The Black Speculative Arts Movement “BSAM” encompasses creative expressions of a world for Black people without limitations – a world like in the movie Wakanda Forever.
It represents the concepts of “Afrofuturism, Astro Blackness, Afro-Surrealism, Ethno Gothic, Black Digital Humanities, Black (Afro-future female or African Centered) Science Fiction, The Black Fantastic, Magical Realism, and The Esoteric.”
The realm includes the works of science fiction author Octavia Butler, the classic movie Brother From Another Planet, Robert Townsend’s movie Meteor Man, and HBO sitcoms “Lovecraft Country” and “Watchmen.”
Afrofuturism has a range of names including Black-SciFi or “weird white people stuff,” according to Dacia ‘InnerGY’ Polk.
There is a subculture known as ‘Blerds,’ or Black nerds, says Polk, who is listed on the BSAM website as BSAMWebmaster and Midwest Field Coordinator for The Black Speculative Arts Movement. She has served in that role since 2016.
Her digital art is featured in the “Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent. Her work, “Red Spring” is an installment of BSAM’s online digital Arts collaboration with Google Arts & Culture
She is also executive producer of “WORDUP! WORDUP!” a weekly open mic that showcases live music, poetry, and comedy.
“The Black Speculative Arts Movement allows different Black sub-groups to come into one space that’s about art, fashion, film, and music,” said Polk.
“We are trying to bring all different elements together.”
According to the BSAM website, BSAM art is “a creative, aesthetic practice that integrates African diasporic worldviews with science or technology and seeks to interpret, engage, design, or alter reality for the re-imagination of the past, the contested present, and to act as a catalyst for the future.”
It represents the concepts of “Afrofuturism, Astro Blackness, Afro-Surrealism, Ethno Gothic, Black Digital Humanities, Black (Afro-future female or African Centered) Science Fiction, The Black Fantastic, Magical Realism, and The Esoteric.”
Polk says Blerds in St. Louis have shared experiences since 2015.
The local BSAM chapter doesn’t boast its existence, “it’s more like an ‘if you know, you know’ type of thing,” according to Polk.
The local chapter has held four events. The most recent event was its Glow In The Dark CosPlay Party in 2018. Polk says the pandemic slowed things down for the local chapter, however, she is excited to put on more events for the Blerds’ community.
Movies including Black Panther, and Get Out, really amped up the dialogue of BSAM, and Polk noticed that the Black community began seeking out this type of art, movies, music, and fashion.
“The tech wave has been more active in including Black girls and boys in STEAM spaces. Yet, the movement hasn’t taken off compared to other movements within the Black community,” Polk said.
“Regardless if you’re on board or not, Afrofuturism isn’t going anywhere; in fact, more and more of us are becoming interested in it.”
Polk says she stumbled into the movement during the Ferguson Uprising after meeting Dr. Reynaldo Anderson, executive director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement. Anderson is an associate professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia.
While involved in her community, Polk says she felt the need to do more. She had “so many questions about the state of Black folks economically, educationally, and all areas where the Black community is behind.”
“[BSAM] is not waiting on people to define us, to tell us how to express ourselves, the lane we are supposed to stay in. We are more than a one-dimensional group of people.”
She uses local filmmaker David Kirkman’s movie Underneath: Children of the Sun as an example of Afrofuturism. The film explores the meeting of an enslaved person in Missouri in the 1850s and an alien that resembles him. Soon, the man is involved in an intergalactic war.
In an article written for the Blerd website, Kirkman says that Afrofuturism “gives a space for Black people where we can imagine a world for us that evaluates our past, present, and future.”
“Some of these concepts are foreign to us and that’s ok. We should embrace all that we choose to be,” said Polk.
“It’s a big whiteboard for us to decide what this is,” said Polk.
