Afronautic Research Lab

Workshop with Outerregion (Camille Turner, Karen Turner, Lee Turner)

A program of:
Otherworld

Saturday, September 28
2pm–4pm
University of Toronto Art Centre
15 King’s College Circle

The Afronautic Research Lab (2016–ongoing) is a Reading Room set within Camille Turner’s exhibition Otherworld. It was initiated in 2016 by the social practice/performance collective Outerregion, comprised of Afronauts Camille, Karen, and Lee Turner. Inspired by the Dogon people of West Africa, the afronautic space travellers will be guided by their extraordinary knowledge of star systems to return to earth, and to guide visitors into the depths of the archive of Canada’s entanglement in the transatlantic slave trade through to its percussive effects in the present. Prompted by clips from newspapers dated from the 18th century to the present, including “wanted” ads for enslaved people who escaped their bondage, the Afronauts will take visitors into complex and underacknowledged histories of anti-Blackness and Black resistance on their way back into the present, and in the otherworldly Lab to find a way to hope and to the future.

In conjunction with the workshop, the Art Museum launches a specially commissioned Afronautic Research Lab Teacher’s Guide for both independent and guided engagement, encouraging critical conversations prompted by the findings amongst the materials provided in the Lab. Intended for teachers, students, and general visitors with an emphasis on a postsecondary level of approach, the Teacher’s Guide has been produced and developed by Dr. Natasha L. Henry-Dixon, Assistant Professor, African Canadian History, in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies at York University.