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journal of speculative vision + critical liberation technologies

THE FUTURE NOWNEVER PRESENT

(SE 02)(EP 01) OCT 2014M E T R O P O L A R I T Y

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METROPOLARITY was born one pixelated summer, desperate for a space where technology and community could intersect. We at Metropolarity believe that those without power must take advantage and control of the media outlets that we have access to. We choose science fiction as our lens to manifest new worlds/identities/self paradigms, and to destroy entropied, harmful ones.

Walk with us.

CONTENTS

p5... IT IS OKAY by Laura Pollard

p7... SPONSORED MESSAGE

p8... WHAT DO WE SAVE WHEN WE SAVE THE INTERNET? (EXCERPT) by Ian Bogost

p10... LIFE ONLINE WORKSHEET by Eighteen & Ras

p14... BATTLEFIELD REPLICA SYMMETRY RETROSPECTA by Moor Mother Goddess

p17... RIP SASS

p18... SPONSORED MESSAGE

p20... THE 40TH ST. CON by Skribbly LaCroix

p23... PORTRAIT OF THE ACTIVIST AS A YOUNG SUPER-HERO by Alex Smith

p26... CONSTANTEMIEDOCONSTANTE by Natis

p28... BLACK QUANTUM FUTURISM by Rasheedah Phillips

p32... DISTRICTS by Aja Beech

p34... FLYBOYS by Billie Blazer

p38... A YOUNG THUG CONFRONTS HIS OWN FUTURE by Ras Mashramani

p42... G.P.S. by Althea Baird

p44... DISPATCHES from the crew

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TODDLERS ON TOUCHSCREENS CAUSE THEIR FINGERS WAS

BORN WITH IT — DRONE SURVEILLANCE OVER ALL YR BODEGAS —

SUPERBACTERIA TALKIN BOUT FUCK YR PENICILLIN SCI FI IS NO LONGER ONLY FOR THE FUTURE

SCI FI IS HERE ON YOUR FRONT PORCH

THIS IS A MEDITATION ON THE FUTURE PRESENT OUR SCI FI REALITIES

THE FUTURE IS NOW AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN

WORLD WITHOUT END AMEN

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THIS PLANET IS DIVIDED

WITH US DOWN HERE AND THE

RICH ABOVE THE

CLOUDS

THE CLOUD SEPARATING US IS

THICK, AND WE

CAN’T PASS THROUGH IT EASI

LY.

THE KING FOUND A WAY TO CO

LLECT A DEAD

PERSON’S MEMORIES AND MADE

IT AVAILABLE.

DUE TO THAT, THE RICH KEEP

BUYING BODIES AND

CONTINUE TO LIVE THAT WAY.

AND NOW OUR MEMORIES AND B

ODIES ARE BEING

SOUGHT AFTER.

NOTHING EVER CHANGES.

THE RICH DO AS THEY PLEASE

.

“

“Kaiba (2008)

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It’s early in the morning. Your cellphone is shrieking music; vibrating so hard you feel it through your pillow as a singer warns you about the noise over an electronic beat. You hit it, not questioning if it’s safe to be hitting what is essentially a smaller version of the glowing laptop sitting in the corner of your room. You close your eyes. You don’t sleep. Minutes later, your phone repeats it’s alarm. You close your eyes again, shutting of the alarm, so used to your phone you can use it with your eyes closed. It is an extension of your body. You get out of bed. You get back into bed. You stare at your closet, wondering if maybe your mother is right, maybe you do need to buy some more colourful clothing. You get out of bed.

It’s hot outside. You stare down at your chest. You stare at the drawer where you keep the bra, the one that’s slightly too small, that flattens your chest. You question why to be read as the genderless being you so desperately want to be, you must make your body look like what a boy’s body should look like. You decide not to bind. It’s hot outside. Instead, you chose a shirt that simply hides your chest. Hides your gender. You correct yourself – hides your sex. Girl is not your gender. It is simply the reason why your chest does not appear genderless to the rest of the world.

You finish getting dressed. You are faintly aware of the sound of traffic outside your window. You pull apart your curtains, expecting harsh sunlight. You are greeted with grey skies. This faintly lights your bedroom. You go to your desk. You pull on thin rings, enjoying the feel of the metal against your skin. You pause for a moment. The metal looks so right on your hand, making it look not real. You go to your mirror. The red lipstick smeared around serves as a reminder of your failed juvenile attempts at femininity.

Black eyeliner no longer feels right to you. You don’t want to be dark anymore. You want to look harsh and strange, but it’s not the right kind of harsh and strange. It’s too human. You search for silver eye shadow, lamenting the stains and streaks of assorted cosmetics appearing on your hands. You apply it to your eyelids with your fingertips. You look at your reflection. It’s not enough. You apply more. You spread it over your eyebrows, apply thick streaks down your cheeks, violently press it to your lips, trying to make it stick.

You look in the mirror. Someone, something that is not you looks back. You smile. You feel robotic. You look right. You are not a girl. You are not a boy. You are not a human.

It Is OkayLaura Pollard

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You feel afraid.

You realize you can’t go outside like this. You grab makeup remover, spilling it over your makeup-covered hands while pouring it on tissue paper. You attack your face with damp tissue, wincing as it gets in your eyes. You do this for several moments, until you’re sure you look human, presentable again. You open your eyes.

You look in the mirror. Your skin is now strangely shiny. It feels tight. You look naked. You frown. It will do. It will have to do. You turn to leave. Something catches your eye. Just below your right eye, a smudge of silver remains. It is a reminder. A reminder that you are not a girl. You are not a boy. You may be a human, but it is okay. It will do. You leave your room.

◁

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AutoFeline Remote Companionship System (Platinum Drone Suite)

You’re already familiar with the HomeBasic edition of Xcorp’s AutoFeline Remote Companionship System™, which received worldwide renown after its honorable mention in the 2044 NASPCA* awards. Well, prepare to familiarize the shit out of yourself with our new expansion to that system, the Platinum Drone Suite! This innovative upgrade to our acclaimed line of remote companionship products adds a dimension of social media capability never before possible for the absentee cat owner. Yes, our sustainably produced drones impose the FDA-mandated 4 hours a day of happy fun calisthenics that you’ve come to depend on. And with the regularly dispensed dry-food modules, the drones remain the reliable proxies for busy cat owners that they have been for years.

But why settle for mere sustenance and exercise? The Platinum Drone model takes things to the next level. The Cutetronic motion-sensing camera is optimized to take cat pictures that are scientifically proven to net more likes per post, and the constant surveillance provided by our advanced moment-capturing technology means you will never again miss the perfect cat photo opportunity, since every moment will always be recorded, forever. The camera has plug-and-play functionality out of the box, or users can choose to program a specific mood preference to portray your cat’s personality according to whatever distorted notion of reality suits your mood at the time. Poopingly Affectionate, Disinterested but Bitey, Aloof Vigor, Clownfully Dirty, Shedding in the Fridge, and Unrepentent are popular mood preference choices. Believe me, it works! I recently took a three-month long “business” trip, and by the time I returned home, I found that all two or three of my cats were basically alive. And although it was clear that they no longer recognized me, I’m happy to report they barely mauled me at all. Buy today!

