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The Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM) is a speculative art movement in the African diaspora and Africa that emerged in 2015. The movement is an artistic and creative practice that draws from African diaspora and African spiritual, mythological, folkloric, experiential, historical and metaphysical notions and merges these with technology and science. The movement materialized out of a need to empower Black creatives to challenge Eurocentric narratives, historiographies, and representations of Africanity and Blackness that are perpetuated throughout mainstream media. In doing so BSAM engages in the interpretation and re-imagination of the past and the contested present to act as a driving force for the African diaspora to shape the future.

The impetus behind the creation of the movement was the debut exhibition curated by John Jennings and Reynaldo Anderson titled, Unveiling Visions: Alchemy of The Black Imagination, at the Schomburg library in New York the same year.

Since its inception, the movement has grown into an international community of intellectuals and creatives who aim to “present, promote, and support human centered speculative imagination to catalyze streams of new thought that envision an inclusive future society.” These creatives and intellectuals each engage with different aspects and bases of inquiry which include: Afrofuturism, Afro-Surrealism, Ethno Gothic, Astro Blackness, Black Digital Humanities, the Esoteric, Magical Realism, The Black Fantastic, and Black (AfroFuture female or African Centered) Science Fiction. The unifying theme and focus of each of these positions is in their speculative approach and their attention to technology ethics. As such, BSAM has been a driving force for developing a global community of artists, scholars, writers, and creatives who organize conferences, seminars, exhibitions, and conventions for the purpose of discussing and displaying the work of Black speculative creators.

Background
People belonging to the African Diaspora have always been involved in crafting valuable contributions around science fiction and speculative art. These endeavors are more commonly known as Afrofuturism, a practice and term which emerged at the end of the Cold War and which BSAM is directly linked to. Key African Diaspora figures such as Sun Ra, Pauline Hopkins, W.E.B. Du Bois, Greg Tate, George Clinton, Martin Delaney, Octavia Butler, Manuel Zapata Olivella and those in Africa like Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa have been engaged in the production of black speculative literature since the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century. However, due to the violence and historical transmogrifications of the Maafa, these contributions have largely gone unrecognized. The intellectuals and creatives of the BSAM Movement, have worked to bring these contributions into public consciousness and promote and encourage the African diaspora to continue carrying the mantle. BSAM contributor Sheree Renee Thomas does this with her seminal work Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, in which she highlights speculative works from key African Diaspora figures like W.E.B. DuBois as well as those of contemporary Black speculative fiction writers.

Unveiling Visions: Alchemy of The Black Imagination
Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination first debuted in 2015 at the Schomburg library in New York. The exhibition explores multifaceted narratives concerning the esoteric Black speculative imagination. It draws on the visual culture of Afrofuturism, science fiction, horror, comics, magical realism, and fantasy. In doing so, it serves as an analysis of the politics of expression and the ways in which creativity can serve as a powerful tool to fight for various freedoms of expression.

Unveiling Visions applied a global lens to the Black imagination, featuring creatives belonging to the Black Diaspora from all over the world. In doing so, it served as an experimental and informative stimulus for the analysis of the increasing corpus of work which engages with the interconnection of S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) and contemporary artistic production. As such, it was the foundation and blueprint for the conception of the BSAM.

Founders of the Movement
Spurred by their curation of Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination, Reynaldo Anderson and John Jennings grew the concept behind the exhibit into a movement which is coined The Black Speculative Arts Movement.

“There was a restlessness in the creative community at the beginning this decade, a dissatisfaction with a certain aspect with politics going on, and a desire to get the art and political ideas a platform. That lead to us forming, putting together the exhibition and then me subsequently writing the manifesto for the movement.”

— Co-Founder Dr. Reynaldo Anderson

Dr. Reynaldo Anderson serves as an Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and the Executive Director and Co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), a network of Artists, Curators, intellectuals, and Activists.

Dr. Anderson is the Co-Editor of several publications which include:

—Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness (published by Lexington books)

—Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent (published by Cedar Grove Publishing)

—The Black Speculative Art Movement: Black Futurity, Art + Design (published by Lexington books)

—Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures, special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

—When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity Journal of Futures Studies

John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and all-around champion of Black culture.

As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. His research interests include the visual culture of Hip Hop, Afrofuturism and politics, Visual Literacy, Horror, and the EthnoGothic, and Speculative Design and its applications to visual rhetoric.

Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University.

Key BSAM Contributors & Allies

 * Sheree Renee Thomas
 * Dacia "InnerGy" Polk
 * Stacey “Black Kirby” Robinson
 * Tim Fielder
 * Lonny J Avi Brooks
 * Dr. Lawana Richmond
 * Queen Kukoyi & Nicole Nico Taylor
 * Zaika Dos Santos
 * Quentin Vercetty
 * Bryce Detroit
 * Ntyam Ernest Jean Blondel
 * Barrington S. Edwards
 * Shannon Zigzaggerz Theus
 * Phillip Butler
 * Diop Shabazz
 * Fredy E Mena Andrade
 * Schetauna Powell
 * Michael Shakib Bhatch
 * David Kirkman
 * Tiffany Barber

Select Art Exhibitions

 * Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination
 * The Black Angel of History
 * Curating the End of the World
 * Red Spring
 * Missing Black Technofossils Here
 * AstroSankofa

Films

 * Underneath: Children of the Sun

Books and Publications

 * Infinitum: An Afrofuturist Tale novel by Tim Fielder
 * Matty's Rocket graphic novel by Tim Fielder
 * Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Technology and Spirituality by Philip Butler
 * Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora anthology by Sheree Renee Thomas