Torque Control

Vector in 2020

Vector continues to publish a broad range of SFF criticism, as well as interviews, reports, and reviews, including both scholarly and fan writing. This year we again published two bumper issues of Vector, #291 (unthemed) and #292 (SFF and contemporary art).

This year, in collaboration with Fanac, we also made sixty years of back issues available digitally. You can explore the archives here (see also this earlier note). Going forward, Vector is likely to be publishing more themed and guest-edited issues, including #293, a special on Chinese SFF guest-edited by Yen Ooi and Regina Kanyu Wang.

The BSFA also continues to publish Focus (for SFF writers, ed. Dev Agarwal) and The BSFA Review (a digital SFF reviews zine, ed. Sue Oke), and has announced a new annual fiction publication, Fission, will be launched in 2021.

We also ran the 2020 Solidarity Salon series, with readings from a variety of wonderful authors, all available here. We don’t currently have firm plans in place for something similar in 2021, although it does seem likely we’ll continue to be doing more things online, so we very much welcome feedback, ideas, and possibilities for collaborations.

The BSFA also adopted a new constitution at our 2020 AGM, and is preparing for a new website launch in (probably early-ish) 2021.

If you’re not currently a member of the BSFA, please consider joining!

In previous years we’ve often done some kind of “Best SFF of the Year” type feature. We won’t be doing that this year exactly, but do check out …

Where do I send my story? Resources for SFF writers

Wondering where to send your latest short SFF masterpiece?

Ralan.com is a fantastic resource. Don’t be misled by that gorgeous 90s decor: it’s regularly and reliably updated (never change, Ralan!).

Locus is also a great source of industry news, and contains a lot of reviews of short SFF that might give you ideas of where to explore further. Locus also does a regular year-in-review of major SFF magazines.

Submission Grinder is a sort of crowdsourced tool where writers can collectively keep track of publication response times. Duotrope is the other big market listing / submission tracker.

This Facebook group is devoted to posting calls for submissions.

You might also be interested in the Science Fiction Writers’ Association’s list of “qualifying markets”. There’s a note that this list is slated to change in format soon. Qualifying markets must have circulations of 1000+ and pay 8c/word, and meet some other criteria.

And for just a few quick ideas, here’s a recent-ish listicle by Annie Neugebauer, ‘20 Places to Submit Your Speculative Short Stories.’

For the more academic side of things, the LSFRC (London Science Fiction Research Community) are currently doing an excellent job of scooping up relevant Calls for Papers, notices of conferences, etc.: the LSFRC Facebook group is the best place to follow them. And of course there is the ever-effervescent Science Fiction Research Association (founded way back in 1970).

Review: The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Reviewed by Eugen Bacon. This review first appeared in The BSFA Review.

“Making things is a matter of hands and eyes. 

All my daughters are makers of things.”

If you’ve read Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s fiction, comprising Wizard of the Crow, Petals of Blood, The River Between—some curriculum in African literature, seen his plays, like The Black Hermit, or read his essays and memoirs, you know to expect the unexpected. This preps you for his black speculative fiction The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi, on the founding of the nine clans of the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya. 

The Perfect Nine

The verse narrative borrows from the mythology of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi, the male and female forebearers created by the god of the mount, the giver supreme, the god of many names, also known as Mulungu, Unkulunku, Nyasai, Jok, Ngai, Yahweh, Allah. He/She is a unifying god, a being and nonbeing of distance and nearness, the here and there, the stars, moon and sun, the mother of the soil, water and wind. The giver grants Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi nine perfect daughters, and a tenth with a disability, and now the daughters have come of age. 

In this mightily feminist story that blends folklore, mythology, adventure and allegory, translated from its original Gĩkũyũ version titled Kenda Mũiyũru(2018), the daughters are self-sufficient women who till the land, build their own huts, are self-reliant yet united in mind, heart and kinship. 

