BSAM EVENTS

OBSIDIAN VOICES

Obsidian Voices is back! This fall our second installment will feature guest editors and contributors from our Speculating Futures issue and our upcoming issue 45.2 What Tell Freedom Now.

Join us for our first event on SEP 25 @ 7PM EST - featuring contributors Walidah Imarisha, Reynaldo Anderson & Arthur Flowers (from Speculating Futures), moderated by Obsidian's associate editor Sheree Renée Thomas.

Register for the free online event!

A THREE PART SERIES

The Afrofuturism and Black Speculative Arts virtual series takes place on October 11, November 8, and December 13, the second Sundays of each month at 2pm (PST), 3pm (MT), 4pm (CST), and 5pm (EST).

The October and November portions of the series are roundtable discussions, while the December program is the reading of poetry of an Afrofuturist immersion and is curated.

The participants represent cultural and literary ambassadors discussing their work and what it means to be an Afrofuturist as well as how the Black Speculative Arts are showcased throughout the African Diaspora.

Cultural historian, science communicator, and performance poet Darrell Stover will moderate the Sunday, October 11th panel with Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo which scholars have described as Afrofuturistic because of the synchronization of hoodoo tropes and technology which contributes to its unique form; Sheree Renée Thomas, the editor of the Dark Matter anthology (2000), in which major African-American writers of science-fiction and fantasy are showcased from W.E.B. Dubois to Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler and beyond, and Nine Bar Blues - Stories from an Ancient Future (2020); and Reynaldo Anderson, the editor of Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness (2017). Anderson’s more recent books include Cosmic Underground - A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent (2018 as edited with John Jennings) and Black Speculative Arts Movement - Black Futurity, Art + Design (2019); and Kinitra Brooks, author of Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror (2017), and the editor of The Lemonade Reader: Beyoncé, Black Feminism and Spirituality.

RED SPRING ART EXHIBITION

In our first online exhibition, Curating the End of the World, we spoke out about the “cyclical chaos” surrounding black lives, black art, black futures. But out of chaos, comes clarity, renewed strength and vision. Red Spring explores the circular nature of systemic racism and the public policies—public safety, health, and wealth—that adversely impacts Black, African and indigenous communities and became more visible in the wake of the social unrest following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others. This work is remembrance and resurrection, resistance and restored hope in a social, economic, and political landscape of uprisings and upheaval, strange fruit buried in scorched earth. The artists and writers gathered here ask the essential questions that plague us all.

What ancient and familiar new blossoms will spring up from the change the world demands now?

What sacrifices and compromises will be made in the days ahead?

Red Spring evokes the clarion call for dignity, equality, and justice of Claude McKay’s classic Red Summer poem, “If We Must Die.” It speaks to the temporal and systemic changes that must come to pass throughout the diaspora in order to birth futures where black lives truly matter.

Submissions can be: Flash Fiction and Poetry (Due to the Google Arts & Culture platform, ideally one- or two-page poems or for fiction, 250-1000 words. Please query for longer works) Music and Sound Performance and Storytelling (5 – 15 minute audio / videos) Essays or Thinkpieces (up to 1,000 words in length, double-spaced, Times Roman 12) Digital Humanities Short Films Visual Art/Digital Art (hi res jpeg files with name of artist, title, dimensions, medium, year) Zine / Comic panels Spiritual Expression Martial/ Survival Expression.