Of Mythic Worlds

Of Mythic Worlds is an evening of performance and music that explores contemporary Afrofuturism and its links to Ancient Egypt. The evening takes its title from Black American Jazz musician Sun Ra, drawing on his myth narrative that linked the black diaspora with Ancient Egypt by way of Saturn and outer space. Sun Ra like many mid-century African diaspora artists claimed Ancient Egypt as an African civilisation in the context of pan-African post-colonialism and civil rights movements.

Of Mythic Worlds draws on Afrofuturist traditions of speculative fictions and mythic narratives to present a programme of contemporary performance, music, and film. The event will further explore how, in a contemporary UK context, artists and creatives are responding to need to shape narratives and myths that draw from the past but that also challenge received and reductive archetypes. Audiences are invited to explore the generative power of imagining futures and future worlds.

Participating artists:

Divine Southgate-Smith

Joshua Woolford

i.as.in.we (Rohan Ayinde and Yewande Yoyo Odunubi)

Amy Nomvula

Set list:

6pm

Amy Nomvula – DJ Set

Divine Southgate-Smith – THICKER THAN WATER

A looped CGI animation sequence that explores water and sand

as materials that hold memory, and which creates a dream-like

suspension where time seeps into every crevice.

6.15pm   

Harold Offeh – Creating Patterns

A performance lecture drawing on black British histories of

Afrofuturism and using audio-visual sampling to explore pan

African post-colonial narratives’ relationships to ancient Egypt.

6.45pm

Joshua Woolford – Molten Form: Assumed Identity 01

A series of provocations that takes the body as a site to reflect

upon the interconnections between varying forms of historical

and contemporary oppression, and their impact on our ability to

imagine otherwise.

7pm

 i.as.in.we – The Score(s): III

An embodied translation of a collaborative studying practice that

spans a multiplicity of b/Black geographies and spacetimes while

exploring the everyday experience of b/Black aliveness and the

desire to create structural change and imagine new worlds. Dive

into the “texts” explored in The Score(s): III here.

7.30pm

Amy Nomvula – DJ Set

8pm

Finish

About Harold Offeh
Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. Find out more here.

This event is part of the Being Human festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 10–19 November 2022. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see www.beinghumanfestival.org.

Image credit: Film still of Sun Ra in Space is the Place, 1974