Sculpting space week 11+12
I was excited to learn at the beginning of this semester that we would be covering Black Quantum Futurism. I had the privilege of participating in their first Time Camp event Time Camp 001 in fall of 2017 when I drove 9 hours from Charlotte to Philadelphia to experience what I had never heard of; a community of thought leaders convening to "dismantle the master clock", a concept rich in reclamation of time and decolonization. I spent the entire weekend deeply resonating to the concepts of entropy, thinking of Harriet Tubman as an afrofuturists, and just an overall thorough introduction to the real mechanics of time. The weekend moved me so much, I asked Rasheedah for her blessing to host the event in Charlotte, NC the following year; and over the next year I began to cultivate a relationship with her; acquiring grants through my fellowship at the time and nearly a year to the day I hosted Time Camp 002 at Goodyear Arts.
This entire experience still sits with me as something that felt like a dream, perhaps through understanding time differently, I was able to access or backcast the future. "When a possible future is envisioned, foreseen, or chosen by a BQF Creative, that future will instantaneously reshape it's relationship to the past"(BQF 19). It's a surreal feeling knowing what Time Camp did to shift my beliefs in time, transitioning my understanding from the linear view of time to the 3 dimensional wave length. The event mapping diagrams, have always visually articulated the overlap that time is in regards to events that are interrelated. The linear or Eurocentric forms of time only fit one narrative, often leaving out spiritual aspects that people like the Dogon and Zamani understand. The past, present and future all overlap. Again, everything about Time Camp 001 resonated so deeply, it's hard to look back and not see the correlations between time manipulation and the fact that I actually pulled off Time Camp 002, it's like I already knew what to do. "...the past and present overlap in an African conception of time, as the present swallows up the future and the past swallows up the present. Your activity is what determines how quickly or slowly time moves"(BQF 24).
Rasheedah Phillips, cofounder of Black Quantum Futurism. leading a Time Mapping workshop at Goodyear Arts in Charlotte,NC for Time Camp 002.