Arts at CERN

Black Quantum Futurism is a multidisciplinary collaboration between Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips, exploring the intersections of futurism, DIY aesthetics, and activism in marginalized communities through an alternative temporal lens.

Black Quantum Futurism (BQF) is a new approach to living and experiencing reality by way of the manipulation of space-time to see into possible futures, and/or collapse space-time into a desired future in order to bring about that future’s reality. This vision and practice derives its facets, tenets, and qualities from quantum physics and Black/African cultural traditions of consciousness, time, and space. Under a BQF intersectional time orientation, the past and future are not cut off from the present – both dimensions influence the whole of our lives, who we are and who we become at any particular point in space-time.

Through various writing, music, film, visual art, and creative research projects, BQF Collective also explores personal, cultural, familial, and communal cycles of experience and solutions for transforming negative cycles into positive ones using artistic and holistic methods of healing. Our work focuses on recovering, collecting, and preserving communal memories, histories, and stories.

In 2020, Black Quantum Futurism won the Collide Residency Award and completed a two-month residency at CERN, followed by one month at Hangar Arts Research and Production Centre, in connection with the scientific laboratories in Barcelona.