Afropolis 2021
Our thematic keynote for AFROPOLIS 2021 demands us to look Beyond Afrofuturism as a paltry evidence of coolness, or the new normal for a pseudo liberal wokeness, but to connect people with broadly diverse experiences and skills. If we are to meet these challenges, we believe in the integration of both ethical and innovative approaches to design, to public policy, to social justice, to technology, and to the intercommunal way that international art manifestations are imagineered. AFROPOLIS 2021 is proposing a technocultural approach to future making, through collaboration between artists and emerging technologies, engaging technology not as a solution but as a tool for understanding and imagining a balanced future.
Welcome to AFROPOLIS Barcelona. AFROPOLIS is the next iteration of our annual danceGATHERING Lagos, it will be hosted as a hybrid gathering, happening both virtually as well as physically in the middle of nowhere. A gathering of artists, thinkers and community organizers who are radically shifting the boundaries of knowledge in their various fields and localities, to connect by philosophies and practically collaborate on ideas that doesn’t fit into one discipline. The 2020 edition of the GATHERING explored the concept of virtuality, through the lens of the intersectionality between art, spirituality and society within the African worldview. More than a hundred creatives and visionaries from over 50 cities contributed to the outcome that led to the creation of our digital space station, AFROPOLIS.ORG.
AFROPOLIS is a multimodal art project, which combines artistic collaboration with remote and physical interaction. It seeks new process of antidisciplinary exchange between performance, visual art, design, community engagement, storytelling and digital technology, to generate creative synergy within a distributed network of global Africans, to compose new forms and express innovative ideas, for a series of curated hybrid manifestations that pops up both in a specific global city as well as for a virtual audience. We work to expand these networks to an interconnected world, where people initiate new ideas and continue to participate in ongoing practices of the future, and ultimately create their own connections, even long after these gatherings.
AFROPOLIS is proposing an Afrocentric technocultural approach for future making, through collaboration between emerging technologies and emerging artists, who perceives technology not as a solution but as a tool for understanding and imagining a balanced future. Human tapestry, migration, movement, hyper creativity, spirituality, innovation, resilience and culture expressed through dance, music, food, stories, histories, language, fashion and fragrance are all central to the formation of the African sensorium. The cultural forms that persist, get remixed, or emerge along the tributaries of such migratory experience, generates abundant tangible and intangible knowledge and contents, which we are specifically interested in exploring, capturing, archiving and celebrating with the various gatherings that will happen in several middle of nowheres.
