AFROFUTURISM is an emergent literary and cultural aesthetic that combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in order to critique not only the present-day dilemmas of people of color, but also to revise, interrogate, and re-examine the historical events of the past. First coined by Mark Dery in 1993, and explored in the late 1990s through conversations led by scholar Alondra Nelson, Afrofuturism addresses themes and concerns of the African Diaspora through a technoculture and science fiction lens, encompassing a range of mediums and artists with a shared interest in envisioning black futures that stem from Afrodiasporic experiences.“If all records told the same tale -then the lie passed into history as truth. ‘Who controls the past’ runs the party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’”. -George Orwell, 1984
… This is one of the epigraphs written in Mark Dery’s text “Black to the future” …
Available on the link below:
http://thenewblack5324.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mark-dery-black-to-the-future.pdf
Check out the beautiful project by Cristina de Middel … ‘Afronauts'
http://www.lademiddel.com/eng/ldmeng.htmlSun Ra was one of the progenitors of modern Afro futurism.