*National Aeronauts and Spacemen for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals**American Psychological Association

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Time May be a Flat Circle, but This Circular Contains Deals You Won’t Wanna Miss!

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You boot a browser and it loads the Yahoo! homepage because that’s what it’s done for fifteen years. You blink at it and type a search term into the Google search field in the chrome of the browser window instead.

Sitting in front of the television, you grasp your iPhone tight in your hand instead of your knitting or your whiskey or your rosary or your lover.

The shame of expecting an immediate reply to a text or a Gchat message after just having failed to provide one. The narcissism of urgency.

The pull-snap of a timeline update on a smartphone screen, the spin of its rotary gauge. The feeling of relief at the surge of new data—in Gmail, in Twitter, in Instagram, it doesn’t matter.

The gentle settling of disappointment that follows, like a down duvet sighing into the freshly made bed. This moment is just like the last, and the next.

You close Facebook and then open a new browser tab, in which you immediately navigate back to Facebook without thinking.

The hot fury of encountering yet another lowlife online. Of knowing how the argument ends (badly) but carrying it out anyway.

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The sunburn of that fury hours later, the bleak shadow side of ha-ha "someone is wrong on the Internet" cartoon mockery in which you scowled through dinner, because you are a person and not a stick figure.

The comments, and reading them, and not reading them. Knowing that response and reaction responds and reacts to someone’s preferred idea rather than the ideas proffered. If you are a woman, knowing something much, much worse.

Notifications. Click me, read me, look at me, "like" me, buy me, contribute to me, respond to me, retweet me, for I am on the Internet.

Another day’s work lost to the vapors of reloads, updates, clicks, and comments. Realizing that you are hyperemployed by the cloud, that you are its unpaid intern. Wondering what you’d have accomplished if you had done anything else whatsoever. Knowing that tomorrow will be no different.

The weight and heat of your smartphone in your pocket, silently whimpering for you, a glass and metal kitten with a small, fragile body.

excerpt from What Do We Save When We Save the Internet? We cannot champion Network Neutrality without admitting

that the Internet is no Utopia. by IAN BOGOST - 15 MAY 2014

10LIFE ONLINE: WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT

((a worksheet for allied media conference 2014))#lifeonline w/ Ras & Eighteen

~ Write, map, draw your responses ~

1) Describe an early or past experience you had online. This can be a description of virtual place/s or space/s, an event, a habitual occurrence, a feeling or atmosphere--anything!

2) "Where" was it? Examples: A chat room, fansite, forum, MMORPG, message board, AIM/Yahoo/MSN chat window, blog or journal platform, text exchange, etc.

3) What were the "physical" characteristics of the virtual space/s? Examples: Design/layout & colors, event sounds, other users present, etc.

114) What were the "cultural" characteristics in the space/s?Examples: Etiquettes, community morals/rules, handle/screen name conventions, in-jokes, taboo actions/behaviors, etc.

5) Did you choose to "be" someone other than who you were In Real Life (IRL)? What was this virtual self (or selves) like? Describe the personality, abilities, appearance, relationships, or anything else you remember.

6) What were your actual physical surroundings like? Were other people present? How old were you? What was the device you used to get online like? Did you have rules or limitations for using the device or being online?

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Battlefield replica symmetry retrospectra

The idea is to travel throughout the race riots from 1866 to the present time A speedy decapitation by time, musk and thickness. Sacrificing blood for hate. making it to the front line with ease like how mamma made biscuits outa nothing, all while having a dope needle in her arm. The blueprint provided by a black cemetery of hopeful dead rattling their coffins with cheer. A new type of happiness a black happiness that’s filled with grief. Some how ending up at the portal in time with just your torso nothing else no mind just the innate wiring, of your dna, the processes of your chromosomes, systematically forming to prevent ones own annihilation. I mean extermination. The labor of existence.

reconstruction error/horror

the first time you heard the whisper of death /the death that has always been

Moor Mother Goddess

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lingering/here with you /since the day you were born.heard it telling you/ that you must be both /dead and alive

want us to bedead when a man wants to beat uswhen they wanna rape usdead when the police kill mealive when the police kill youalive when it’s time to be in they kitchenswhen it’s time to push out they babies

I’ve been bleeding since 1866dragged my bloody self to 1919and bled thru the summerbeing slaughtered by whites

A klux of kaos came after an influx of terror from German and Irish immigrants. Amerikkkan imperialist wasted no time joining mobs of riots even the descendants of the pilgrims still licking knives clean from the trail of tears joined in to slaughter and rampage.

All because of a feelingan emotion/ fear

by the time I got to watts I was missing most of my limbsstill had enough blood in my throat to gargle up 9 wordsI resist to being both the survivor and victimbut I know the realityand some of us did just die

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under a boot/under a pounding fistin the back of a car raped /our vagina mangled gutssome of us did just die while giving birth /(past oure)while protesting for the freedom of our sons/ (future hora)

Only god knows how I made it to fergusonRenisha didn’t make itRekia didn’t make itAiyanna didn’t make itYvette didn’t make itPearlie didn’t make itShantel didn’t make itTarika didn’t make itTyisha didn’t make itKathryn didn’t make itGabriella didn’t make itMiriam didn’t make itShereese didn’t make itSharmel didn’t make it

I was sure I was dead in Oakland after being chained by my ankles to a pick up truck and dragged miles in jasper texas where 81 pieces of me/my body/was scattered across a back road. The white men dropped me off at a black cemetery /see that’s how I got over/here/the same place I was in 1866. A bleeding black body blowing in the wind dripping a ironic thickness of things never changing/time is a balancing act that encompasses all things suspended in illusion.

(reconstructing errors. ) ◁

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RIP Sassquat. Sass was a squat on 49th street just south of Baltimore Ave in west Philly. A lot of very fucking excellent and very fucking glorious, viciously smart queer and trans and brown and black and++ people have called this place home over the years, making art and surviving. The area Sass was in is being aggressively gentrified by the University of Penn, University City District, the (duh corrupt) City of Philadelphia, and the Cedar Park Neighbors association which is full of property owning red-blooded American suburban tranplants who are married to cops and are very concerned about the safety of these kids living in a house that should very well be condenmed (and coincidentally don’t want it to bring down the property value of their newly bought home which is attached to the very unsafe looking property with those transient kids). Sass was full of femmes of color in its last days. The interloping next door neighbor (and home owner™!!!) harrassed them, the property owner, and anyone else possible, till inevitably the crew was forced out.This isn’t even the full story and we’re just filling you in on some recent events concerning our friends & neighbors, but when you go thinking FEMME DYSTOPIA is real cute, just remember this was Sass and meditate on it.

