Black Quantum Futurism: Ancestors returning again / this time only to themselves

BLACK QUANTUM FUTURISM

ANCESTORS RETURNING AGAIN/

PAST PRESENT PROJECTS

FAIRMOUNT PARK CONSERVANCY

THIS TIME ONLY TO THEMSELVES EXHIBITION ZINE

WRITE NO HISTORY AN EXPERIMENTAL FILM

BY BLACK QUANTUM FUTURISM

Write No History is a short, speculative three-panel film featuring found and archival footage of The Temporal Disruptors, members of an ancient Secret Society of Black scientists, healers,and writers. spread out across time in the relative past/present/future at one of their meeting lodges, the Hatfield House in Philadelphia, performing quantum time capsule burying and unearthing rituals to transport quantum time capsules containing tools, maps, clocks, and codes as a technologies to hack colonized timelines.

Write No History is directed and produced by Black Quantum Futurism with filmmaker Bob Sweeney. Featured Temporal Disruptors include: Dominque Matti, Iresha Picot, Marcelline Mandeng, Vernon Jordan III, Angel Edwards, Vitche-Boul Ra, Sheena Clay, Camae Ayewa, Alex Farr, Rodnie King, and Riot Dent.

TEMPORAL DISRUPTORS

Write No History features speculative found footage of members of a secret society of Black scientists, healers, and writers known as The Temporal Disruptors. The members of the ancient society stretch backward and forward in time, with members planted in every decade, setting up an intricate communication network operating on principles of quantum physics and Afrodiasporan features of space and time.

The members have several locations in the past/present/future that serve as portals or sites to meet and hide/bury/unearth quantum time capsules. The Hatfield House is one such site/portal - particularly because it has special features, having been dismantled, transported from its original location, and rebuilt.

The found footage documents construction of a quantum time capsule and its burying and “unburying” rituals. The quantum time capsules were containing information and items that will help the secret society archive and share information to help warn and protect Black communities against harm and keep the communication/warning/healing loop going.

QUANTUM TIME CAPSULES

Quantum time capsules are temporal technologies for oppressed Black and Brown people isolated in local, progressive, linear, fatalistic time ghettos that otherwise deny access to temporal dimensions. Quantum time capsules can send messages and objects to any point in the past or future, communicating with both ancestors and future generations.

They elude linear space-time and trouble our notions of past, present, future, history, and progress by including stories and objects usually rendered invisible. As a way of communicating with the past and connecting with the future, quantum time capsules can help us unsettle and question expired presumptions and understandings of time.

Kindred Temporal Library is an archive of books, films, tarot & oracle decks, and other materials holding the themes of community, time, temporality, prophecy, speculation, foresight, the past, and Black womanist future(s). The library is named for Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, and first appeared at BQF’s Time Camp 001 (2017).

In the Time Capsule Study, time emerges from timeless degrees of freedom, creating conditions by which Temporal Disruptors can collapse all eras, instances, and possibilities for Blackness across time and into the present, borrowing freely from any temporal dimension. Through a study of the Unknown, and development of Black/Afrodiasporan ritual temporalities and codes, Temporal Disruptors activate portals, shadows, and black holes as sites of re-memory, future memory, and temporal liberation.

TIME CAPSULE STUDY + KINDRED TEMPORAL LIBRARY

THE REDEEMER ROOM

Historical collage provides an illumination of The Temporal Disruptors secret society. The collages speak to the power of oral and visual traditions. The memory of color/ A collage of future visions/ It is these visions that give us agency to better understand our past and to better identify the groundwork that has been nurturing our foundations here in the present. The collage is accompanied by a family photo album called “The Familiar.” The photo album is an archive of feelings, a collection of emotive folk experiences.

TRANSMISSIONS FROM A QUANTUM TIME CAPSULE The quantum mirrors sound sculpture channels Transmissions from a Quantum Time Capsule, the sonic record of a quantum time capsule holding Black cultural artifacts excavated from Black sites of memory and Colored People's Time Capsules, such as Potter’s fields, housing projects, subfloor pits in the cabins of Black enslaved, and Black monuments that are almost never legible in the white gaze unless it is being used for capital exploitation. Quantum time capsules requires us to ask: what information can the past glean from the future, and what can the future transmit back to the past?

PAST PRESENT PROJECTS Past Present Projects organizes contemporary art exhibitions with historic sites. Our projects foster the development of culturally inclusive site narratives and support artists through funded, site-responsive exhibition opportunities.

Learn more at PastPresentProjects.org, Instagram: @pastpresentprojects

FAIRMOUNT PARK CONSERVANCY Fairmount Park Conservancy exists to champion Philadelphia’s parks. We lead capital projects and historic preservation efforts, foster neighborhood park stewardship, attract and leverage investments, and develop innovative programs throughout the 10,200 acres that include Fairmount Park and more than 200 neighborhood parks around the city. Learn more at myphillypark.org

HATFIELD HOUSE The Hatfield House, a historic house and community cultural hub, is located at the intersection of North 33rd Street and West Girard Avenue in East Fairmount Park. Originally a farmhouse constructed circa 1760, it is the only all-wood historic house in Fairmount Park.

Given to the city by Major Henry Read Hatfield, the house was moved from its original location near Hunting Park and Pulaski Avenues to its current location in Fairmount Park in 1930.

BLACK QUANTUM FUTURISM Black Quantum Futurism, based in Philadelphia, is an interdisciplinary creative practice between Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips that weaves quantum physics, afrofuturism, and Afrodiasporic concepts of time, ritual, text, and sound.. Black Quantum Futurism has created a number of community-based projects, performances, experimental music projects, installations, workshops, books, short films, zines, including the award-winning Community Futures Lab and the Black Woman Temporal Portal.

BQF Collective is a 2021 CERN Artist Residents, 2021 Knight Art + Tech Fellows, 2020-2022 Vera List Center Fellow at The New School, 2018 Velocity Fund Grantee, 2017 Center for Emerging Visual Artists Fellow, 2017 Pew Fellow, and 2016 A Blade of Grass Fellow. BQF has presented, exhibited, and performed at Red Bull Arts NY, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Manifesta 13 Biennial, ApexArt NYC, Philadelphia Museum of Art, ICA London, Serpentine Gallery, Monument Lab and more.

Learn more at BlackQuantumFuturism.com Instagram: @blackquantumfuturism

UPCOMING EVENTS Exhibition Open Hours SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2021 | 1-5PM

From August 14 to September 19, the Hatfield House in East Fairmount Park will be open for the site-specific art installation Ancestors returning again / this time only to themselves by Black Quantum Futurism. The installation debuts the short film Write No History (2021). Visitors will walk through the house for a multilayered experience combining video, sound, and physical objects.

No reservations are required; visitors will be admitted on a firstcome, first-serve basis. Masks are required indoors and social distancing protocols will be in place.

Community Futures Zine Brunch SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 2021 | 1-4PM (RAIN DATE AUG. 29)

Join us on the lawn of the Hatfield House for a light brunch, zines, performances, and an open mic to close out summer and welcome autumn! Come explore time capsules, time travel, and time shifts with performances by Black Quantum Futurism and Marcelline, and short sci-fi readings. Create, trade, read, or buy zines from local scifi writers and zinesters M. TÉLLEZ and Alex Smith, youth arts collective Creative Resilient Youth (CRY), mental health collective DeepSpaceMind 215, and more. Masks are required to visit the exhibition indoors and social distancing protocols will be in place.

DESIGNED BY ZINDZI HARLEY