J. Yolande Daniels

From the multiple displacements of race and gender, enter The BLACK City Astrolabe, a space-time field comprised of a 3D map and a 24-hour cycle of narratives that reorder the forces of subjugation, devaluation, and displacement through the spaces and events of African diasporic women. The diaspora map traces the flows of descendants of Africa (whether voluntary or forced) atop the visible tension between the mathematical regularity of meridians of longitude and the biases of international date lines.
In this moment we are running out of time. The meridians and timeline decades are indexed to an infinite conical projection metered in decades. It structures both the diaspora map and timeline, and serves as a threshold to project future structures and events. The BLACK City Astrolabe is a vehicle to proactively contemplate things that have happened, that are happening, and that will happen. Yesterday, a ‘Black’ woman went to the future, and here she is.

Technical collaborators
Sunil Bald (studioSUMO); Alfredo Greco, Pierpaolo Martiradonna (Sinfonia Group)
Team
Christina Dimitri Battikha, Ekin Bilal, Arthur Boscoli Salas Rodrigues, Hana Meihan Davis, Doris Qingyi Duanmu, Jie Fan, Penny Fan, Ashkan Eslami Fard, Alexandros Haridis, Mara Jovanovic, Kyle Joseph Kalmar, Thomas Logan King, Namhi Kwun, Nia Iman Rich, Renan Teuman, Afy Deborah Lauren Tsogbe, Hon Ting Wong, Cheng Qin, Shreya Verma, Hiteshree Das
With the additional support of
MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology; MIT School of Architecture and Planning; MIT Department of Architecture; Graham Foundation; studioSUMO; Elise Jaffee and Jeffrey Brown; African Futures Institute