Black Quantum Futurism Performance - Altar 2: Quantum Chronolith

December 3, 2023, 7-8pm in Alumni Concert Hall, CFA building, CMU. Part of the Impossible Music exhibition at Miller ICA, CMU, curated by Candice Hopkins and Raven Chacon, with Stavia Grimani. Featuring: Terry Adkins, Black Quantum Futurism, Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetelá, Nikita Gale, Sarah Hennies, Tom Johnson, Christine Sun Kim, Conlon Nancarrow, Aki Onda, C. Spencer Yeh, and Potlatch Records Listening Station. Video credit Matt Carrick, CMU Media Tech.

This event was an interactive experience with Black Quantum Futurism's installation in the Impossible Music exhibition. This performance centers on BQF's unique altars that delve into Black temporalities and quantum concepts, from challenging linear timelines to understanding the cyclical nature of time. "Altar 2: Quantum Chronolith" also serves as an entry point to explore the complex histories and futures of historic all-Black towns, offering attendees the opportunity to engage with and redefine their own understandings of time and space.

BIO

Black Quantum Futurism is an interdisciplinary creative practice between Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips that weaves quantum physics and Afrodiasporic concepts of time, ritual, text, and sound and creating counterhistories and Black quantum futures that challenge exclusionary, mainstream versions of history and future. Black Quantum Futurism has created a number of community-based projects, performances, experimental music projects, installations, workshops, books, short films, zines, including the award-winning Community Futures Lab and the Black Woman Temporal Portal. BQF Collective is a 2022 Creative Capital Fellow, Arts at CERN Artist Residents, 2020-2022 Vera List Center Fellow, 2021 Knight Art + Tech Fellows, 2018 Velocity Fund Grantee, 2 2017 Center for Emerging Visual Artists Fellow, and 2017 Pew Fellow. BQF has presented, exhibited, and performed at documenta fifteen, Counterpublic 2023, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Manifesta 13, ICA London, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and more.