• Surge Afrofuturism: “Not About Race Dance” Performance by GeraldCaselDance

    Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California

    Dance artist and equity activator Gerald Casel will present Not About Race Dance, a collaborative, choreographic response to the racial politics of U.S. postmodern dance. Despite postmodernism’s popularity, its racial dynamics have gone largely unacknowledged. In Not About Race Dance, Casel and his collaborators occupy a space that has been historically defined by white artists to present a contrasting vision of where Black and Brown bodies belong.

    Free
  • Surge Afrofuturism: Festac ’77 and Liberation w/ Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi and Ntone Edjabe

    Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History 705 Front St, Santa Cruz, CA, United States

    Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi and Ntone Edjabe will discuss the recent publication of FESTAC ’77, an innovative book and mixtape which is the product of years of research helmed by Chimurenga—a magazine based in Cape Town, South Africa, and one of the most important cultural journals on the continent—in collaboration with Afterall, the London-based journal. Listen to the FESTAC '77 mixtape here.

    Free
  • Surge Afrofuturism: Nishat Khan, David Murray, and Hamid Drake in Concert

    Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California

    This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.

    Free
  • Afrofuturism Film Screening Featuring Films by Larry Achiampong and Nuotama Bodomo

    Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California

    Afronauts, a 2014 short film by Ghanaian-born filmmaker Nuotama Frances Bodomo, follows a team of astronauts as they train for a mission to the moon. This video was inspired by the Zambian space program in the 1960s and follows then-17-year-old astronaut Matha Mwamba, the woman at the center of this historic mission. Led by schoolteacher and revolutionary Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy began as an unofficial program with aspirations to beat the Soviet Union and the United States to the moon.

    Free