Talk

Artist and lawyer, Rasheedah Phillips explores the relationships between justice, time, and the future, and how these constructs work together to catalyze and perpetuate systemic oppression denying Black communities access and agency over the temporal domains of the past, present, and the future. The presentation will also introduce Phillips’ VLC Fellowship project Time Zone Protocols, exploring the written and unwritten legal, political, and social agreements, protocols, and rules underlying Westernized time constructs such as the US and International time zones, and unmapping the same with the Black Quantum Futurism lens to leave room for new possibilities and configurations of political and social space and time. New School professor Mia White, Associate Director of the Housing Justice Lab, Parsons, responds and shares connections. 

This event is part of the Vera List Center Forum 2020, introducing the 2020-2022 Focus Theme As for Protocols and featuring presentations by the five 2020-2022 Vera List Center Fellows: Carolina Caycedo (Colombia/U.S.), Etcétera (Argentina), Maria Hupfield (Canada), Adelita Husni Bey (Italy/U.S.), and Rasheedah Phillips (Philadelphia).

Rasheedah Phillips is a queer Philadelphia-based public interest attorney, mother, interdisciplinary artist, and Black Futurist cultural producer whose writing has appeared in Keywords for Radicals, Temple Political and Civil Right Journal, The Funambulist Magazine, Recess Arts, and more. She is the founder of The AfroFuturist Affair, a founding member of Metropolarity Queer Speculative Fiction Collective, co-founder of Black Quantum Futurism, and co-creator of Community Futures Lab. She is a social justice advocate, a 2016 graduate of Shriver Center’s Racial Justice Institute, and a 2018 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity. As part of BQF Collective and as a solo artist, Phillips has been A Blade of Grass and Velocity Fund Fellow, and has exhibited, presented, been in residence, and performed at Institute of Contemporary Art London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Serpentine Gallery, Red Bull Arts, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Akademie Solitude, and more.

Mia Charlene White is currently Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies in the Environmental Studies Program at The New School for Public Engagement, with a co-teaching appointment at the Milano School for International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy. White is a Black, disabled, Afro-Asian, US born mother-of-two originally from Queens, currently living in South Orange, NJ and teaching courses on race and space at The New School. Mia did her PhD in urban planning at MIT, her masters focusing on environmental justice at Columbia, and her bachelor’s in anthropology at SUNY Stonybrook.  Her first book project builds on Harney and Moten’s concept “fugitive planning,” and uses a black geographic approach to explore BIPOC space-making towards theorizing love as a planning ethic.

The Vera List Center Forum 2020 launches the center’s 2020-2022 focus theme, As for Protocols. Curated by Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira, it is organized with the support of Adrienne Umeh, Heran Abate, Joshua van Biema, and Maryna Arabei.

The Vera List Center Forum 2020 is made possible by major support from Jane Lombard and the Kettering Fund, as well as the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The New School as well as members of the Vera List Center’s board and other individuals.