Exploring Black & Indigenous Futurisms 2021

Join us in reimagining our future and centering the contributions, philosophies and artistic practices of Black and Indigenous identities.

About the Event

Guest Speakers

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  Lisa Jackson

  Filmmaker

  With a background in documentary, Lisa Jackson expanded into fiction with SAVAGE, which won a Genie award for Best Short Film. She is known for her cross-genre projects including VR, animation, performance art film and a musical. Playback Magazine named her one of 10 to Watch and her work has played at festivals internationally, including Berlinale, Hot Docs, SXSW, Tribeca, and London BFI, as well as airing on many networks in Canada.

  Her NFB VR work BIIDAABAN: FIRST LIGHT premiered at Tribeca, has exhibited widely around the world, won a Canadian Screen Award, was nominated for a Webby, and has garnered high praise from press and the public. TRANSMISSIONS, a 6000 square foot multimedia installation on the power of language, premiered in September 2019 at SFU's Milton Wong Theatre in Vancouver. UNEARTHED, a film component from the installation, was featured at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) for Nuit Blanche. Her recent IMAX short film LICHEN is part of Outer Worlds, a commission project featuring the work of five artists including Michael Snow. In 2017 she co-directed the CBC Firsthand one-hour doc INDICTMENT: THE CRIMES OF SHELLY CHARTIER which won Best Doc at imagineNATIVE. She's currently developing broadcast and film work in both fiction and documentary.

  Website
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  Adeyemi Adegbesan

  Afrofuturist Visual Artist

  Adeyemi Adegbesan is a Toronto based photographic artist whose practice aims to examine the intersectionality of Black identity. Reflecting on Blackness through pre-colonial, colonial, present-day and future timelines as well as across regions, religions, varying levels of income and political lines; Adegbesan interrogates the dichotomy of the richness of Black experiences with the imposed societal homogeneity of "Blackness." Through his work Adegbesan pulls from these varying elements to create Afrofuturistic portraits that embody history, future, and culture all in one.

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  Stephanie Chrismon

  Futurist Writer

  Stephanie Chrismon is a writer, scholar-educator and facilitator. She identifies as masculine of center and has presented on various topics related to equity and diversity, as well as pop culture, literature and art as critical tools in exploring social justice and dismantling oppression. Core to all of Stephanie's work is Afrofuturism, which Stephanie views as a way of looking at the past through a historical and fantastical lens and using those lessons learned to reshape the future.

  Stephanie is also a higher education professional with nearly 15 years of experience working with students, including work in student activities and student affairs, admissions, and academic advising. Outside of work, she is engaged in the Twin Cities writing community; she was a participant in the 2016-2017 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose and was a fellow in the 2015 Emerging Writers' Mentor Program sponsored by the Givens Foundation for African American Literature.

  She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Hamline University and a BA in political science from the University of Minnesota, Morris. She writes both creative nonfiction and urban/dystopian fantasy stories through which her passion for topics around race, gender and sexuality are explored. Her writing has appeared in The Root, Black Girl Nerds, MN Artists, and Water~Stone Review. Her debut novel (under her pen name dc edwards) Bright City was published in 2017.

Co-moderators

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  Dr. Audrey Hudson

  Chief, Education & Programming at Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and teaches Black Canadian Studies at U of T

  Audrey Hudson is an artist, educator, researcher and futurist. Audrey is on the leadership team at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), where she is the Richard & Elizabeth Currie Chief, Education & Programming and teaches Black Canadian Studies at University of Toronto.

  She holds a PhD from University of Toronto/Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UT/OISE). Most recently, Dr. Hudson co-edited a ground breaking text entitled, In This Together: Blackness, Indigeneity and Hip-Hop, with a chapter, entitled, All eyes on Hip Hop: Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurities.

  Other chapters and articles include: Where We @?: Blackness, Indigeneity and Hip-Hop’s Expression of Creative Resistance (co-authored) (2015); Here We Are On Turtle Island: Navigating Places, Spaces and Terrain (2016); Integrating Black Lives into education: Black Lives Matter Freedom School (2019); and Learning From A Young Indigenous Artist: What Can Hip-Hop Teach Us? (2020) and forthcoming co-edited text in Winter 2020 is, Cosmic Underground Northside: An Incantation of Black Canadian Speculative Discourse and Innerstandings.

  Credit line: Photography, Craig Boyko @cbdotcom

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  Dr. Karyn Recollet

  Professor, Women and Gender Studies, U of T

  Karyn Recollet is an Assistant professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Karyn is an urban Cree, residing in the traditional territories of the Petun, Wendat, Mississauga’s of the New Credit, Dish with One Spoon treaty territory. Karyn’s research explores the various intersections of Indigenous artistic activations rooted in the multiple layered Indigenous territories that are urban spaces. Karyn’s focal points are choreographic fugitivity, Indigenous futurities, and decolonial love. Karyn’s publications include articles Glyphing Decolonial love, Gesturing Indigenous futurities, and has coedited alongside Eve Tuck, Native Feminist Texts (a special edition of English Journal). Karyn is currently working on a manuscript entitled Urban glyphs: fugitivities, futurities, and radical decolonial love.