Is er nog leven in het afrofuturisme?

The problem is that the electronic sounds produced between the 1950s and the 1990s remain sonic signifiers of the future—and, as such, they are signs that the anticipated future never actually arrived. The music of Burial and of Ghost Box is haunted by a paradoxical nostalgia: a nostalgia for all the futures that were lost when culture’s modernist impetus succumbed to the terminal temporality of postmodernity. 

'The Metaphysics of Crackle' voor Dancecult is een handig overzichtsartikel van Mark Fisher over afrofuturisme, al voegt het weinig toe aan de drie sleutelteksten uit de jaren '90* en ben ik zeer sceptisch over de claim dat hauntology een cruciaal cultureel en politiek alternatief vormt (p.49). Elke keer als Eshuns naam wordt genoemd word je geconfronteerd met de positieve future shock die muziek van de jaren '90 veroorzaakte. Dat een dergelijke golf tegenwoordig afwezig is doet je ook afvragen of afrofuturisme nog speelruimte heeft of als idee is verzadigd. Maar wellicht hangt er iets in de lucht? Zie de boekpresentatie van Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism in American Book Center op 9 november.

* Mark Sinker - 'Loving The Alien: Black Science Fiction'
   Ian Penman -  'Tricky: Black Secret Tricknology'
   Kodwo Eshun - More Brilliant Than The Sun

De Rode Draad van 2013?

Uit het uitstekende interview met Boards of Canada in De:Bug:

Simon Reynolds strongly relies on you as the forefathers or originators of certain musical and theoretical concepts of the last ten years, like Hauntology or Hypnagogic Pop. You’re actually the starting point for one aspect of his Retromania concept – making music sound old, worn out, triggering memories etc. Those were things you did and talked about almost 20 years ago and have become the principles of many young producers. What are you thinking about that today?

Mike: That’s still absolutely a driving force in our work. It’s something we love doing, we can never run out of inspiration in this direction, because if you only pay attention to current music then you can’t help sounding pinned down to the fashion of today. But when you allow yourself to explore music from various eras in the past, you can find starting points that were never fully explored, like tangents that didn’t actually occur in the real history of music, and that’s really exciting to me. Especially in the face of so much current music that is becoming indistinguishable because all the producers are basically using the same tools.