DJ Haram ::airhorn::

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The TurboStoopIs “partying” a wedge in your chore wheel? Do you introduce yourself to new people by offering to wait in the car? It’s time to renovate your socius, and XCorp has just the thing! Meet the TurboStoop™, whose two variable-speed automated escalators integrate seamlessly into your existing stair masonry and connect to your automatic sidewalk port, allowing you to decide both the speed at which foot traffic cycles before your doorstep and the personality content of the people filling those shoes.

Don’t bother wasting any more time deciding who to invite over, just hook your computer up to our system and let the TurboStoop do the work. Syncing your iPad with our architectural software is a synch. First make sure you are nearby a reliable Wi-Fi hotspot, then slather your tablet device with a generous layer of our patented e-Nut Butter Adapter Spread™ and leave it in your basement overnight. If the moon was full that night, you will find your internet browser data cache has been uploaded into the StoopCloud. At that point, our sophisticated JambSync matrix will cross-reference the celebrity gossip blogs you frequent with all relevant IMDb data on the Real Housewives who most closely match the results of the IQ test you took in 4th grade. The results of that process are combined with data we mined from the leaked databases of Google Map’s Street View Facial Encyclopedia Vault, thereby allowing us to find people in your area with satisfactory looks and enough social acumen to compensate for your whatever inadequacies may have piqued your interest in the TurboStoop™ to begin with. Worried about potential tension between you and these strange interlopers? Well I’m not, and you’d better be ready to fight me first if you’re calling me a liar.

But even if you do end up hating the friends provided by TurboStoop, there’s no need to worry. Enter the new and improved Mechanized Goodbye™! All it takes is the simple flick of a switch, and your party will instantly begin to die down. No more messy attempts at party dispersal; no more awkward, drawn-out departures — simply shrug and smile as your guests are violently ejected by the patented Mechanized Goodbye. If this name reminds you a little too much of your last ex, shit, me too! But fret not: this Nobel Party Prize winning marvel of engineering is also available in a custom, limited edition pastel skin that, while functionally identical to the Mechanized Goodbye, is still available in a pleasant repackaging and with a much more pleasant name: The Hellotron 5000, if you’re willing to fork over the extra dough to meet our immodest markup. Save time and bundle! Hellotron ships in the OmniStoop Expansion pack alongside our Cooler Bear (a teddy bear wearing a tinfoil hat, stuffed with dry ice) and the Ash Puppy (four kevlar booties and an ashtray saddle for your dog, to cut down on littered cigarette butts without compromising paw safety). They’re a hit at summertime barbecues! Trust me, it only took half a Cooler Bear’s worth of ice cold wine spritzers to numb the pain of my ex-husband and our most recent mechanized goodbye, and since I was awarded the front half of the dog I in the divorce, I can pretty much use the Ash Puppy. Act now!

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Time May be a Flat Circle, but This Circular Contains Deals You Won’t Wanna Miss!

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(2012)

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the 40tH sT. CoN (poem disguised as prose abt a Country disguised as a street corner)

He hated books for taking his head magical places his legs cldnt take him. He got conned outta $90 once trying to help some lanky Sudanese dude on 40th and market. He thought that if he scrolled just fast enough on his smart device he might thumb himself into another world. A world with less obvious outcomes. A world that was more like the bark black con man; subtle, lingering around a bend in the street, all legs and feet. More like all of Sudan standing on one corner in west philly. At one fucking intersection taking one photo to send back home. And they need a fisheye to get everyone in it. So they send the man, the con man, the long slender man, all legs and feet. Saying he’s lost on 40th. Hands me a business card that feels like a worn dollar bill. With a number to a church on it. His accent hangs from his mouth, primitive and agile. He’s a dark hallway in an abandoned school and he will get his way. And get all his family in. And this fisheye will make it so that all of Sudan standing in front of crown fried chicken, not buying nothin will have a photograph to send home.A black mass on a wall not some fuckass University City mural. Sudan. All of it, standing across the street from the projects and the bar and the gross ass cat smell passing itself off as a corner store. They are bursting through the tar seams in the streets and clogging the subway entrance. At any moment the 40 will pass by and it’s riders will cuss looking out from the windows and talk shit abt how black it is on the corner that day. Some will get off the bus and want chicken wings or a beef pattie but that store is just a black wall now. Sudan is there, they brought their own foods. Posing for a photo. Poking out it’s chest. No one is saying cheese. This isn’t a vacation. There’s plenty of sunshine back home. This is something else. 40th and Market on a busy Friday afternoon, sun beaming but covered in shade. It will be different from now on. Less obvious. Less

S x L x

21obviously bullshit and more like that con man. The blue black African moon man that acted lost. He pretended to be homeless and needing shelter at a church he couldn’t find just to take a photo of his family. And now they’re standing on the corner of 40th and Market confusing people.

Once the photo is taken, they will send it to Sudan but then they will stay put. And border agents will come. And customs. And ICE. And DHS. And they will "canvas" the area. And surround it. And "caution" tape it. And get tired of negotiating before they even try. And call the dogs. And brandish pistols and some will have automatic weapons. And they will march towards the black wall. And just as they get close enough they will be sucked inside and trade places with the ones they came to take away.

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Julia Rowe

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Julia Rowe

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PORTRAIT OF THE ACTIVIST AS A YOUNG SUPER-HERO

Alex Smith

Warning! This article is not about the partisan would-be warriors of the northwest whose loose interest in super-heroics have led them on a path of weirdness, towards the ancient practice of police radio interception, night patrol hysteria. Their wildly uninformed and uncreative endeavors into super-herodom is more than a misfortunate misstep; it’s a wildly aggressive state of non-being, derived from a lack of cosmic, spiritual, or socio-political guidance that makes super-heroics possible in the real world. Ultimately, the folks in the so-called real life super-hero community are just banal constructs of post-cosplay western lifestyle, living out their dreams in the wacky universe of their own mind.

But at least they’re doing something. Right? Well, consider what the first comment on the youtube video "Top 10 Real Life Superheroes" suggests: "These are vigilantes, not super-heros." What’s the difference? A vigilante is someone who operates within selfish, even if at times well-intentioned parameters. Their motivation, much like the civilian border guards near the US/Mexican border, the Michigan militias of the ‘90s, or even earlier, the Guardian Angels, isn’t to serve or enlighten or empower the people or to even "fight crime" (which is, of course, highly problematic in and of itself) but to participate in a self-congratulatory subculture, to find something to grab onto and identify with, similar to say, punk rockers or juggalos.

With that said WE AIN’T GONNA BE TALKIN ABOUT THEM. Nope. Instead, this article, will attempt to lay a predictive blueprint for the future of activism, particularly pan-African and queer activism, as it relates to power and real possibilities of super-heroics. The future of activism is wearing a cape.

Using the template set forth by the Black Panther Party and various groups of passionate revolutionaries, one can derive a sense of history within the black diaspora for direct action, all within a realistic context that makes super-heroing possible. The key elements of super-heroes that will be essential for activism in the future will be 1. Self-defense 2. Infiltration 3. Science 4. Spirituality 5. Imagination. These things on their own are self-explanatory, but how do they relate to restructuring the well-worn tenets of activism?

