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ON - N - ON
On-n-On: Ciara Elle Bryant in Conversation with Octavia E. Butler
SMU: Hawn Gallery
Dallas TX,
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2022
On-n-On is to Archive. To continue. To print. To assemble. To cipher. A zero. An infinite.
Over time we change and evolve over and over, On-n-On.
On-n-On is an installation of works that looks at the agency of Black existence in the future. Specifically looking at Octavia Butler and Butler’s main character Lilith from the Lilith's Brood series, the installation constructs and interrupts the evolution of Afrofuturism in the context of contemporary new media processes.
Legacy and Identity continue to embed and burrow in the lineage of future generations. One can only predict what the future will hold or how it will look, or even how it will smell. On-n-On is an ode to the unknown and the unseen. ‘My cypher keeps moving like a rolling stone’. Octavia Butler lays out how a Black future could look, based on knowledge, predictions, and the archive of history. I take what she provides and imagine it for myself. Agency in the form of resilience, is the need to keep going. It is where the future lies.
On-n-On: Ciara Elle Bryant in Conversation with Octavia E. Butler
SMU: Hawn Gallery
Dallas TX,
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2022
On-n-On is to Archive. To continue. To print. To assemble. To cipher. A zero. An infinite.
Over time we change and evolve over and over, On-n-On.
On-n-On is an installation of works that looks at the agency of Black existence in the future. Specifically looking at Octavia Butler and Butler’s main character Lilith from the Lilith's Brood series, the installation constructs and interrupts the evolution of Afrofuturism in the context of contemporary new media processes.
Legacy and Identity continue to embed and burrow in the lineage of future generations. One can only predict what the future will hold or how it will look, or even how it will smell. On-n-On is an ode to the unknown and the unseen. ‘My cypher keeps moving like a rolling stone’. Octavia Butler lays out how a Black future could look, based on knowledge, predictions, and the archive of history. I take what she provides and imagine it for myself. Agency in the form of resilience, is the need to keep going. It is where the future lies.
The method and thoughts of the archive have been present in my work for years. Butler, an archivist herself, provides countless records of information that she has used in preparation for her literary works. On-n-On: Ciara Elle Bryant in conversations with Octavia E. Butler, dives into the archives to construct a view of Butler's process of creating her works.
‘My cypher keeps moving like a rolling stone’
- Erykah Badu, 1997, On&On