Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. African & African American Studies. Art. Music. Black artists of the avant-garde have always defined the future. BLACKSPACE: ON THE POETICS OF AN AFROFUTURE is the culmination of six years of multidisciplinary research by trans poet and curator Ana s Duplan about the aesthetic strategies used by experimental artists of color since the 1960s to pursue liberatory possibility. Through a series of lyric essays, interviews with contemporary artists and writers of color, and ekphrastic poetry, Duplan deconstructs how creative people frame their relationships to the word, liberation. With a focus on creatives who use digital media and language-as-technology--luminaries like Actress, Juliana Huxtable, Lawrence Andrews, Tony Cokes, Sondra Perry, and Nathaniel Mackey--Duplan offers three lenses for thinking about liberation: the personal, the social, and the existential. Arguing that true freedom is impossible without considering all three, the book culminates with a personal essay meditating on the author's own journey of gender transition while writing the book.