Developed out of Rasheedah Phillips‘ ongoing practice as a member of Black Quantum Futurism, the Vera List Center is thrilled to present Time Zone Protocols (April 4–18, 2022), the Prime Meridian Unconference (April 15–17, 2022), and the digital project www.timezoneprotocols.space.
The exhibition and accompanying Unconference, both held at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery at Parsons School of Design, explore the implications of the 1884 International Meridian Conference (IMC), a convening that established a prime meridian and universal time standard. Tracing the written and unwritten political agendas and social agreements that underlie Westernized time constructs, Phillips examines the protocols by which dominant time structures regulate, catalyze, and perpetuate systems of oppression that deny marginalized people access to and agency over the temporal domains of the past and present, with a focus on Black communities in the US.
Using Black Quantum Futurism and Colored People’s Time as critical frameworks, the exhibition, Unconference, and digital space propose alternative theories of temporal-spatial consciousness. Learn more below.
Time Zone Protocols
Time Zone Protocols debuts a nonlinear map pinpointing sociohistorical events in the development of Western time consciousness. The map illustrates the backward and forward-reaching impacts of time standardization and colonized time.
Prime Meridian Unconference
The three-day, hybrid Prime Meridian Unconference brings together artists, architects, musicians, physicists, geologists, technologists, and scholars who consider new ways of understanding our relationship to space-time. Speakers and presenters include Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother), Asia Dorsey, Walter Greason, Kendra Krueger, Ingrid LaFleur, V. Mitch McEwen, Katherine McKittrick, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Danielle M. Purifoy, Ingrid Raphaël, Thomas Stanley, Joy Tabernacle-KMT, Ujijji Davis Williams, and Celeste Winston.
www.timezoneprotocols.space
Preceding the exhibition and Unconference is the launch of www.timezoneprotocols.space. The site documents the ongoing Time Zone Protocols research project and sets the stage for the exhibition and Prime Meridian Unconference. It offers an interactive space for rewriting the protocols of time with a Black [Quantum] futurist lens.