For self-defense, we are interested in breaking through the restrictive idea that self-defense is simply protest etiquette for uninitiated white children on a furlough. The make your body limp" sort of compliance techniques of the ‘90s is perhaps dead, as is relentless black-blocking and sabotaging, breaking Starbucks windows during peaceful protests. If there must be a confrontation, the evading techniques of Roberto Sharpe (look it up, youtubers), perhaps, makes more practical sense. Further, we’re not concerned with going to firing ranges or taking karate lessons as the sole means of our survival. Those are broken models. Our self-defense is an active pursuit of constant preservation techniques that chooses to ignore the apparent might of an enemy. Look, as Outkast said, "nigga they made them gats/they got some shit that’ll blow out yo’ back/from where they stay at" so we’re not inclined to simply go to war with some vague enemy or throw rocks at a barricade of armed police officers. Self-defense

Julia Rowe

24in the future of activism will involve predictive strategies that will destroy the reliance on the machine, thus crippling it’s will. The "hands up" protests are striking visually, aren’t they? But they are passive. What a super-hero does is create new engines and practices her craft and art in the face of this kind of teeming adversity. Ferguson, for instance, is ripe for this kind of gearing up. Water, air, food, land; these things need to be seized first and then replaced with the weaponry of true sustainability. The most powerful images of Storm in the X-Men are ones where she controls the weather not as simply a destructive maneuver, but to give her people food. How can this translate into the defense of a community?

Where science and spirituality meet, this will be a key element in reconfiguring activism. It’s discouraging how little attention activists put on imagination. What can capture the minds of a generation, of a people? We’d like to see an emphasis put on not just putting another politician in office but on crafting a world (and we can start with a house, a street, a community and go beyond) where the emergence of art, science and spirituality become the most palpable factors of existence. It was said that during the post-World War rise of fascism, that Dadaism was more suppressed and thought to be more of a threat than the so-called anarchists and communists of the time, mainly because visually they eschewed conventionality and were insistent on manifesting the world that they wanted to live in. This will be hard for a lot of artists; we are taught to react to our surroundings and to protest and to make statements. Rarely are we as concerned about creating a world that we actually do want to live in. With super-heroism, we have that opportunity.

But science, not just art or aesthetic, is essential in this process. Although one of the key arguments against Afrofuturism is that "blacks, being poor and oppressed, will never have the money to join the space race", a simple understanding of our place in the scientific world as innovators, inventors, healers, and spiritual practitioners will silence those critiques. Furthermore, it’s not a simple matter of going into space, launching shuttles and trying to compete with the western world. It’s about being in a better relationship with those around us, creating a stimulating and eco-empowered environment here, now. We can borrow from many current models of sustainability, from doomsday preppers to radical faerie sanctuaries, and transform our lives through scientific discovery tempered with a reliance on the spirituality that has sustained us in many forms since the dawn of time. The best way to initiate a scientific aspect into black activism is to first imagine it, then get others to imagine it. If we can apply the practical historical and scientific wisdom of the speeches and writings of Dr Ivan Van Sertima, the visionary restructuring of society in the communal paraspiritual dreams of Sun Ra, and the real world application of those imaginings embodied by Yumy Odom’s Frator Heru Institute, which is quite uniquely structured program of learning that resembles Yumy’s own creator-owned superhero universe, and by Heru Khuti’s Black Funk: The Center for Culture and Sexuality, it makes super-heroing an entirely possible reality for black activism.

Understand, super-heroism isn’t just fighting crime, living in a cave somewhere, and beating up badguys. It’s not about flying in the air, "stay safe, citizen", and it’s not about vigilante justice. Many of the comic books we read are insipid and banal wish-fulfillment fantasies of straight white men. Obviously, we want a world, a universe, that doesn’t reflect that anymore. To best illuminate a more pertinent model, take the Legion of Super-Heroes, still a creation of white dudes, albeit a relatively unknown super-hero team. They’re a band of teenaged heroes from the far future, inspired by Superman (remember, Superman’s first appearance

25had him beating up corrupt politicians, sticking it shady businessmen and stopping domestic violence!), from different worlds, who came together to imagine a better, more sustainable universe. This template is far more sincere to the super-hero idea than the pulp/vigilante inspired anti-heroes of say, Batman, or the tethered-to-the-American-military oppression of modern day depictions of the Avengers. This new world will consist of a black community structured around semi-anarchic, visionary strongholds, bristling with light and harmony, marrying principles outlined in Lorenzo Komboa Erving’s seminal text "Anarchism and the Black Revolution" with the wildchild, free thought drugless psychotropia of Hakim Bey’s "TAZ", creating tangible opportunities for not just survival, but for thriving, beautiful and open invention. A world where young black geniuses like Stephen R Stafford use their engineering prowess in concert with the time traveling and light experimentation of Rasheedah Phillips of the Afrofuturist Affair, and all under the guidance of spirit mediums like Mami Watu, formerly of Harmony House. Listen, we’ve tried this before with MOVE and we realized that being in disharmony with the people is not practical. We have realized that technology is moving extremely fast. We don’t have a choice anymore; we have to not only join the space-race, but circumnavigate it. We have to take the flying suits and re-appropriate them from the jocks and x-treme sports community and use these kinds of out there things for our own purposes. Plus, our structures, bunkers, strongholds and bases must be able to disappear and recontextualize themselves. We obviously run the risk of suffering at the hands of the state; super-heroing is not a fantasy when applied to the real world. Therefore we must be freer in the way we construct, must be willing to let go of structural attachment, living sometimes in the crevices of the world only to reappear as pillars of shimmering, true gold directly in the face of the monolith. We must live a cell-life, being malleable and amoeba-like, opening up our hearts to the vastness of temporary autonomy.

With this autonomy comes a new way of defining our sexuality. Super-heroes are aliens, mutants, paranormal manifestations; their idea of sexuality is essentially non-binary. This is a must for the future of activism! We must be ambassadors for all worlds and to have a general understanding of our relationship to the body. We can not demand rigidity based on our own personal preferences. In science fiction and super-hero lore, many ways of experiencing sex exists, many genders and sexes exist so as to render these concepts arbitrary. There isn’t so much as genderlessness but a celebration of all possibilities of gender.

Influential afrofuturist musician Mike Ladd once posited, "Where’s my floating car/my utopia/my mars colony." I’d say to him now that if we follow the idea behind the super-heroes, creating our own models using our own attempts from the past injected with a new, resounding fervor, we won’t need them; we’ll be the ones flying.

