Created for the exhibition “Afrofuturism” at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, MN, “Mutropolis” is a video Mash-Up of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Stephen Speilberg’s Amistad.
Metropolis, the 1926 movie that envisioned a mad scientist replacing humans with robot clones, is a perfect indicator of issues of race, class, gender, and futurism. The ideas of a downtrodden underclass working beneath the city and robots as slaves are abstractions of the black experience. By using images from the film Amistad as an overlay on Metropolis, this brings home the similarities between working class people used as machines to build great civilizations. A poignant scene at the end of the film overlays images of the new Babel with slaves being thrown overboard during the Middle passage. This is a direct response to the tragedy in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. The reference to the lost city of Mu is personified by the new African robot in this film. Created from a combination of Chokwe, Mangbetu, and Ndebele elements, this golden woman is the symbol of the height of technology. Throughout the film Haitian vévés and Kongo cosmograms are used to reference spiritual forces associated with elements appearing in the scene.
Since Metropolis was created as a silent film with a classical score, the music conveyed the emotions of the characters and foreshadowed elements of the plot. This is now achieved through a new soundtrack using drum & bass and dub reggae which are contemporary examples of African inspired mechanical music.
This piece is an attempt to reclaim the idea of the future as something that is ever changing. Through the representation of various visions of the future combined with images of the past, it is an effort to visualize the term Afrofuturism.
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