Keynote Address for the conference This Isn’t About the Future: Black Digital Culture Now, presented by the CalArts MA Program in Aesthetics and Politics.

This lively multimedia talk by writer and scholar Alexander Weheliye, professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University, is the launching keynote for a multi-event conference focusing on Black digital culture. Weheliye, author of Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity, gives a critical history of the intimate relationship between R&B music and technology since the late 1970’s. Weheliye also wrote Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics and Black Feminist Theories of the Human.

A conversation follows, moderated by CalArts faculty member Douglas Kearney, an organizer of the conference. Discussions continue November 15 at the West Hollywood Library with panels about the Black body, community, and the archive, with guests Anna Everett, Jennifer González, Stephanie Greenlea and Thomas Allen Harris.