Afrofuturism and the archive

Abstract

This article is concerned with questions of history, memory and meaning, and with the construction of Afrofuturism as both an archive and a living tradition. It will begin by outlining the origins of the term, and consider how its naming and initial explication in a popular article by Mark Sinker, interviews by Mark Dery and a film by John Akomfrah functioned as preliminary archivings, which in turn became parts of the archive they inaugurated. It will then turn to two recent Afrofuturist films which deal with history, temporality, semiosis and transformation in intriguing ways: Kibwe Tavares’s six-minute short, Robots of Brixton (UK 2011), and Miguel Llansó’s short feature, Crumbs (Ethiopia/Spain/Finland 2015).