There’s Wanjirũ, who put a curse on the hyena to smother greed. Wambũi, who rode a zebra to war, led an army to victory. Wanjikũ, who has a fierce love for personal freedom and self-reliance, and a healing power of peace. Wangũi, whose lullabies can dispel a war. Waithĩra, who resolves disputes with the wisdom of the mount. Njeri, whose power of glance is a quest for justice. Mwĩthaga, who can make rain. Wairimũ, who sculpts and invents life, can trap souls. Wangarĩ, whose courage of a leopard protects the powerless from the powerful. And Warigia, the unspoken tenth, born with a disability, but she charms animals, so much joy in her laughter, the whiteness of her teeth lights a path in the darkness, and her arrow never misses an eye.    

Suitors arrive from far afield, lured by the silhouettes of the daughters’ beauty in their dreams, girls in fantasies who lead them down valleys to rivers with song. The suitors perform their own songs and dances of their regions, some picked up on the way, and they’re willing to serve the trinity of life—birth, life, death; the trinity of day—morn, noon and evening; the trinity of time—yesterday, today, tomorrow. 

But with its caution on the lure of strangers, the cunning of ogres, the folly of greed and the ugliness of discord, the philosophical story tosses up challenges and much peril to the daughters and their ninety-nine suitors, until only the worthy remain. 

With its inclusion of no distinction between man or woman, its inspiration on care of the land, its adages on the power of nature, and knowing to listen to the dictates of the heart, The Perfect Nineis an accomplished work that’s deeply cultural. It platforms the importance of naming in African tradition, the place of ceremony and the heart of kinship, bonded by blood or marriage—as one groom says to Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi:

“I want to talk to you, my father and my mother,” he said, 

“For I cannot call you by any other name, given that

You received me and accepted me as your son.” 

In this lush chronicle on the genesis of Gĩkũyũ clans through valour, family, nature and nurture, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o shows how supremely he’s a leading literary African author and scholar, a recipient of twelve honorary doctorates, and a nominee for the Man Booker International Prize.

“Life has and has not a beginning.

Life has and has not an end.

The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning.”

Review: Born of the Sun: Adventures in our Solar System edited by Mike Ashley

Reviewed by Graham Andrews. This review first appeared in The BSFA Review.

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In Jack Williamson’s thought variant short story, ‘Born of the Sun’ (Astounding, March 1934), Sol – like possibly every other star in the universe – is a sentient being and the planets are its incubating eggs. Well, you can’t get much more “thought variant” than that! But since the Sun didn’t give birth by self-genesis, Mike Ashley has excluded it from his whistle-stop tour of the solar system. (I would have plumped for ‘The Golden Apples of the Sun’ – which is neither here, there, nor anywhere else.)

Ashley explains in his general introduction that the stories will deal with “the old solar system, beloved of writers of science fiction, before the space probes discovered what was really out there.” His Planetary Exclusion Order also applies to the Moon (but then he had placed Luna-set stories in the BL Moonrise: The Golden Age of Lunar Adventures anthology). Mars, however, could hardly have been left out of the batting order (see below). Following my usual form, I started by reading Ashley’s erudite* prologues before reading the actual stories.

*A redundant adjective, if ever there was one.

“So strap yourself in and prepare for a kaleidoscope of worlds!” (ibid.).

I’ll get the Golden Oldies – or at least Silveries – out of the way first. ‘Sunrise on Mercury’ (1957), by Robert Silverberg, takes place on the hot-side/twilight zone/cold-side innermost planet that we used to know and love so well. It’s one of his best early stories that never stops moving – or thinking. ‘Garden is the Void’ (1952) is Poul Anderson’s haunting exploration of an asteroid: “A green asteroid.” James Blish went over all Joycean again with ‘How Beautiful with Banners’ (1966), set on Titan, if not Saturn itself. Par example: “Feeling as naked as a peppermint soldier in his transparent film wrap, Dr. Ulla Hillstrom watched a flying cloak swirl away toward the black horizon with a certain consequent irony.” ‘Wait It Out’ (1968) is a marooned-on-Pluto story that shows how well Larry Niven could write hard science fictioon when he used to work at it. [And I, for one, will never accept Pluto as a ‘dwarf’ planet.] But my favourite classic story – and also my favourite story in the whole book – is Clifford Simak’s ‘Desertion’ (1944).

