BLACK SPACE
2020 | Short Film / Multidisciplinary Afrofuturist Work
Originally created for Bakanal de Afrique
Directed and conceived by Afatasi
“BLACK SPACE is vital for the future of San Francisco.”
Black Space was conceived in San Francisco in 2020, during the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd. As the country declared that Black lives mattered, Afatasi was confronting another reality in her hometown: San Francisco’s Black community had undergone generations of displacement, and the neighborhoods, institutions, and social worlds built by the city’s Great Migration families were rapidly disappearing.
At the time, Afatasi did not yet have the language that would later define much of her practice. Black Space became a way to investigate that disappearance.
The work challenges San Francisco’s mythology of itself as an inherently liberal and progressive city by sending two Afronauts through the city in search of evidence of Black San Francisco. Portrayed by Latrice McNealy and Ashley Williams, the Afronauts appear as travelers from another time, moving through the Harlem of the West, Potrero Hill, and Bayview–Hunters Point, including the Hunters Point Shipyard and other sites carrying the city’s Black history.
Here, space operates simultaneously as subject, metaphor, and method: outer space; public space; neighborhood space; cultural space; interior space; and the increasingly contested physical space Black San Franciscans are permitted to occupy within their own city.
The Afronaut became a vehicle through which Afatasi could ask a speculative question: What if travelers from the future returned to San Francisco looking for us? What evidence would remain that we had ever been here?
Afatasi designed and constructed the Afronaut suits and illuminated helmets, incorporating Sāmoan motifs and forms influenced by spacecraft and jet propulsion. She wrote the script and created the work’s score and soundscape, incorporating recordings associated with NASA’s space exploration alongside historical voices and references to San Francisco’s Black past. Photographer Jean Melesaine photographed the Afronauts as they moved through the city, creating the images from which the film was assembled.
The resulting work moves between photo essay, film, performance, wearable sculpture, historical inquiry, and sound work. What Afatasi initially understood as a photographic slideshow had, through the addition of narrative, sequencing, sound, and score, become a short film.
SF Urban Film Fest
In 2022, Black Space was selected for the 8th SF Urban Film Fest and presented at the African American Arts & Culture Complex as part of Here, Now and Beyond: Cities of the Afrofuture, a program exploring Afrofuturism as a means of confronting gentrification, displacement, environmental racism, and the future of Black communities.
Afatasi participated in the accompanying panel discussion as the Creative + Director of Black Space. The festival’s recognition of the work as film marked an important evolution in how Afatasi understood the piece—and the possibilities of her multidisciplinary practice.
Black Space would become foundational to Afatasi’s developing futurist language. The Afronaut emerged not simply as a figure of science fiction, but as a symbol of a San Francisco community insisting upon a future: we were here, we are here, and we deserve to remain part of what comes next.
From Black Space to Augmented Reality
A photograph from Black Space later became the source image for Afatasi’s first augmented reality work. Printed onto a church fan, the photograph functioned as a physical portal through which viewers could activate a digital layer using their phones. The experiment extended Black Space beyond photography and film into physical object and augmented space, marking the beginning of Afatasi’s use of augmented reality within her practice.
[View the AR Church Fan →] https://afatasi.com/2023-the-church-fan/
Credits
Creative Direction + Director: Afatasi
Concept, Afronaut Suits + Helmets: Afatasi
Script, Score + Soundscape: Afatasi
Afronauts: Latrice McNealy + Ashley Williams
Photography: Jean Melesaine
Created for: Bakanal de Afrique
Year: 2020
Film: 3:14
