i. Queer(ed) Speculations, Radicalized Imaginations

I N D I G E N O U S F U T U R I S M W E H A V E C O M E B A C K F O R O U R B O D I E S L O I S E S M É C R U Z

Cruz in this piece is conveying the kinship and the intrinsic love that is central to imagining Indigenous futures. The image represents fluidity in gender, spirit and kinship not only amongst humans, but with all organisms and the land itself. Indigenous Futurism describes the fluidity that was stolen through erasure by the colonial standard, and any imaginations of the future must require the return to the fluidity. Lindsay Nixon analyses this piece by Cruz by saying, “Esmé proposes a restoration of two-spirit life within

Indigenous community, actively remembering our traditions of gender fluidity and sexual diversity, in order to create a future imaginary that is responsive and respectful to the multiplicity of ways Indigenous peoples express their selfdetermined genders and sexualities.” 87 These imaginations are a call for centering story-telling practices in worldmaking—stories that reveal the histories of love, kinship, struggle and prefigure the futures to come.

q u e e r ( e d ) s p e c u l a t i o n s q u e e r ( e d ) s p e c u l a t i o n s D I R T Y C O M P U T E R J A N E L L E M O N Á E A F R O F U T U R I S M , ,

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Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer tells the tale of a dystopian society where people were called “computers” and those who refused to live by dictated rules were rendered “dirty.” Janelle Monáe’s character wakes up on a sterile bed in a place called “New Dawn” and after a helmet is placed on her head, she is made to repeat “My name is Jane 57821. I am a dirty computer. I am ready to be cleaned.” The “dirty” computers are brought to this facility to be cleaned of their “bugs”—bugs that emerge from their existence outside of the binary categorizations of the normative society and their practice of dissent. Two men in sterile white suits run through her memories, methodically deleting them after the viewers see them to be of her life as a young, Black, queer artist. Jane’s girlfriend from her “real” life is the one brainwashing her in this facility, her own memories vanished. This afrofuturist art potrays a dystopian society but really is just showing a technologically advanced version of the erasure of Black, queer and other marginalized lives that has been social reality for centuries now. Othered identities are seen to exist outside the normative sphere of existence and their very survival is considered an audacious act. The video ends with both women remembering their erased memories, signifying the importance of storytelling and epistemologies of resistance that define the lived realities of marginalized groups. They release a gas called the “Nevermind” gas on their oppressors, putting them to sleep. The gas was used by the white-suited oppressors in the New Dawn on dirty computors to comply them into erasure. The use of the word “nevermind” as a weapon to torture is a play on the use of privileged complacencies and turned heads to the exploitation of othered identities. The video relays the role of resistance and the fight against erasure in imagining alternative futures that cater to the hopes and dreams of all.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is a Pakistani, queer artist belonging to a wellknown political family in Pakistan. Zulfikar’s art revolves around the destruction of heteronormative, religious and cultural expectations of masculinity. This image is from a series called Musalmaan Musclemen: a reproduction of a book written by Arnold Schwarzenegger on bodybuilding. Bhutto translates the images in the original book using colorful fabric, thread-work, satin, and floral patterns, contradicting what is normatively considered to be the standard for masculinity with normative feminine characteristics. The result is a blurring of these binaries that have been vehemently protected by those adamant to not think beyond what they have been told. The queering of this standard opens imaginations of new subjectivities—ones that enable bodies with all their layered identities to be allowed to exist in their entirety without being forced to fit into a standard mold or being erased. Studying alternative world-making movements like Afro/Indigenous/Chicana/Muslim/Trans Futurisms reveals new ways of imagining futures—it allows a glimpse into a parallel universe, one where life was not interrupted by colonialism. It enables visions of futures How do art and imaginations transcend rigid thoughtlessness? r a d i c a l i z e d i m a g i n a t i o n s r a d i c a l i z e d i m a g i n a t i o n s Design plays a crucial role in articulating modes of being in the world. It is a field involved not only in the shaping of matter, but in the shaping of relations, processes, systems; it is implicated in managing who is allowed to inhabit the world, and how. In constructing the material world, design devises nodes of possibility: what could be, and what could not; how things could be, and how could they not. It creates worlds, and “ S O U T H A S I A N - I S L A M - F U T U R I S M M U S A L M A A N M U S C L E M E N Z U L F I K A R A L I B H U T T O with culturally diverse cyborgs—where technology is ways of inhabiting them. not developed to extract and exploit but to enhance The ramifications of these kinship; where nature is not an object with value possibilities reach back, prescribed based on personal gains, but is understood as an entity of its own that cannot be categorized separately from organisms; where identities are not categorized into standardized boxes, but flow freely. rewriting pasts, reconfiguring presents, prefiguring futures. 88

These futures are based in story-telling practices—they are fantastical and empowering. They do not ask for Luiza Prado De O. Martin a return to pre-colonial times, but are rooted in the histories of resistance and struggles that have defined lived social realities of marginalized groups. Image 1 source_ louisesmecruz.blogspot.com Image 2 source_independant.co.uk Image 3 source_zulfikaralibhuttoart.org

87. Lindsay Nixon, “Visual Cultures of Indigenous Futurism,” Otherwise Worlds, 2020, pp. 332-342, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn1vd.21. 88. Prado de O. Martins, 24.