ZTOPIA - X: Sonic Futurity in the Black Diaspora

In ‘ZTOPIA - X Sonic futurity in the Black diaspora’ we will be exploring the notions of representation, narratives, memory and the archive through the mode of sound recognizing the importance of the sonic and how that gives us a practice and an entry point to redefine what ‘future’ is and sounds like. In doing so, it brings this ZTOPIA-X back into conversation with Dr. Marcella Ernest, Native American (Ojibwe) interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker and scholar whose ZTOPIA-X show aired on Jan 31 2020. Where her work spoke of modes of representation, abstract narratives and the archive. In this session we will be speaking with and hearing the work of (MINQ) (Demelza) (Melody) three sound and visual artists who are individually and collectively considering the role of sound and its relationship to the concept of futurity from a Black diaspora perspective and how this manifests. Melody takes the concept of the remix in her work and brings the archive into play through a sonic layering that attempts at articulating a sonic narrative that translates her own lived experience.

MINQ is interested in discovering how we can use sound, especially the voice, as a portal to the fundamental parts of ourselves, to authentic connection to one another and to different times and places. They have also been practising the invocation of queer, Black ancestors and believes our voices contain those voices who’ve come before us and are displayed in our thoughts, which become ideas, which become actions - merging the past, present and future. MINQ combines these concepts together in their work as a snapshot of where they’ve been, where they are and where they’re going…and with whom. Demelza presents an activation and re-animation of her text The Long Now in an effort to triangulate the relationship between futurity, blackness and the sonic. Using vocal manipulations such as delay, she causes the voice to break temporality – present in the past, present in the future. This temporal breaking adds a political dimension to the sound as it fails to accommodate a capitalist (deep) linear time and creates a noise and rhythm that forms an underscoring for the text. The text operates within non-linear conceptions of time through loops and repetition. The process becomes the action of listening and responding to the machine as time is manipulated. Here, noise functions as a strategy to render opacity. This Pluraversal approach via the sonic provides a jump of point to rethink futurity as it’s relations.

*this event will also be recorded