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constantemiedoconstante

Vivo en esta dimensión paralela a un universo infinito, donde todo lo que pienso, escribo y digo se vuelve realidad.Donde se desatan las peores catástrofes y fenómenos naturales.Donde mi saliva sirve para cauterizar heridas dejadas por las guerras internas que nunca acaban.Donde se pagan alimentos con besos, abrazos y canciones y un dólar te sirve para dejar notas de amor a tus enemigos.Se vive sin prisa, con pausa y júbilo.Todos los androides han sido desactivados.Los arboles y sus frutos alimentan las masas que se reúnen en las plazas a danzar en nombre de los dioses, celebrando otro día, otra noche otro atardecer rodeados de prosperidad.Cada desplazamiento del cuerpo; alto, bajo, delgado, obeso; es visto como un regocijo, cada puesta del sol y cada amanecer es un tributo. Cada abrir y cerrar de ojos es una celebración mas, infinita y recurrente en esta dimensión.Me gusta permanecer largos periodos de tiempo en ella.Donde soy una desconocida entre caras familiares.Totalmente inexistente, una paranoia irreal.

Natis

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Carolyn Lazard

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It was already dark in the east as Adara rode the train to her district. A sliver of orange light loomed just over the horizon, flashing between the buildings protruding into the air in the west. She heard not to stare straight at the sun, but sometimes she would, until it burned and she saw black spots. It was too precious a sight to look away.

When she got off of the train, there was already a small line at the exit ID check.

A calm familiar voice instructed from the speakers overhead: “Please have your Police District ID ready to secure a quick transition.”

Four men dressed in dark blue uniforms, thick with black bullet proof vests, stood on the platform, their chests heaving. They wore carbine rifles slung around their backs and pistols in hip holsters. Sometimes they laughed among themselves, lightly slapping one another on the chest with the back of a hand. Much of the time they stood there, tense and motionless.

For days, these guards bristled at Adara, and took an extra moment to look her ID over. Today, the tallest of them approached her in line.

“Come aside.” He said.

She stepped out of line and over to the inspection area just past the exit at the end of the station platform.

“Police and Congressional District IDs please.” He stood right in front of Adara looking everywhere except directly at her and then leaned gently to whisper into her right ear. “I liked your joke.” He said smiling, finally acknowledging her face.

“Excuse me?” Adara shivered with her answer.

“The joke.” He said to her, and then turned to yell towards the other guards, “Ey! Dashiell, what was the joke in the email she sent?”

Dashiell stood with his head down checking the IDs at the gate. When he thought of the joke, he smiled to himself and lifted his head to look over at Adara and the tall guard.

“The ‘urine trouble’ joke.” Dashiell answered. He thought about last week, when there was first talk among them to look into her, and how he mentioned she looked too thin for him. He thought about how small she looked just then and turned back to the next ID.

“Tell it to me.” The tall guard said to Adara.

“Really, I’m not very good at telling jokes.” She replied.

“Tell it, come on. You can write a joke in an email this morning but you can’t speak it to me right now?”

DistrictsAja Beech

33

They stood just next to where the platform met the tracks. She could still hear the train rumbling in the distance.

“Um, what does a uh, what does a teacher say to the kid that pees himself?” She said.

“Urine trouble!” The tall guard yelled to the others and in unison, they all filled the platform with laughter.

The sun was nearly gone and the few people left on the platform held their IDs out. They moved slightly in place and hid under their hoods and scarves as long as they could to keep warm, but were careful not to do much more. A breath of impatience too deep and any one of them could be taken aside for hours, or days. The guards could see every note sent, every word typed, at a whim they could pick any of them and know all they wanted: where they went, when, whom they loved, and why. There would be no secret left in their lives.

Adara forced a smile. She felt as if her skin was so restricted by the cold that it slowly crushed the bones of her face as she stood there. The tall guard gave her a wink.

“Go ahead.” He said and motioned his head towards the exit while handing her back her ID cards.

She passed through the turnstiles and her shaking increased. Adara raised her shoulders up as high as she could and placed her hands in her coat pockets with the IDs. She could feel tears slowly glaze her eyes and reminded herself to keep an even pace, not to draw any further attention. The guards, all four of them, stood at the end of the platform watching her. She kept herself from looking back and wondered if tomorrow she would see the sun.

◁

34

FlyboysBillie Blazer

Down here there are a hundred over-educated flyboys, full of amazing ideas, none of which are very good. Life is a board-game to them -- three boring dimensions. They gather in buzzing groups and shoot down each others’ ideas relentlessly, because they can. It bestows a sense of true power. Those hyper-analytic minds consume themselves. They light up when they smell money and they only see depth when they look into their phones. Many of them were funneled without detour or delay from well-to-do homes to ivy-league schools, and on to neighborhoods whose streets are cleaned by the same people who tidied up their parents’ lawns. The world is their birthright. You can see it in each of their gleaming teeth. When things heat up, they won’t abandon their homes, take only what they need, and move to higher ground -- they’ll just loosen their collars and get out their phones. Surely someone can build a higher wall. We’ve got bricklayers still -- don’t we?

The empresarios lurk in huddled clusters, planning future exploits for all of their flyboys. They fancy that with their low tones and sleek new armor they can cover up their schemes, but their plans are blazed in neon across their chitinous backs.

The flyboys lick their lips.

Somebody has wandered in. His skin tone and dress are mildly startling, too porous for this shiny world: hat too ragged, posture too slack, the face lined too deeply. The curiosity in those stranger’s eyes belie an unfamiliar longing that arouses looks of consternation -- confused furrowed brows. The empresarios are openly repulsed. They have been distracted from their water-cooler antennea-twiddling.

One of the screwed down flyboys greets him with a gigantic false smile, eager to set things strait.

“Can I help you?”

He seems pleased at his own erudition and already knows the answer to his facile question. No. He can’t help. He knows it with a pheromone surety. The flyboy has known since he was carted off to the castles of learning that some thorny unfortunate problems won’t succumb to his craft. Not to the Lorentz’ transformations or to multi-dimensional phase physics. Not to non-linear

35Kalman filtering or Bayesian smoothing. He’s long ago dismissed such problems, and the people who have them.

The unwanted visitor understands all of this with a reliable, well-worn logic.

“Is this where the white people hang out then?”

Scattered laughter. The non-white among the empresarios straighten their backs and their antennae, faces stiffening and simultaneously collapsing, offended by the supposition that they, too, are white, which clearly they are not.

The flyboy jumps to the rescue. “No. It is not. We are a technical cooperative. We are contracted with the city-state to solve the water crisis.”

The old man looks around the room. Nobody looks very thirsty.

“Can I get some water then?”

There is a collective chuckle and a sigh of relief. The flyboy nods and turns towards the water cooler. The empresarios part for him as he approaches, a man on an important mission. The flyboy offers the intruder a tall glass of cold filtered water. The mood in the room settles towards a sub-optimal hum.

The stranger stands there, drinks his water cooly. The currents in the room shift, flowing widely around this new unexpected reef in the well-managed sea. The other flyboys’ eyes, consumed by matrices and algorithms, twitch at the corners, drawn towards the uncomfortable intrusion. The empresarios huddle more closely, shells clacking, planning their next move.

They hadn’t bothered to check him for enhancements, confident that he was a nuisance-level threat, and nothing more. The stranger soaks up the cold clean water and the crisp conditioned air, that other thing inside him soaks up everything else. Finished, full, he places the sweating glass on a nearby table, nods to no-one in particular.