‘Desertion’ (1944). Set on and around Jupiter, it became an integral part of the fix-up novel City (1952) and inspired a crucial plot device in Avatar (watch and compare). The last four understated lines of this story never fail to move me. I envy anyone reading them for the first time.

As usual with Mike Ashley, however, it’s the little-known or even unknown stories by ditto authors that make these BL anthologies so worthwhile. Leslie F. Stone (1905-1991) was one of the “pioneer women” contributors to the dawn-age sf pulp magazines. She set ‘The Hell Planet’ (1932) on the “real” Vulcan, once thought to lie between Mercury and the Sun. Background reading: The Hunt for Vulcan (2015), by Thomas Levenson. ‘Foundling on Venus’ (1954) by John and Dorothy De Courcy has a stinging twist in the tale. John Ashcroft (1936-1997) does Mars proud with ‘The Lonely Path’ (1961). ‘Where No Man Walks’ (1952), by E. R. James (1920-2012), about mining for industrial diamonds on the “surface” of Uranus, could well have been expanded to novella, or even novel-length. It’s the strongest story in the book, in my opinion, after ‘Desertion’. By the same token, ‘A Baby on Neptune’, a collaboration between Claire Winger Harris (1891-1968) and Miles J. Breuer (1889-1945) is by far the worst story in the book. “Ye Gods!” shouted Kuwamoto. “Just at the crucial moment, like a cheap novel serial! I suppose all we can do is nothing, and Elzar’s child has been devoured by the filthy beast.”

It just remains for me to say that Born of the Sun is yet another excellent theme anthology edited by Mike Ashley for the British Library. Buy it! Read it! Keep it!

Treasuring the Wreck of The Unbelievable: Envisioning a future archive of contextualised contemporary art

By Alex Butterworth.

This academic article explores Damien Hirst’s 2017 exhibition The Wreck of the Unbelievable, which mischievously purported to present treasures salvaged from the wreck of the legendary Apistos. How might we preserve, curate, and otherwise mediate such ambitious and distributed artworks, which extend in such convoluted ways through diverse social and cultural spaces, and which deliberately ambiguate their own boundaries and encounters? Where artworks both seek to capture and to intervene in their own historical moment, what obligations and affordances arise for future historians, curators, critics, and publics? Might the challenges set by The Wreck of the Unbelievable even model a new kind of digital art history including, for example, data generated incidentally and abundantly by digital processes? This article playfully mobilises new Digital Humanities methods for reading the vast and stormy seas of social media data discourse, reading between the artwork itself and the historical ‘moment’ in which it is so entangled.

Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable by Damien Hirst

Man has no harbour, time has no shore;

It flows, and we pass away!

Alphonse de Lamartine: ‘The Lake’ as quoted by Franck Goddio, ‘Discovering a Shipwreck,’ in Damien Hirst, Treasures of the Wreck of the Unbelievable

Damien Hirst’s 2017 Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable was work of ‘spreadable’ historical narrative, spun around an elaborately wrought hoax. Ten years in planning and execution, the exhibition straddled two large spaces on either side the mouth of Venice’s Grand Canal, the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana. It alleged to present treasures salvaged from the Apistos, a ship lost almost two thousand years ago, comprising the art collection of a freed slave of incalculable wealth and cupidity. Treasures wrought of marble, gold, crystal, and jade were accompanied by films of the marine archaeology in action, featuring animistic figures — some with the disconcerting features of Disney characters — gently raised from the sea bed. The authenticity of the sculptures themselves was vertiginously involuted, with some sculptures appearing in variant versions, scaled up or down, cleaned of or encrusted with coral. Captions, located inaccessibly, also played games with curatorial authority, describing the construction of the luxurious display ‘cabinets’ as often as they did the contents of the vitrines.

