Reparative Worldbuilding: Black and Indigenous Collaboration in New Media & Speculative Non/fiction

April 23, 4pm EST

Closely associated with sci-fi and fantasy stories, ‘worldbuilding’ often refers to the fictional construction of whole ecological and planetary systems. In any saga—beyond the plot, characters, or a given setting—worldbuilding involves the non-linear creation and composition of new logics and beings. New and magical entities appear, birthed by imagination. But the process likewise pulls inspiration from and responds to our current world; fictive worlds are built as a criticism, reaction, or extension of lived experience and perceived possibilities.

In this online talk, new media artist collaborators and peers Samay Arcentales Cajas and Kim Ninkuru discuss the reparative potential in collaborative Black and Indigenous worldbuilding—and how we might realize or learn from dream worlds through techno-cultural imagination, redefinition, and transformation

PresenterSamay Arcentales Cajas

is a (Kichwa) digital media artist and filmmaker based in Toronto. In her creative practice she explores human connection and relationship to land, the meaning of urban indigeneity, and how to meld together indigenous cosmology with technology.

PresenterKim Ninkuru

is a multimedia artist born in Bujumbura, Burundi. In Canada since 2009, she has been living and working in Montreal and Toronto.

Using video and sound performance, story-telling and installation work, she creates pieces that give her the chance to explore and express rage, love, desire, beauty, or pain in relation to her own body, mind and soul. Although her art is very personal, she is committed to speaking out about the liberation of black women and femmes everywhere.

Her work heavily questions our preconceived notions of gender, race, sexuality and class. It is grounded in the firm belief that blackness is past, present and future at any given moment.

90 min Canada

2023, Symposium