![]() Perhaps it’s not the case that the data thief can access the future merely because he has access to archival documents and historical information. If this is the case, then we might reconsider in what way Afrofuturism formulates its appeals to futural thinking. Is the data thief then searching for information in the form of historical records or archival documents, or is it the case that the data thief is after something far much for immaterial, perhaps certain affective, spiritual, or perceptual registers of the black experience? Indeed, as the narrator muses, Robert Johnson sold his soul in order to get access to a “black technology” that we now know as blues. In what sense, then, does the data thief access data or use data to his advantage? I’m wondering in this regard if it might be useful to speculate on the possibility that, in Akomfrah’s version of Afrofuturism, data is not defined by a digital ontology, but rather might be produced by certain socio-cultural practices. ![]() However, as we know, data is non-visual and non-representational, and flows through complex networks of algorithmic systems in order to assess and shape our experiences of the world. Perhaps these images then might be the objects of the data thief’s interest, images which seem to encode obscured historical and political struggles. Throughout the film, digitized images that we see reflected in the data thief’s glasses seem to burst through the cinematic form and interrupt the narrative and various interview segments. In some sense, then, Akomfrah gestures to an understanding that databases might democratize power relations in the digital age, such that data might be rescued by countercultural or resistive practices.Īt the same time, I’m also compelled to consider in what way Akomfrah uses the term “data” – specifically, what data “looks” like, what might it contain, and how it might be mobilized for speculative encounters with future. This data thief then is one who mines the archives of history in order to surface some hidden meaning or message that might render possible a sociopolitical transformation. We are invited in the first few minutes of the film to imagine the data thief two hundred years into the future, who looks back upon late 20 th century in order to crack the code embedded in certain “techno fossils” and grasp glimpses of a black technocultural future. I’m interested in the character of the “data thief,” and how this figure might serve as a metaphor for Akomfrah’s own filmmaking practice (by way of the film’s form as a documentary/fiction/video essay hybrid), as well as the Afrofuturist project more generally.
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