But the physical exhibition was only a single, ephemeral manifestation of the world of Treasures. To commit wholeheartedly to comprehending that world is to hazard one’s sense of coherence in a game of narrative disentanglement, played out within a mise-en-abyme. The layering of the Lamartine epigraph, above, illustrates this experience: it serves as a textual gesture towards mortal infinitude, extracted from its context, relocated within an essay of playful dishonesty — printed in one of three catalogues advertised as accompanying the exhibition, of which only two appear ever to have been published — that aims to ground the exhibition in a plausible fictionality. In his essay in the same catalogue, Goddio ponders parenthetically of the wrecked ship, which bore the Greek name Apistos, translated as Unbelievable: ‘Was that its original name? Or did it acquire it subsequently because of its fabulous cargo? No one knows.’ On such uncertainty, the fascination of the show pivots.

Continue reading “Treasuring the Wreck of The Unbelievable: Envisioning a future archive of contextualised contemporary art” →

African contemporary artists and SF

By Alexander Buckley and Hannah Galbraith

Nuotama Frances Bodomo, a still from Afronauts 

Africanfuturism, a term coined by writer Nnedi Okorafor, is used to describe science fiction created by Africans and those of the African diaspora. Afrofuturism, on the other hand, tends to define science fiction created by Black people predominantly in the U.S. – the key difference, Okorafor explains, is that ‘Africanfuturism is specifically and more directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view as it then branches into the Black Diaspora, and it does not privilege or center the West’ (Okorafor, 2019). While the practices of Africanfuturist and Afrofuturist visual artists differ greatly in their techniques and subject matter, there are common themes which run deeply through many works: hybridity, cultural tradition and history, trauma, and the possibilities of outer space. This article will showcase multiple contemporary Afrofuturist and Africanfuturist artists through the lens of these themes, exploring the ways their works resonate and diverge.

Emos de Medeiros is a Beninese-French artist currently living and working between Benin and France. Medeiros practises a concept he calls ‘contexture’:
‘a fusion of the digital and the material, of the tangible and the intangible, exploring hybridizations, interconnections and circulations of forms, technologies, traditions, myths and merchandises’ (Kikk Festival, 2019). Hybridity is alive throughout Medeiros’s work and is one of his central philosophies. In 2014, Medeiros’s performative installation Kaleta/Kaleta synthesised installation with performance, incorporating music, videos processed and recombined in real-time, photography and a performative video installation that encouraged public participation. Kaleta/Kaleta was hybrid not only in its medium, but also its subject matter. The work depicted the Beninese cultural tradition ‘Kaleta,’ which is a combination of music, dance and performance, itself a ‘unique mix of Brazilian carnival, American Halloween, and Beninese mask tradition.’ By reimagining this tradition through the use of digital technology, Medeiros explains, he sought to form ‘a synthesis between memory and vision, past and future, conservation and creation.’ 

In Medeiros’s Vodunaut series (2017), science fiction and the imagery of space exploration is merged with Yoruban cultural tradition. Vodunaut #09 presents a space helmet decorated with cowry shells, referencing Fa; Medeiros describes this work as an embodiment of ‘a West African philosophy and geomancy system, widespread in Benin as well as Nigeria (and present in Brazil) that involves cowry shells, both as objects and symbols.’

The Vodun religion in Benin associates cowry shells with exploration, as well as protection, prosperity and fertility. In Vodunaut, the helmets are combined with video works presented on smartphones, merging the organic with the inorganic, the symbolic and spiritual with the digital and scientific. Through these objects, Medeiros points to an alternative future where Yoruba spirituality is situated in outer space, and in doing so his work ‘encompasses transcultural spaces and the questioning of traditional notions of origin, locus or identity and their mutations through non-linear narratives’ (Now Look Here, 2020). 