“Good luck with all of that then.”

He is studiously ignored.

He wanders back into the street and the blistering summer sun. The transit swing scoops him up and he settles onto the scarred molded plastic bench. The air vent blows tepid, humid air at his face. The wing accelerates and he settles back for the long ride, cueing the buffer. He smiles as data flickers past:

36

leaky third-party encryption streams, cached innuendo-laden conversation, hasty plans for poorly guarded neighborhoods. Secrets. Castles, he muses, are notoriously drafty. It’s a rich load. It will fence easily and will fetch well. Satisfied, he kills the feed and watches as the city spins off beneath him.

◁

"Crytek has finally revealed what it’s doing with Homefront, THQ’s last stab at a big-budget shooter: it’s turning it into a free-roaming guerilla warfare FPS. On first impressions, it’s like Homefront meets Far Cry, set in a future Philadelphia dotted with encampments of Korean occupying forces to be photographed with smartphone cameras and disrupted with guns and explosives."

- Keza McDonald for Kotaku.com 02 JUNE 2014

37

D.Soulface

38

I live in Long Beach California by Compton College with my big brother, my baby sister, and my mom and dad. I am nine years old. I get into trouble by going out and not coming back all day, doing stupid stuff with my brother and my friends. I be leaving because it’s hard in my house, my dad is strict. He’s strict because he’s from Guyana, and mom said he had a hard life, so he be beating us for stupid stuff. So I just try to get away from him. We do stuff like going to the liquor store and one of us talks to the lady, and the rest of us just take the Mexican candy and put it in our pockets. Or we catch fishes in the LA River, but you got to walk a long long way to do that. In school they say don’t walk in the river cause if it rains you’ll get washed away, then they show you all these videos of people drowning in the river when it’s raining. But sometimes the police catch us and they bring me back home all the time, and that’s how you get a beating in my house, when the police bring you home. I’m not afraid of getting put away cause I went before to a residential after they found me during the riots taking Nintendo games from the game store up the block. It wasn’t nothing though, and we still got the games. Sometimes my brother won’t have time for me so I go down by the car wash to make some money. I use the money to buy Mexican corn and candy and sometimes I save it to buy sneakers cause my dad won’t get me new stuff like that, and I get clowned at school because of it. Three times though I went down to the car wash and the dude who’s always there wasn’t there, and this other old dude was there and he gave me 20 dollars to touch his thing. The second time he gave me 20 dollars again to touch my thing. But the last time was bad, and I told my dad about it and he just beat me. He said I didn’t have no business by the car wash anyway, so why am I telling him all this. He poured some rice on the ground in the kitchen. He told me to kneel on it and the rice was all in my skin when it was done, and there was blood coming out my knees. That’s why I be riding the bus up and down Long Beach Blvd by myself sometimes, cause I’m not tryna be home like that. That’s why I be by the baseball fields so I can watch the kids play, cause my dad won’t let me play. He wants me to play the damn violin, and I’m like nah, I can’t do that. I want to play baseball, that’s what I really want to do. They’re gonna put me away when I’m 12, because I’m too much trouble and I keep running away and I be drinking and smoking like my brother. And my therapist’s gonna be this white dude Dr. Ferguson. He tells me all that’s wrong with me, and he tells my mom and dad all that’s wrong with me. I got attention deficit disorder, and I got oppositional defiance disorder, and I got this and I got that, man all I got is a dad who beats me and my mom, she don’t do nothing to help me. So I’ma just stay in this hospital til they let me out and try to be good, and then when I get out I’ma get away for real. When I get out I’ll find out they moved out of Long Beach to somewhere safer. They forgot a lot of my stuff, and when I get out I feel fucking lost. My big brother’s gonna die when I’m 13, and we find out in the middle of the night. Some gang bangers shot him in front of our old apartment complex. Dad says I’m old enough to come with him to the morgue. He says only the men of the house can go, and that’s just me and him I guess. And I see his body. They shot him in the side, and the bullet broke his artery. Now my big brother’s dead and all I got is a sister, who’s just a baby. And something’s wrong with mom. After the funeral something happens to her, like she don’t live in real life no more. All she talk about is seeing him in front of her bed, seeing his spirit with blood pouring out his side. And I hear her talking to him. She tells him ‘You asked for a brother, you got a brother. You asked for a sister, you got a sister,’ and then she’s crying. That’s another reason I don’t be in the house.

A Young Thug Confronts His Own FutureRas Mashramani

39

The police tell dad they can’t find the killers. Mom says my brother was only on the news for one night, but when these white kids get killed you know their names for months and months. I hold a gun when I go over my brother’s best friend’s house to smoke some weed. My brother’s best friend says he got something for them cholos. He said they came from the Sans, all these streets where the Mexicans live named San Dominguez and San Juan. They neighborhood is right across Orange Ave. My brother’s friend said I can ride with him when he goes if I want. He says I’m grown, so what’s up? I hold the gun for a long time and I see all its parts. We’re gonna move away from Paramount to somewhere safer called Norwalk. I run the streets with my Korean homies Danny and Mark here. Sometimes we get jumped by the Mexicans, and sometimes we jump the Mexicans. We throw glass bottles in the alley behind our apartment complex. I fuck Danny’s cousin Julie. I fuck Chris’s sister Monica. We fuck all these girls. I feel like I can’t stop sometimes. We smoke wet. We huff paint. We choke each other out to get high. We talk shit when we can’t think and that’s how I like it.

I’m gonna get in trouble at school for fighting this fat girl with a bald spot. The school cops put me in a hold and bend my fucking wrist, and when the teacher tried to stop him the cop was like ‘I will spray this shit down your fucking throat, who’s your supervisor?!’ And I’m like damn Miss, be careful, these cops don’t play. But yeah they fucked my hand up, but I went to the police station, not the hospital.

I’m gonna get in trouble at school for sexual harassment cause this white girl said I touched her butt. So they kick me out, and I gotta go to this rehab program for teenagers over in Cerritos behind the Home Depot. But I don’t mind it there really. They’re cool. But I’ma keep smoking shit, honestly. The police are gonna kick me in the head cause I stole a Walkman from Circuit City. They put the dog on me and put me away again, except not in a residential, in juvenile hall because I’m 14 now, and I’m a threat to the community. My dad hates me because they all gotta come up and visit me and he says it’s too far but it’s not that far, only in Downey. It’s called Los Padrinos. This kid name Marcos tells me it means ‘godparents.’ Where the fuck is my Padrinos right now? I could use some of them. Marcos keeps the other boys off me cause he’s my roommate. Marcos says he loyal to all his roommates, no matter what, cause we don’t got anyone else in this place but each other. And I believe that. When they let me out my dad’s not gonna have me back, so I stay over Mark and Danny’s house across the way from our townhouse. I see my sister, and she be wanting to play with me and follow me around. I know she misses me. It’s fucked up I can’t live in that house no more but I guess I brought it on myself. Mark and Danny’s mom let us smoke in the garage while she mixes kimchi right there, she don’t care. How come my parents can’t be like that. My sister tells me mom is worse and worse every day, but I barely see my mom so I don’t really know. When I see my mom she happy, but she don’t tell me to come back or nothing like that. Maybe this a good thing. I’m gonna be fucking this white girl, but her dad gonna walk in on us and she gonna start screaming like I’m raping her. And they say I was raping her, so I hide out so they don’t find me for a while, til my homie Greg mom snitches on me. Which, whatever, maybe I would too cause I’m a fucking criminal already. Nobody wants a criminal in their home, not even your own

