Curating the End of the World, Red Spring, and 2nd-wave Afrofuturism

Abstract

[...]wave Afrofuturism/Afrofuturism 2.0 and the Black Speculative Arts Movement are indebted to previous movements like the Black Arts Movement (BAM), Negritude, The Harlem Renaissance, AfriCOBRA and other continental and diasporic African speculative movements (Anderson R. 2016). [...]La'Nora Boror's piece Life-Altering captures the new reality of life in a mask for Black people, and intentionally looks at the intersectional position occupied by women. In summation, the Curating the End of the World exhibition series serves as an online visual archive of the African diaspora experience in America during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the acceleration of capital to online platforms as working class people of color did not have the luxury of working from home, often functioning as front line workers that still had to pick up garbage and prepare or deliver food. [...]the exhibition also serves as a turning point in the formation of platform capitalism as Black digital artists began to demonstrate an increasing sophistication with blockchain technology, developing NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens as an alternative to the traditional route of using art dealers, other elite outlets, or hegemonic platforms like Google and more that control their artistic expression.