Camae Ayewa & Rasheedah Phillips

“Repurposing the language and imagery of science and science fiction allows us to create counterhistories and futures that will challenge exclusionary, mainstream versions of history and the future.”

Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips are interdisciplinary social practice artists who describe themselves as “afrofuturistic cultural producers.” Through self-published writing, music, film, visual art, and creative research, Ayewa and Phillips explore the intersections of black culture, science fiction, futurism, and social practice. “We consider how afrofuturism can be used by disenfranchised communities to create safer spaces for visioning and testing of ideas around community sustainability, resilience, and resistance, and as a technology for practical implementation of those ideas,” the artists say. Working under the name Black Quantum Futurism Collective, their multidisciplinary collaboration presents community-based events, experimental music projects, short films, and zines. Their publications include an anthology of experimental essays on space-time consciousness titled Black Quantum Futurism: Theory & Practice Vol. 1 (2015), and Space-Time Collapse Vol. 1: From the Congo to the Carolinas (2016). The duo have been artists-in-residence at West Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Time Exchange and are currently fellows with A Blade of Grass, where they have created projects in collaboration with community members, addressing issues of gentrification, displacement, and erasure of history.