This module focuses on the aesthetic and political practices within the genre of science fiction, with its spectacular imaginations and inventive possibilities, with its narratives and visuals collapsing and spanning time, reality, technology and the human condition. We will analyse media practices and visual cultures with and through theories of the imagination as a collective process and the spatial politics of time and explore what science fiction has to do with colonialism, migration, with diaspora and improvisation. 
In the second part of the module we will turn to the increasing science-fictional interventions in film, literature, fashion, music, architecture, art and performance art in the geopolitical context of the global South - interventions that seem to escape a linear temporality. We will turn to Afrofuturism in particular and discuss this emerging archive. One of the questions that will guide us through this part of the module is: What is the futuristic in art and visual cultures when we do not consider the futuristic only in relation to outer space and/or technology? 


Semester: WiSe 2024/25