Black Atlantis: In conversation with Alexandra Wanjiku Kelbert

Influenced by the afrofuturist world-making of musicians like Sun Ra and Igbo creation myths, the legendary 90s Detroit techno duo Drexciya named themselves after a mythological underwater country populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women who were thrown off slave ships. The Black Atlantis series invites artists, academics, activists and musicians to discuss the nautical afrofuturist mythologies that Black creatives have explored and what they tell us about the Black experience in the new millennium.

In this conversation with educator and activist Alexandra Wanjiku Kelbert we explore afro-futurist mythologies in fiction and how these connect to climate justice, feminist practice and a radical Black liberation movements.

Alexandra Wanjiku Kelbert is a London-based educator and activist. She is a member of Black Lives Matter UK and the Wretched of the Earth collective.

Her work focuses mainly on the politics of race, gender, class and climate justice. Her educational work centres on race and racism, black feminism and radical imagination. She currently works at the University of Warwick.

Alexandra has worked on a number of collaborative and creative projects and recently wrote a piece for Skin Deep magazine called 'No police, no pollution: A vision for Black liberation in the UK’.

@WanjiKelbert

Chair: Chardine Taylor-Stone : Adult Education Programmer at National Maritime Museum

Event Image: Pumzi 2009 Dir: Wanuri Kahiu