Vodunaut — Emo de Medeiros
Emos de Medeiros, Vodunaut #02

Explorations of hybridity and tradition can also be found in the work of Jacque Njeri. Jacque Njeri’s visual artwork focuses on feminism, culture and empowerment ‘through projected extra-terrestrial realities.’ In her project The Stamp Series, Njeri redesigns selected stamps, combining local culture with space exploration and science fictional elements. Her MaaSci series of digital artworks puts the Maasai tribe, inhabitants of Kenya and Tanzania, into visceral imaginative scenes in space. Njeri’s Maasai science fiction imagines a universe where the Maasai people explore the stars. In MaaSci, the culture of the Maasai is made inseparable from space exploration. The MaaSci series put Njeri in the global spotlight and her work has since been exhibited in Kenya and the 2018 Other Futures Festival in Amsterdam. 

Continue reading “African contemporary artists and SF” →

Vector 292 Speculative Art

Vector #292Download
  • vector-292-cover
    Cover art by Fabrice Monteiro
  • Back cover: Juliana Huxtable

This special issue of Vector is all about SFF and contemporary art, guest-edited by Rhona Eve Clews. In this issue, Smin Smith explores transmedia worlding in Marine Serre’s FutureWear, while Alexander Buckley and Hannah Galbraith offer a selection some of the most exciting SFF-themed art from contemporary African artists. Declan Lloyd examines the tempestuous temporalities of the artist Neo Rauch, while Rachel Hill traces the twisting threads of Sinofuturism, cyberpunk, and AI futures in the work of artist Lawrence Lek. Frank L. Cioffi takes us on a tour through the science fictionality of conceptual art, while Alex Butterworth delves into the mysteries of Damien Hirst’s The Wreck of The Unbelievable and conducts his own speculative imaginings about the future of digital curation.

We’re also delighted to include interviews with the incredible artists Julianna Huxtable and Sensory Cartographies (Jonathan Reus and Sissel Marie Tonn). Artist and researcher Stephanie Moran discusses her art practice in ‘Eco-SciFi Art and Interspecies Technology.’

Andrew M. Butler reviews Science Fiction, edited by Dan Byrne-Smith and featuring contributions about SFF and art from Margaret Atwood, J. G. Ballard, Rosie Braidotti, Rachel Carson, Donna Haraway, Xin Wang, and many others. In Kincaid in Short, Paul Kincaid looks at Art and Science in Charles Harness’s ‘The Rose,’ and Vector Recommends brings you Fiona Moore on Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora and Eugen Bacon on The Perfect Nine.

This issue also includes information on the diversity and anti-racism motions passed at the BSFA’s 2020 AGM, and a message from the Chair Allen Stroud about current opportunities for volunteering with the BSFA. In a special editorial, guest editor Rhona Eve Clews explores this issue’s wealth of words in conversation with Stephanie Moran. It’s a bumper issue at 88 pages. To get a copy, join the BSFA.

Front cover by Fabrice Monteiro, back cover by Juliana Huxtable.

Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora

Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora. Edited by Zelda Knight and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora by [Zelda Knight, Marian Denise Moore, Eugen Bacon, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Dilman Dila, Rafeeat Aliyu, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Michael Boatman, Odida Nyabundi, Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald]

Reviewed by Fiona Moore

This review first appeared in The BSFA Review.

It’s become almost a cliché of conversations in sf circles: someone says that they would love to read more works by authors from non-Western, non-White, and/or postcolonial origins, but, they add, “I don’t really know where to start.” While the recent rise to prominence of African and African-diaspora authors like NK Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor and Tade Thompson has been welcome, potential readers might still wonder where to look for writers in other sub-genres of sf, such as horror, Weird fiction, or post-apocalyptic fiction. 

Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora provides a suitable answer to this question, being a sampler of a diverse range of stories by established African and African Diaspora authors, covering a startling range of genres that provides something for everyone. At the same time, however, there is plenty for those with a good understanding of Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism to appreciate.

All the stories were, however, at the very least interesting and in most cases very enjoyable to read. Some fit comfortably within familiar sf categorisations. “Trickin’”, by Nicole Givens Kurtz, is a Hallowe’en-set horror piece which develops both the vampire and demonic-possession subgenres. “Sleep, Papa, Sleep” by Suyi Okungbowa Davies is also on the conventional horror spectrum, a Lagos-set story involving necromancy and revenant corpses to explore family relationships.  On the science fiction side, “Red_bati” by Dilman Dila, about a former robot pet now repurposed as a mining robot after the death of its human owner, fits into the growing genre of stories exploring the morality of creating AI for human use; this example does a good job of handling the balance between making the AI sympathetic and not obscuring his non-human mindset.

Other stories engage more directly with colonialism and postcolonialism. “A Maji Maji Chronicle” by Eugen Bacon is a fantasy about a mage who meddles with African colonial history, exploring questions about power, corruption and legitimate leadership. “To Say Nothing of Lost Figurines” by Rafeeat Aliyu is a mixed genre SF/fantasy, giving us a wizard from Earth tracking a magical object to an alien society and retrieving it with the aid of a half-human-half-alien woman. The idea of magic-as-science, a feature of much postcolonial sf including that from Africa and its diaspora, arises both as an embracing of the indigenous logics dismissed as superstition in a colonial context, and a challenge to the idea of “Western” science as hegemonic and objective. Here, it is counterpointed by the narrative of a mixed species character finding an escape from her oppressive birth society. 

“The Unclean” by Nuzo Onoh is a genuinely terrifying horror fantasy about an Igbo woman in the 1950s in an abusive marriage; the best horror for me is always that which works as a metaphor for real-life issues, and the way in which the protagonist struggles against not just her husband and his family but the patriarchy of 1950s Nigeria in general is both reflected and amplified by the supernatural terrors she encounters (and sometimes brings into being herself). Mame Bougouma Diene’s “The Satellite Charmer” engages directly with Chinese neo-colonial activities in Africa, the background involves two Chinese mining companies using satellite technology for resource extraction in Senegal, our foreground is the life of one man, Ibrahima, affected by the satellites in unexpected ways and how he, and they, converge to an explosive meeting.

History, and more specifically the loss of (and recovery of) history, also emerges as a key theme. “A Mastery of German” by Marian Denise Moore is a near-future hard-science story whose protagonist is an American project manager tasked with evaluating (and possibly cancelling) a project meant to enable the transfer of human memory for profit; at the same time, we have the counter-narrative of the protagonist’s father attempting to trace the family history, thwarted by the invisibility of Black, enslaved and working-class people. The end result explores the meaning of individual and social memory not just in the USA, but any postcolonial country. “Emily,” also by Marian Denise Moore, is the shortest piece in the book, a poem starting with a historical advertisement for the return of an escaped enslaved girl and imagining different parallel futures for her, picking up on the theme of lost history in Moore’s earlier piece for the volume. “Thresher of Men” by Michael Boatman is a deeply satisfying revenge narrative: as a goddess takes vengeance on the White residents of an American town for past atrocities, we see the hidden history of the seemingly idyllic community emerge, beginning with a recent police shooting of a young Black man but going deeper into the past as the story unfolds, revealing the murder as one horror in a long chain of atrocities extending back decades, if not centuries.

