This exhibition is a visual and sound journey through the space and times - diffracted or confused, in all cases iridescent – of an Afrofuturism in perpetual revolution: a triple diving into the beyond, the below and between. Afrofuturism, labeled or not, is the vision of a new world. At a crossroads, it assumes but questions its links to Africa as much as it feeds but alters a set of other cultural expressions from all over the world. And if it helps that more and more people realize the part of African identity of their surroundings; discover the origin of each of these events, without further reductive amalgams; and take advantage of this new knowledge to upset / reinvent the codes ... this is by a commitment to openness and mutual enrichment: to omit this is to cut stories (anthropologies, traditions) and imaginaries (breakthroughs, rewrites) yet – how much - fertile. Evoking Afrofuturism is then to push further the boundaries of our habits, mental and physical, it’s to break the ethno-centric «contamination» when we talk to other people, other facts, other beliefs. Playing on the ambiguity of the term, between technology and mysticism, MEDIUM (S) explores notions of border and crossing, of these other space-times, that some call virtual and other enchanted ... • The screen, privileged exchange and demonstration interface of our contemporary era, is only too rarely put in the heart of the museum space as other than a schedule object in action (information boards, signage, etc. ) except formal necessity (cinematography, facilities, etc.). Yet, as an object of mediation and a media, it holds the crucial role of witness of the fluctuating if not arbitrary perceptions of our spatio-temporal definition frames, the true and the false, technology and the miracle of magic... Therefore, to place the screen in the middle of the curatorial and scenographic arrangement is to indicate a possible opening to other worlds and other communities, virtual and/or dematerialized in relation to oneself, here and now, but yet existing elsewhere (archives of a past, announcement of a possible future, relocated present...). • Alter-egos and miracle working shamans, prescient demiurges or unclassifiable dis-ordered, driven by the Muses or spirits themselves... artists blur the boundaries of the strange(r) and the familiar. Not only their works escape any reduction to uniqueness, but especially, they enrich this polysemy (palimpsest, polyphony, mixed media, etc.). Artists give us the opportunity to discover alternative worlds, spaces, rich because heterogeneous, protean, continually increased.
Visionary (or insightful soothsayers), artists are also intercessors: tearing their identity from the standard, they show us the way for other modes to be possible and so doing they act as a link between different levels of reality ... But we would come to doubt of the tangibility of their powers, the acuity of their conscience or their clairvoyance, let’s just take the gamble of Arthur C. Clarke : «The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to venture a little beyond them into the impossible.» Mawena Yehouessi ________________________________________________________ Medium (s) is a proposal of Black(s) to the Future, a transmedia platform fed on Afrofuturism. B(s)ttF commits to an alternative narrative of the world through the prism of its Afro-related dimensions. www.blackstothefuture.com MAwEnA YEhoUESSI / From Philosophy to Culture Management and Art Communication, Contemporary Danse and Graphic Design, Mawena has one credo: the praxis. Founder and Contents Director of Black(s) to the Future, she aims to highlight the “Afro” part of the world as well as to perform the future on a sustainable but uninhibited way.
STEF YAMB / Introduced to visual art by Philippe Sers at UP6 in the mid-90’s, he co-founded the artist collective Pulsart. Now crossing over the Afro(s) worlds, he explores different geographical areas and practices, from portraiture to abstraction. He is working on the development of a new, curatorial platform called Afronauts Polyrhythmy.
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FElIX rAMon / Founding member of the PEzCORP collective, Felix questions conflicts between viewer and user performance and authority, gross object and storytelling. Installations, videos, performances and workshops are so many ways to explore the fundamental question: « How to live together? »
SonIA lIBonG / Visual arts trainee, Sonia is an author, composer, singer and producer. Whether about her hybrid musical project O’kobbo, and other artistic collaborations (theater, dance and contemporary art), she overturned the notions of context and border, rift and slits, the invisible.
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