I/Mages of Tomorrow is a free anti-conference that works to envision Black & people of colour futures, disabled futures, queer & trans futures, feminist futures. Convened by writer, artist and organiser Ama Josephine Budge, part I of the programme ran from the 2nd-4th June at Goldsmiths University of London. Part II is currently fundraising for 2018 - if you are interested in supporting please get in touch.
Part I was an immersion in the impossible materialised, a beautiful and empowering attempt at community, healing, creation; a challenging and unsettling exploration of our capacity to invoke dreams and to enact them into reality. I/Mages of tomorrow welcomed activists, artists, academics, film-makers, community organisers, scientists and tech-creators to consider what can be achieved when we come together as people of colour, as black and brown bodies, as queer, trans and nonbinary voices and do not only talk about whiteness, patriarchy, islamophobia, racism, or homophobia. The last twelve months have seen the fruition of a new wave of extreme right-wing and fascist political and ideological power in the West, we asked how we can prepare for this future they are building, have a say in what that tomorrow looks like and who it prioritises? In such a moment of dejection and exhaustion, we need images of tomorrow.
I/Mages of tomorrow prioritises black and brown, queer and trans, people of colour voices and we especially encourage those communities to attend.
CONTACT US
For other questions and comments email imagesoftomorrow@protonmail.com
“We need images of tomorrow, and our people need them more than most.”
- Samuel R. Delany
PART ONE
June 2-4, 2017
Stuart Hall Building
Hosted by the Centre for Feminist Research
Goldsmiths College
Convened by Ama Josephine Budge
2017
I/Mages of
Tomorrow
Envisioning black & POC futures, disabled futures, queer & trans futures, feminist futures
Gail Lewis is an academic in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College and a psychotherapist. Her political subjectivity was formed in the intensities of black feminist and anti-racist struggle and through a socialist, anti-imperialist lens. She was a member of the Brixton Black Women's Group and one of the founder members of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent. She has written on feminism, intersectionality, the welfare state, and racialised-gendered experience. Her publications include ‘Birthing Racial Difference: conversations with my mother and others’ (2009) Studies in the Maternal; ‘Unsafe Travel: experiencing intersectionality and feminist displacements’ (2013) Signs: journal of women in culture and society; ‘Where Might I Find You’: Popular Music and the Internal Space of the Father’, (2012) Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. She believes that intergenerational conversations are among the most urgent in these times. She is an Arsenal fan.
KEYNOTES
Kodwo Eshun is author of More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction(1998). He is also one half of the Otolith Group, founded in 2002, alongside Anjalika Sagar. The group explore the moving image, the archive, the sonic and the aural within the gallery context. Eshun was educated at University College, Oxford, and works as a writer, lecturer and D.J.. He won the Best Journalist Award at the First International Techno Congress in Berlin, and was a judge on the Digital Music Jury at Ars Electronica, Linz and the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, Germany. He contributes regularly to a number of journals including ID and The Wire. He currently teaches the MA in Geopoetics special subject in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
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Raju Rage is an interdisciplinary artist who is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival.
Based in London and working beyond, they primarily use their non-conforming body as a vehicle of embodied knowledge; to bridge the gap between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. They work in performance, sculpture, soundscapes and moving image, focusing on techniques of resistance and utilising everyday objects and everyday life experiences in communicating narratives around gender, race and culture. They investigate history, memory and trauma, with an emphasis on colonial legacy, its continuation and impact on the body and contemporary diasporan identity.
They are an organiser and member of Collective Creativity arts collective and a creative educator with an interest in radical pedagogy.
KUCHENGA is a writer, an agitator an avid consumer of all culture high and low. She is a Black trans feminist whose work sparkles with vivacity and originality. A member of Black Lives Matter UK, the Bent Bars Collective and Sisters Uncut she lives by the Thames in Battersea and can be found frollicking in the park with her dog Nene.
