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LOS ANGELES (Oct. 27, 2021) — Opening Nov. 6, 2021, and running through March 5, 2022, Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) presents CPT Reversal, a new exhibition by Black Quantum Futurism, the interdisciplinary creative practice of artists Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips.
Weaving quantum physics with Afrodiasporic concepts of time, ritual, text, and sound, Black Quantum Futurism’s work creates counter-chronologies and grandmother paradoxes and envisions Black quantum womanist futures that rupture exclusionary versions of history and future. This practice spans writing, music, film, visual art, and creative research with a focus on recovering, collecting, and preserving communal memories, histories, and stories. Through its work and alongside collaborators, Black Quantum Futurism aims to develop and enact a new spatiotemporal consciousness.
The series of work created for CPT Reversal examines time and temporality at various scales and dimensions—personal, interpersonal, communal, global, and cosmic—and their connections and reverberations. The title of the exhibition comes from the acronym commonly understood as “Colored People’s Time,” oftentimes a stereotype of Black people as chronically late, but also a cultural understanding that events and experiences do not adhere to strict schedules and linear time. In physics, the same three letters stand for “charge, parity, and time reversal,” a fundamental symmetry of laws that holds for all physical phenomena.
The work CP Timeline (2021) illustrates the usage of both terms in books, magazines, and other media. Black Quantum Futurism considers these incidences as interconnected rather than accidental. Their pathways diverge and come back together along the timeline in contrast to the directly flowing water in River of Time (2021). Presented here as the three-channel film at the center of the timeline, Write No History (2021) features The Temporal Disruptors, members of an ancient secret society of Black scientists, healers, and writers transporting a “quantum time capsule” between the future, past, and present. The assortment of clocks from the series Dismantling the Master’s Clocks (2015-21) take measure of movements and time, further challenging traditional notions of temporal linearity. Black Hole Viewfinder (2021) offers visitors a glimpse into another dimension of layered imagery from the artists. Throughout the exhibition, Black Quantum Futurism aims to make visible the temporal meridians that connect, distort, and mirror each other, depending on one’s arrival or location on the timeline.
CPT Reversal is part of the longer-term research project CPT Symmetry and Violations with the Collide Residency at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The exhibition also includes a new soundscape by the artists that incorporates discussions about time with scientists in Spain and Switzerland during their residency.
Black Quantum Futurism: CPT Reversal is organized by the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater with Emily Gonzalez-Jarrett. Special thanks to Carmen Amengual.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Black Quantum Futurism Collective is a multidisciplinary collaboration between Camae Ayewa (Rockers!; Moor Mother) and Rasheedah Phillips (The AfroFuturist Affair; Metropolarity) exploring the intersections of futurism, creative media, DIY-aesthetics, and activism in marginalized communities through an alternative temporal lens. BQF Collective has created a number of community-based events, experimental music projects, performances, exhibitions, zines, and anthologies of experimental essays on space-time consciousness.
BQF Collective is a 2016 A Blade of Grass Fellow, 2015 artist-in-residence at West Philadelphia Neighborhood Time Exchange, and had their experimental short, Black Bodies as Conductors of Gravity, premiere at the 2015 Afrofuturism Now! Festival in Rotterdam. BQF Collective frequently collaborates with other Black Futurists Joy KMT, Irreversible Entanglements, Thomas Stanley, Ras Mashramani, and Alex Smith to produce literature, present workshops, lectures, and performances.
Through various writing, music, film, visual art, and creative research projects, BQF Collective also explores personal, cultural, familial, and communal cycles of experience, and solutions for transforming negative cycles into positive ones using artistic and holistic methods of healing. Its work focuses on recovery, collection, and preservation of communal memories, histories, and stories. Through its own work and that of its collaborators, BQF Collective is in the process of developing and enacting a new spatio-temporal consciousness.
INFORMATION:
Black Quantum Futurism: CPT Reversal
Nov. 6, 2021 - March 5, 2022
Admission is FREE
Opening Day (Saturday, Nov. 6): 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
In keeping with current Los Angeles County Public Health requirements and Music Center policy, and for the safety and comfort of the REDCAT community, all patrons and guests must provide proof of full vaccination. All patrons and guests must also wear a mask while at REDCAT except when eating or drinking.
For more information, press comps, or artist interviews, please contact Katie Dunham (REDCAT/Katie Dunham Communications) at redcatpr@calarts.edu.
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