superhero popular culture, the graphic novel form of storytelling, as well as the aesthetics and politics of Afrofuturism as a critique of the dominant corporate “technofuturism.”