The Black Speculative Arts Movement co-founders Reynaldo Anderson and John Jennings first teamed up in 2015 as the co-curators of Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination, an exhibit at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. This collaborative effort, which ran from October to December 2015, featured the works of more than 80 artists, writers, and graphic designers and was the first broadly developed Afrofuturist exhibition in the United States. It was also the catalyst for the Black Speculative Arts Movement.
“Following that exhibition, we basically didn’t want it to stop, and that was how we were able to network around the United States,” Anderson says. “So we have different clusters of people that represent the movement in different cities like San Diego, Oakland and L.A., and other cities around the country, but it starts as a formalized movement in St. Louis City, where a lot of the ideas and concepts were developed.”
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Afrofuturism refers to the evaluation of the past in the context of the present to ultimately envision and create a better future through the use of things like art, literature, and technology for those of African descent. It can also be understood through other lenses, such as politics and aesthetics. Climate change is one notable example and is currently a major focus for the organization according to Anderson.
“It’s thinking about where I’d like to see my culture in 100 years,” Anderson says. “It’s tackling these philosophical issues of climate change along with the idea of human augmentation…what it’s going to take to survive as some of these environments become harsher.”
These ideas and others will be on full display this weekend at the collective’s Black Futures Festival, which is coming back bigger than ever before, inspired by a successful event the group held in partnership with Carnegie Hall last year. Registration is free through the group’s website, though some of the events both in-person and online may require the purchase of a ticket.
Dacia Polk, community liaison and curatorial consultant for The Black Speculative Arts Movement St. Louis, says this year’s festival comes jam-packed with events such as mural tours, keynote addresses, and panels covering topics such as Black health and Black art. Polk says the large array of concurrent events was part of the group’s vision and will allow attendees to curate their own experience.
“St. Louis is a big city, so instead of coming into the city with this big, huge festival that will draw everybody into one thing, it made the most sense to me to uplift everything that’s happening around us at the same time,” Polk says. “Folks have the opportunity to pick and choose what’s their cup of tea and what they want to get involved in.” Themes explored by the festival events will include Afro-surrealism, Black digital humanities, magical realism, and the esoteric, among many others.
As the group makes its final preparations for the fest, one thing is clear for Polk: the movement is just getting started.
“It was impossible to have all of this stuff happen in three days…we are structuring strategies on how we can continue to have these programs happen throughout the rest of the year,” she says. “And we are continuing to not just build the partnerships that we are growing with this first festival coming back [from the pandemic] this year, but developing even more partnerships. Because this is beautiful stuff happening in St. Louis.”
The Black Futures Festival runs August 19-21. Register for more details about the schedule of events and ticket information.
