Join students of performance artist and adjunct faculty member D. Denenge Akpem as they explore the future of Blackness through Afro-Futurism as a liberatory practice. Jazz musician Nicole Mitchell will join the performance, adding a pied piper’s theme to the performance to guide and mesmerize the audience-participants, with aliens and overseers leading the way through an interactive environment of projections, soundscapes and dance. A study in human nature, historical context, performative art, this one-of-a-kind adventure draws on pop-culture and tradition to create a futuristic vision of Black culture. References include: call-and-response; blackface and ganguro (now remixed as Octavia Butler’s oankali in blue-grey); post-colonial discourses; notions of place, allegiance, and nationhood; the remix as liberatory practice; hybridity and identity; and the alien, both in space and in your neighborhood. Influenced by a wide array of practitioners such as Sun Ra, George Clinton, Octavia Butler, DJ Spooky, Nicole Mitchell, Chakaia Booker’s futuristic black tire rubber monumental sculptures, Hattie Gossett, and Krista Franklin, this event invites the public to become part of the speculations and interpretations to investigate the future of Blackness. Students are from the new Spring 2010 course “Afro-Futurism: Pathways to Black Liberation” of the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. This course is also sponsored by Black World Studies in HHSS.