40parents. In court, the white girl there crying and they talk about her vagina and semen and all this shit, and my mom not there cause they had to put her ass away too. But my dad here, and he had to bring my sister cause he don’t have childcare. Dad interrupts court when they’re talking about all the sex stuff, and he asks if my sister can go in the back room and they say ok. But she don’t even know what they was talking about, so it don’t even matter. They make me stay at Los Padrinos for six months. That shit really fucked me up I think cause I don’t sleep no more. I have to fight all the time since Marcos not here this time, and my roommate just sleep all day. They said he going through withdrawal. My dad don’t really visit like that, and they bout to send me up to the mountains, some place called Chatsworth. That’s where they put juvenile sex offenders like me. I’m like who gives a shit. Maybe somebody’ll kill me before I get up there. Some boy hung himself in the next room over. That’s how I be feeling. They’re gonna leave me up here in the mountains by myself to rot for four years. All these other kids got their family coming up for groups and therapy and activity time and shit, and my dad stopped coming after like three months. The doctor banned me from seeing my little sister, so my dad stopped bringing her. I know she gonna forget about me, cause I’ma be up here for four more years. I try not to worry about it, but the doctor make me write letters to my dad to tell him how I feel. I sent one, but he never calls so I don’t know if he got it. In the letter I was like, ‘How come you stopped seeing me and stopped calling me? How come you don’t love me like a son? Why do ya’ll always put me somewhere? What do you want me to be like?’ All these questions. They keep me awake all night.

I’m gonna have a social worker who cares about me though. She tells me my strengths, and she puts me in this program with computers, where I learn to fix them and take them apart. She tells me I don’t need the family I was born in, and that I can make a new family when I’m out if I want. And that I got some chosen family already, like Dave and Anthony who I knew since I was like six. And I’m about to get out too, soon. They gonna move me to semi-independent living back in Paramount. It’s like a group home for kids who age out of the system. But I’ma just keep to myself and try to get in school or something like that.

I’m gonna go down Lakewood Blvd to my dad new apartment. It’s gonna be nice and gated with a swimming pool and trees and shit. Like a good place to raise a kid. My sister is all the way in sixth grade now. I like to help her out like buy her shoes or give her a ride to school or something. Dad is very old, like he might die soon, or get sick. I don’t know if he remembers me even though it’s only been four years or so. But he had remarried while I was gone, and now Mom’s in Newark, New Jersey where her sister takes care of her. I try to give them what little bit I have from financial aid and the shipping place. I try to buy some groceries and keep them having internet. I’m gonna live in a garage behind this one lady’s house in Carson, and there’s gonna be a pitbull in the backyard guarding everything. The police raid all the houses on this block, so I can’t keep the weed around like I really need to. I just keep it on Lakewood Blvd with my sister. I take her to see my girl in San Diego so she can chill with us and my girl’s niece, Aubrey. It’s nice cause it’s a long drive and it’s like the fall, and you can see the beach all along the side of the car and the wind feel good as shit. On the way back it’s dark and late and I know my sister had a good time cause she sleep in the passenger seat with all this In-n-Out burger stuff all over her.

I’m gonna move back in with my dad cause he had like two major strokes, and he don’t even

41

leave the hospital bed no more. Lynette is his wife and that bitch is suspect. She probably thinks my family comes from the devil, but my thing is, why you marry into this shit? Just to judge us? My sister, I worry about her. She don’t talk to me like that no more since she started high school, maybe cause she was like a daddy’s girl and he’s like all laid up in the living room looking dead. I could see how that’s depressing. She just be in her room all the time. I wonder if she’s doing drugs. I’m gonna leave California and help take care of my mom in South Carolina, cause my aunt said she can’t handle her no more. Like she don’t listen to her and don’t stick to her medications. Sometimes I call my sister to talk to my mom because she got more experience dealing with this bipolar shit than I do. My sister dropped out of college and she’s mad at me about it. Or maybe she’s mad at some other shit. And I can’t help her with nothing. I can barely help myself.

Mom’s gonna fall into a diabetic coma, and I’m gonna find her face down in the yard. They ask me all these questions about what she’s been eating like I’m raising her. I try to call my sister to let her know, but her dude is like she’s in the hospital and he gives me the number. When I call her I have to wait for her to come to the phone. ‘Hey, shut the fuck up, I got a call,’ she says to somebody. ‘Yo,’ she says and I ask her what she’s doing in there and she’s like ‘What do you think?’ And I forget what I called to tell her cause I’m mad she’s fucking up like me and mom. And I tell her that, and she hangs up the phone on me. She stops answering our phone calls for years.

I’m gonna be fishing one day on the Edisto River on my day off from the group home. I took off cause it’s my 33rd birthday, and this is how I want to spend it. My cell phone is gonna ring and it’ll be a 267 number. My sister is calling me from Philadelphia and it’s a lot of noise on her end. I haven’t heard her voice in four years but I can recognize it, even though she’s older, even though I can barely hear her over the shit in the background. Shit sound like bombs, honestly. I try to ask her how she doing but she’s screaming over sirens and static ‘Can you hear me?’ I try to tell her yeah, a little bit I can hear you. I ask her where she is. It’s like chaos over there. ‘You were a whole life,’ she says, ‘Can you hear me?’ I look out over the black water confused like. I think, I still am, and what is she talking about? I tell her I’m not dead, which is a fucked up thing to say out loud in a boat in the middle of the swamp. ‘I’m not dead,’ I say again and the call is dropped.

I’m gonna have dreams that night I’m shot in the top of my head with my hands up. I’m gonna wake up feeling for blood, hearing mosquitos all around my head. I’m gonna walk over to my window and look outside, and the sun will be rising over the houses as tanks roll through our streets, AIKEN POLICE painted on the sides. Something will tell me to stay inside with my mom, who’s sleep. Something will tell me they’re coming for me. And that none of this mattered.

◁

42

43

Recurrence Plot by Rasheedah Phillips

Available now at AfrofuturistAffair.com

Books ($12.95) + Prints ($10)

Poster image by Fabiola JL Photography

HOT LOCAL FRESH!

"The major linchpin of the book is

Phillips’ slippage between reality and fiction. It

pervades throughout the entire book as well as in

a metafictional sense. Walls

between the reader and book seems

to break down at several points

with the inclusion of chapters of

Experimental Time Order interspersed, and especially in one of the later

chapters, it seems as if the reader is the one to whom the

book addresses."

