Afro Hair Futurity (2020)

Alix Bizet

Afro Black Futurity features Hair Pieces, a series of crowns made of human hair, and three podcasts comprising interviews of an artist, designer, filmmaker, anthropologists and trichologist (medical hair specialist) reflecting on their knowledge, personal and professional experiences of Afro Hair. More generally this work aims to be a starting point to rethink Afro hair in a post-colonial context and as a performance of black futurity.

About Alix Bizet

Alix Bizet's work is a mix of interests in the theory, philosophy and psychology of human sciences coupled with a real passion for human behaviours and the environment we live in. She combines different disciplines such as product design, research, installation and art installation, to explore the human activity and everyday solutions. Alix studied Fine Arts / Curation at La Sorbonne in Paris and went on to study Product Design at Central Saint Martins in London. She graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven with an MA in Social Design in June 2015. By re-appropriating textile techniques, she explores human hair as a material and medium through which to explore cultural difference and community. Alix' experimental approach to materials and techniques creates work which explores anthropology, identity and fashion through which she challenges convention and taboos whilst celebrating diversity.

credits

Podcast credits:
Creation Alix Bizet Studio
Recording 11-18 August 2020
Online release 18 September 2020 Sound recording Alix Bizet Studio Mixing and Sound Design Sarah Perez Illustration Alix Bizet Studio

With
Casey Elisha, Author of the book and musical Love Thy Fro.
Rambisayi Marufu, Visual Antropologist, Goldsmiths, University of London
Ebuni Ajiduah, Certified Trichologist, Natural Hair Stylist & Author of The Healthy Hair
George Okello, Film Director of The Peckham Documentary
Farrah Riley Gray, Fine Artist
Adom Philogene Heron, Lecturer in Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London
Cynthia Lusilu, Transdiciplinary Designer and Resident at the Design Museum London

Other Audio extracts
Afro Sheen commercials
Kathleen Cleaver interview 1968
Mena Combo, No you cannot touch my hair! TEDxBristol 2017 Spike lee - School daze 1988
Good hair, Chris Rock 2009
Black hair history, Chime Edwards, 2015

Further Reading

Maboula Soumahoro, Le triangle et l’Hexagone, Reflexions sur une identité noire, La Découverte,
2020
Du cheveu défrisé au cheveu crépu : de la désidentification à la revendication, Anibwé, 2007
Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon, Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press 2007
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Remi Eddo-Lodge, Bloomsbury Publishing,
2018
Ain’t I a Woman, Bell Hooks, Pluto Press, 1987
Lecture
Tina Campt, Black Futurity in a Photographic Frame, ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry 2016