Stacey A. Robinson on Collaborating the Afrofuture
The 2025 Cohort of the Climate Storytelling 2075 program gathered in early May to discuss how we pull threads from the past into envisioned climate futures. We were honored to be joined by professor Stacey A. Robinson - a graphic novelist, curator and DJ currently based in Urbana-Champaign, IL for this conversation. Leveraging the Regenerative Climate Storytelling Resource Guide as a launchpoint for conversation, Robinson’s introduction to his practice as a futurist to the context of desirable climate futures. Rooting in decolonization to envision a just transition for this conversation offered robust discussion, quotes from which can be found in the graphics in this article.
Stacey A. Robinson (he/him), graphic novelist, curator, and DJ is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design, and Studio at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His work discusses decolonized Black futures, their obstacles, and securities. He was a 2019-2020 Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research who completed his MFA at SUNY Buffalo.
The influence of science fiction, Black liberation politics, and comic books fuel Stacey’s multimedia practice.
He moved to NYC the day that Tupac died and the next day became an intern for Milestone Media Inc., a Black owned comic book company that inspired many of today’s comic creators. Exhibitions include: Ascension of Black Stillness (CEPA Gallery) in 2021 and The Black Angel of History (Carnegie Hall) in 2022.
Graphic tile 1: “I could argue that we, my ancestors, were not brought to this country to be artists and thinkers and philosophers that challenged the system of White supremacy and racism. This is what I do in my art.”
Graphic tile 2: ““It is important to walk in the footsteps of the ancestors and to bring them into the future with you. And that is a Ghanaian practice called Sankofa: It means to go back and get it. I am working in a tradition of Elizabeth Catlett, who conceptualizes art and liberation as a singular practice —to help define my practice of using black cultural wealth as a way of ushering in a Black Liberation government.”
Graphic tile 3: “We don't get to the future without collaborating and working with each other. The academy thinks about this in a very Western way, so it is very much about what you make as a solo practitioner. But in Black traditions, we tend to think about more community and more building together. So I've really had to make it a point of my research to look at and think about collaborating the Afrofuture. What are our obstacles and then what are our agencies to creating the futures that we want? I believe any place—whether in adjacent galaxies, past, present, future spaces or in alternative realities—spaces where Black people practice liberation, freedom and agency. That’s my Afrofuturism.”
Graphic tile 4: “I think about algorithms a lot. There is a science to White supremacy. We've all learned White supremacy through the system of racism that functions as an algorithm. And for me, I am thinking about, what is the algorithm of black healing? This is an abstraction or an imagining of a graffiti-inspired technology of overlapping shapes and abstractions that might unfold into an algorithm of Black healing from colonial trauma.”
Graphic tile 5: “Much of Afrofuturism is seeped in the ideas of space and time and outside of our solar system and in other galaxies. I think it is very important for us to think about ourselves in other galaxies and our connections to the cosmos and the DNA of the universe that resides within us. And, for many people, Afrofuturism is securing food for their family tonight or paying the rent next week, and I don't want to lose track of that when I'm making my art. I think there is room for both.”