- Reese FrancisFuturistically

Ancient.com

44

DISPATCHES FROM THE CREWSince last we met, we saw through the Liberation Technologies sci-fi track for Allied Media Conference 2014 with our neighbors KellyAnne Mifflin, Ash Richards, Petra Floyd, and Jade Fair. We hope everyone who took part in that had a positive time, let us know. After AMC we took a hot second to breathe. Rasheedah put out a book (please get a copy!), is planning the 2014 AfroFuturist Affair Ball (Nov 8th!), and is running a column for the Atlanta BlackStar, among other things. Ras put out a zine (finally), did this lifegiving community potluck/critical theory open mic night, Street Theory, and is steady on some subversive tactics for the youth grind. Alex has been putting in work on several music/performance projects, comic collabs, and his second ARKDUST zine. Eighteen won a modest grant from Leeway Foundation to put out a book next year of their All That’s Left series, with mad new stories and audiobook component. Oh and the crew got this arts & culture feature in The City Paper, which was sweet cause reach yo. Anyway, it’s been busy, more is in the works. Now it’s time for show and tell with some media picks:

E I G H T E E N ’ s+ KAIBA by Masaaki Yuasa (anime)+ Harmony by Project Itoh (fiction)+ The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee (fiction)+ Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James T. Tipree (fiction)+ James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips (biography)+ Ghost in the Shell: ARISE by Kazuchika Kisa x Tow Ubukata x Production I.G. (anime)

R A S ’ s+ Black Face White Masks by Franz Fanon (analysis/lit/critique)+ The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah (fiction)+ Another Earth by Mike Cahill (film)+ Story Of Your Life and other stories by Ted Chaing (fiction)+ oo and all these zines but ask Ras about it in person

A L E X ’ s+ Shutter by Joe Keatinge (comic)+ The Mystery Traditions: Secret Symbols And Sacred Art by James Wasserman (history/critique)+ Pitch Black Rainbow: The Art Of John Jennings by John Jennings (art)+ Ganja Goons rap band and art by lead rapper Dogon Krigga (music)

R A S H E E D A H ’ s+ The Magician’s Dictionary: An Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of Advanced Magic(k)al Arts and Alternate Meanings by E.E. Rehmus+ The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet and its Hidden Mystical Language by Alvin Boyd Kuhn+ Space, Time, & Medicine by Larry Dossey, MD+ The African Unconscious: Roots of Ancient Mysticism and Modern Psychology by Edward Bruce Bynum, Phd+ Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman (!), Murder She Wrote (TV)+ Sun Ra Arkestra, Pharaoh Sanders, Moor Mother Goddess (music)

45

up: our City Paper jawnover: after Street Theorybelow: at Rockers BBQ Weekend Zine Brunch

46

CONTRIBUTORS

Laura Pollard (fiction, p5) "Sometimes I’m a girl, most of the time I’m notagirl. I want to be a cyborg. It is Okay is loosely based on a real experience before work one morning."

Grey Nebraska (sponsored content circular ad, p7,18) A child of commodity culture raised by ad copy. went to school but spent too much time studying the literature on the backs of cereal boxes and chip bags. heard enough radio commercials that the voiceover guy took over the old voice inside my head, can’t think straight ever again. the limited warranty on ms. nebraska’s conscience expired last year, and they keep forgetting to renew their membership card to the real anarchist community. can’t write poems no more because nobody’s buying it. so they just sit alone in their room, troll forums and dream about becoming an electronic music superstar.

Fred Pinguel (Gmail chat screencap, p6) is a homie to end all homies (relative) and more on point than Robin Hood.

Azeem Hill (Facebook screencap, p12) says "Staycy is coming." Going from hybrid cars and youth organizationg to being inspired by space thots. Peep this yung page on twitter n stuff @herbiehandclap.

Moor Mother Goddess (poetry, p14) is a seer beatmaker, MC, and wordsmith of the finest caliber. She runs a rock and roll scene to put yours to shame (ROCKERS PHILLY). Roll to save.

DJ Haram ::airhorn:: (Instagram pic, p17) has that queen of swords aura. Check yourself. https://soundcloud.com/djharam

Skribbly LaCroix (poetry disguised as prose, p20) [no bio]

Julia Rowe (photos, p21,22) Pedestrian extraordinaire. jukiebot.tumblr.com + https://secure.flickr.com/photos/juliarowe/

Natis (poetry, p26) 31 years old, afroboricua, queer, Social science, Anthropology and Museology graduate. Been writing poetry since middle school about a bit of everything. Recently relocated to Philadelphia.

Carolyn Lazard (Instagram pic, 27) is a writer/artist/canary based in Brooklyn. Look them up.

Phaesporia (screen still, p30,31) is a sci-fi feature starring people you know coming soon.

Aja Beech (fiction, p32) is an independent author of poetry, essays, short stories and the creator of Process Press. Since 2008 her poetry and short stories have been published internationally, her essay and articles appear at Newsworks and The Huffington Post. Her work focuses on personal subjects related to prison issues, women’s rights, disability rights, war and militarization, art, and social responsibility.In 2010, she was the recipient of a Leeway Art and Change Grant and in 2011, was named one of Philadelphia’s Creative Connectors. One of her poems, for you women, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. An activist and organizer, Beech

47

This issue took a minute to come together. We put out a call for submissions online, extended the deadline, never managed to post fliers locally, yet ended up with mostly Philly contributors. We muse on this. We muse on time, "production", and capacity in this our ongoing capitalist apocalypse. We muse on the darkness of dystopia and the lack of discipline(?) to conjure that which is joyous and thriving. We muse through paradox, anger, and recurring psychic death. Some of us gaze uneasily at the hologram projections that are ourselves. Some of us work with magic and small temporal spaces. How long should we go on Naming that which plagues us? Shall we endure all the days of our lives witnessing? What else is there?

WHAT ELSE IS THEREAll screencaps taken in summer + fall of 2014.Zine compiled while listening to Drexciya.Shouts out to everyone who submitted for this issue, even if you don’t find yourself herein. We appreciate the love/intent.

Drop a line at metropolarity@gmail.comFind more stories + media + events ++ at

M E T R O P O L A R I T Y . N E T

SOME PEOPLE THINK SCIFI ONLY MEANS DYSTOPIA

works to address alternatives to severe imprisonment and capital punishment.

Billie Blazer (fiction, p34) is chaotic neutral and good with machines.

D.Soulface (‘Mecha’ collage, p37) a mixed media artist from the chicagoland area. "My main focus is on collage, digital and analog. I am a dadaist at heart. But I am an American and I am part of the african diaspora. With that said I have created a new movement called SoulfaceDadaism, which umbrellas my work whether I am creating afrofuturist works,surreal, or dadaist pieces."

Althea Baird (fiction/handform, p42) is one of the ritual energy manifestors of SWARM (freakband), and sage in the arcana of body movement, earth, and word order power.

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