Finally, some stories in this collection cross genres or defy classification. “Convergence In Chorus Architecture” by Dare Segun Falowo is a strange and surreal Weird fiction piece involving quests, boneships, human-arthropod fusions; the prose is beautiful and haunting and the imagery lingers. “Clanfall: Death of Kings” by Odida Nyabundi is a post-human post-apocalyptic adventure story, which reads like the setup to what could be a very interesting series, and one hopes the author develops this universe further. Finally, “Ife-Iyoku, The Tale of Imadeyunuagbon” by volume coeditor Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald tells the story of a society undone by its own essentialism; as the narrative twists and turns unexpectedly, so the story shifts genre, beginning as an epic heroic fantasy, before shifting into a postapocalyptic story with echoes of The Chrysalids, and shifting again into another divine revenge narrative.

Dominion is a worthy addition to volumes like Walking the Clouds and So Long Been Dreaming which serve as introductions to postcolonial and indigenous science fictions and fantasies. The interesting range of stories, genres and themes provides a clear guideline for people looking for new work by African and African Diaspora writers in their favourite subgenres. However, the exploration and development of themes of colonialism, history, and memory, as well as the re-interpretation of colonialist sf tropes such as vampires and AI through African and/or Afrofuturist lenses, means that the volume also contributes to the ongoing dialogue on decolonising science fiction. 

Emerging from vibrations: An interview with Juliana Huxtable

A sneak peek at Vector 292, the contemporary art issue. Juliana Huxtable’s groundbreaking postdisciplinary artistic practice encompasses cyberculture, portraiture, performance, poetry, transmedia storytelling, critical making, fashion, happenings, and myriad other modes and magics. In September 2020 Vector took the opportunity to chat with Juliana about her work, especially the role played by science fiction …

What were your early encounters with science fiction like?

My father, in particular, was obsessed with science fiction, and so we had a lot of science fiction lying around the house, games, films, magazines. He was really into Heavy Metal magazine, which featured this sci-fi soft-core pornography. For my dad, who was not a religious person, it was as close to a religious practice as we came.

My mom on the other hand was highly religious. But both of my parents really saw technology almost as this necessary gateway to liberation, to cultural and social advancement. There was a strong racial aspect to that. So that was the context in which I grew up, and what’s funny is that when I went to university, I almost had this kind of adolescent “I need to define myself!” moment. I pulled away from science fiction, and would feign disinterest.

How long did that last, that feigned disinterest?

It really was when I moved to New York that I started to develop my own interest in science fiction. Possibilities related especially to gender are so interesting to me. So I found myself naturally drawn to subjects that heavily relied on science fiction, or that were actually a form of science fiction … even if they might not be formally classified as part of that cultural sphere.

For instance, there was my interest in the Nuwaubian Nation. The merger of Ufology and Egyptology, and the literature and contemporary almost pseudo-science which that produces, is essentially a form of science fiction. That reanimated my interest in science fiction more generally. I started engaging with it again almost as a form of art research.

“Maybe the goal is that gender doesn’t have any meaning, because there’s less ascribed to that tethering …”

This morning I saw this tweet where somebody was like, “Describe your gender in five words or less or more, and you can’t use words like masc, fem, androgynous.” People were replying with song lyrics and so on. I guess my question is, Juliana, what is gender?

For me, the struggle for gender that I’m interested in, and the work for gender that I’m interested in, is about expanding beyond inherited gender structures. That means expanding the signifying space that floats right above the concrete materiality of sex. So if ‘sex’ is this literal form of inherited embodiment, whose essence supposedly can’t be modified, then ‘gender’ is the directly corresponding world of cultural, religious, linguistic, and social meanings. Meanings that are, it’s assumed, birthed from that materiality. 

The struggle for gender and the work for gender that I’m interested in is de-linking those two, and then expanding that field, ideally to a point where maybe it doesn’t have any meaning any more. Maybe the goal is that gender doesn’t have any meaning, because there’s less ascribed to that tethering, both of the two parts of a binary to each other, and to the idea of gender as it’s tethered to sex.

Continue reading “Emerging from vibrations: An interview with Juliana Huxtable” →