black mirrors: AfroFuturist sensibilities in technologies navigating black space

Abstract

This written thesis is in support of blk/sp_C, a live multimodal dance that invites audiences to navigate black space through movement and interaction. The work examines how AfroFuturist sensibilities in performance and technology can help to reconfigure understandings of identity through what I term the black mirror interface. Central to my thesis is a conceptual shift in performance from identity as replication to identity as generative variations, where opacity, embodiment, and technological mediation produce new possibilities for relationality in performance. This thesis performance and accompanying document propose alternative, anti-reductive ways of engaging identity in performance.