2020 Presenters
Arts Street - EnvironMENTAL Talk
Find out how the Arts Street summer youth team is making a difference in their future through environmental change. Take a tour of their website complete with community action resources, learn to create new and interesting up-cycled products, and see how the environment has influenced their art. Be part of the EnvironMENTAL movement.
Celia Peters - "An Educational Guide to Afrofuturism” Talk
"An Educational Guide to Afrofuturism" is a multimedia primer on the definition, origins and foundations of Afrofuturism. It explores the cultural phenomenon of afrofuturism across its various expressions in art, music, film and fashion, including an introduction to the players whose work comprises the genre. This presentation provides a multifaceted introduction to what is one of the 21st century's most powerful cultural juggernauts.
Gregory Crichlow - Talk
The divergent role of Chocolate Spokes looks at design engagement at both the industrial scale of production and creating spatial relevance by occupying a disenfranchised retail corner. The "broken corner" presents the potential for transcendent conversation between two opposing scales of social capital. The motive is defined as an investment in the community with a space that is open to broad constituent engagement and discourse.
Ill Se7en - Performance
The project will be a song that we create with local musicians. We'll ask people who created the song to be a part of the performance. The project will have visual and film included for the music video that we create for the song.
Ingrid LaFleur - National Keynote Speech with Q&A
Becoming the Alchemist: A practical guide to Afrofuturism
Curator Ingrid LaFleur has been exploring how to bring afrofuture thought into practice for the past ten years. At the start of the quarantine in South Africa, LaFleur created the video series What Does The Afrofuture Say? where she spoke to over 30 afrofuture thinkers about the current state of affairs. She states, “The uncertainty of the pandemic forces us to develop a new approach to a world in transition. The possibilities of our futures have expanded and Afrofuturism serves as the perfect guide.” For her keynote speech, LaFleur will be examining commonalities that were highlighted through the interviews that further inform the evolution of Afrofuturism as a practical framework for designing a new reality.
Juannean Young Socially Engaged Art Piece
This mini-exhibit virtual interactive art gallery of selected African American millionaires of the past. As the guest journeys through the online gallery, they can click on any photo and it will expand to give them more history about the figure. The gallery will be accompanied by original music composed by me as well.
Kadampa Meditation Center Colorado - Our Future is Now: Harnessing Spiritual Power for Change Meditation
Buddha was a revolutionary spiritual teacher who taught practical and transformative teachings that reveal how to create a new world founded in inner transformation and explained that we each have immensely powerful minds, with which we can create an entirely new world. Buddha’s teachings and meditations challenge social norms providing everyone – without discrimination – the opportunity to attain lasting freedom. He presented a path which is based on the equality and interdependence of all living beings.
About the Teacher: Alexandra Bonano
Alexandra is an inspiring teacher of Kadampa Buddhism and a Socio-Cultural Anthropologist instructor. For many years she studied and taught the African Diaspora in the United States and Latin America. Meeting Kadampa Buddhism was a life changer, soon after she left university teaching and began volunteering and teaching Buddhist meditation. Alex brings to her teachings a wealth of both understanding and practical application of Buddhist practices.
#kadampacolorado
@kadampa_colorado
Kisha Burton - The End Youth Violence Community Workshop (EYVCW) registration limited, see schedule for registration link
Join Jason McBride & Kisha Burton's campaign structuring a plan to develop healthy communities that care for themselves and others. The End Youth Violence Community Workshops (EYVCW) strengthens the opportunity to enhance the social infrastructure in the community and foster improved resident health, safety, and lifestyle. The Workshop promotes the enhancement of community effort to plan for the prevention of youth violence, particularly among minority males.
PlatteForum - Conversations with Gen Z Discussion
Conversations with Gen Z is a lively intergenerational discussion between high school students and community leaders on topics that matter most to their generation and the future of our world. PlatteForum’s ArtLab high school interns will interview Rep. Leslie Herod, Dr. Cristopher Bell and Toluwanimi Obiwole on the provocative topic of afrofuturism and re-imagining the future.
