This event is co-hosted by African Speculative Fiction Society and The Centre for Environmental Policy
What does it mean to say that Africa is the future, in an increasingly multipolar world order built upon and continually reifying anti-blackness?
From the erasure of the Black presence in representations of plantation technologies to the appropriation of radical, worker-centred design methodologies to the commodification of liberatory politics and the deceptive progress of neo-colonialism, when it comes to creating the socio-technical systems of the future, history repeatedly demonstrates the importance of perspective. Who gains? How do benefits scale respectively?
This seminar will introduce a series of talks and workshops exploring how African science fiction can be applied to the question of perspective, and how this intervention might be utilised in the formation of policy making as an exercise in world-building: what are we actually building? And for whom?
Biography
Florence Okoye is a designer, curator and independent researcher whose practice draws on collaborative approaches from critical design methodologies. A research interest in West African and Black diasporic knowledge systems and philosophies of technology, Black Queer frameworks as well as critical sociotechnical theories of design make up the foundation for her analysis of technology and design as emergent outputs.
Much of her current work is focussed on design education and organising within cultural, design and community spaces. This has involved appearances and collaborations with a range of organisations including Het Nieuwe Instituut, Mozfest, Barbican centre, University of Sussex and many others. She has taught as part of the Feminist coding course at University of the Arts London and is currently focussing on projects that use data from museums, galleries and other cultural institutions to create open source platforms for interdisciplinary STEM education.
Her work as an experience and service designer has resulted in the creation of digital services across a range of sectors; her work in community centred design has involved facilitating workshops ranging from co-designing digital infrastructure for smart cities, mmuo-centred and critical roleplay based design, to enabling the wider adoption of service design techniques through open design jams.
This event is the first in a series of seminars that are part of the Applied African SF project.
Registration required if joining online: please register here.