Quincy Scott Jones - Performance
Moving through hidden history to possible futures, this reading attempts to re-center humanity through comics, conspiracies, fringe sciences, and that kinda-funny story you might have once heard. Through a series of performance poems, we will move towards a better space, a better world, or at least find a proper rhyme for “tachyon.”
R. Alan Brooks - Local Keynote Speech with Q&A
Let’s imagine that your brother or sister is a painter.
What if they created a portrait, envisioning what your family will look like in 10 years?
That might be pretty dope.
But what if, when the painting was completed, you saw that they didn’t put you in it?
All of the family was included, but not you.
How would that make you feel?
Rejected? Forgotten? Perhaps, even hated?
Now, consider what it might be like to be Black,
And notice that every futuristic movie, novel, or comic book
that you encounter
has almost no Black people in it.
Is that the future that people are envisioning?
One with no Black people?
How would that make you feel?
And here’s where we’ll begin R. Alan Brooks’ talk on AfroFuturism.
Join us on Aug 8th through We Are Denver and RedLine’s Facebook live pages for programming from 10am-7pm.
Reach Studio Evening Programming
RedLine’s Reach studio artists will host an evening of conversation and socially engaged art activities aimed to help participants connect and collaborate. Registration will be capped, so be sure to register via the link on the schedule once it’s published.
The Reminders are a rare and remarkable musical duo seamlessly blending soulful sounds and roots music with insightful messages and thoughtful lyrics. The group consists of Brussels-born emcee Big Samir and Queens-born emcee/ vocalist Aja Black, a collective creative force that’s hard to beat. Big Samir weaves intricate rhythmic patterns with a bilingual French/English flow, displaying his street-smart credibility in both his lyrics and cool demeanor. This is beautifully complimented by Aja Black's confident delivery, diverse cadences, and unique vocal stylings. The two have an undeniable magical chemistry as they share more than lyrical abilities and stages; the couple shares a partnership in both music and life as Samir and Aja have been married for almost a decade.
Robert Franklin II - Talk
For most people, hair is a fundamental feature of identity. For centuries, Black hair has been a currency of life experience. I tell life's stories so I never forget the historical trauma of my ancestry and do my hair because it carries a legacy that has yet to be.
Turner Adornetto - Kukumbuka Mbele Short Film
Set in Arusha, Tanzania, “Kukumbuka Mbele” (Remembering Beyond) is an experimental documentary film that strives to undermine Western development sensibilities through a cinematic exploration of forms of energy and innovation situated in the blurred space between material, spiritual, animal, and human worlds. In course, the film wanders through workshops where experimentation and storytelling underscore an imaginative foundation for uniquely-Tanzanian techno-futures.
Tilt West - Afrofuturism & Black Safety: Beyond Policing Panel Discussion
Afrofuturism is more than art, and even more than art that means something: it’s an expression of politics as well. It gives form in the present to black visions for the future, ones that often repair an unredressed past.
— Elizabeth Reich, LA Review of Books.
Police brutality and other forms of racial oppression are currently coming to a reckoning in the US, as protestors fill the streets both nationally and internationally. Afro-futurism has long been concerned with issues of safety, sovereignty, and the violence perpetrated against black bodies. For Redline’s 48 Hour virtual summit on Afrofuturism and Beyond, Tilt West and Headroom Sessions will host a 90-minute Facebook Live panel discussion on Afrofuturism: Black Safety Beyond Policing.
These source materials will frame the discussion: Mariame Kaba’s recent opinion piece in The New York Times, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police;” as well as her June 5, 2020 interview on the podcast, “Call Your Girlfriend;” and critical race theorist and criminal law professor Bennett Caper’s 2019 piece, “Afrofuturism, Critical Race Theory, and Policing in the Year 2044.”
Toluwanimi Obiwole - Poetry Performance and Talk
Afrofuturism and Afropresentism are two intertwined methods of dreaming and acting that connect Black people on a timeless, global scale. This talk will introduce the relationship between the two concepts and pose questions for practical application of the concepts.
