Culture & Community | NXTHVN | Arts & Culture | Arts & Anti-racism | 6th Dimension Festival
Chef Keem Hughley and Babz Rawls-Ivy. Danielle Campbell Photos.
In NXTHVN’s second-floor kitchen, chef Keem Hughley was doing culinary alchemy. Working methodically at the front of the room, he drizzled olive oil and vinegar over a tray of mushrooms, promising the audience that a communal taste was just minutes away. As their fragrance filled the room, he told the audience a secret: he didn’t always like to cook. Beside him, Babz Rawls-Ivy took it as an opening.
How did he balance that reality with his work in the culinary arts, she asked. And how did he get over it? As she spoke, the audience held on to every word.
That focus on Black futures—and Black presents—was front and center on a recent Saturday, as curator Juanita Sunday launched the inaugural “Into The Afroverse Summit,” a culminating event of the 6th Dimension Afrofuturism Festival, as a day-long celebration at NXTHVN on 169 Henry St. From breakout sessions and spirited panels to a keynote address from pleasure activist Ingrid LaFleur, the day centered Afrofuturism in many forms, from music to gaming to the culinary arts.
Top: Panelists Saya Woolfalk, Jahmane, and Dr. Semente, with curator and moderator Juanita Sunday, speaking on Afrofuturism and Visual Culture. Bottom: Woolfalk's work at NXTHVN, where it is currently on display through November 19. Danielle Campbell Photos.
“With the programming for 6th Dimension, people can engage in different ways,” Sunday said as activity buzzed around her. “Whether it’s through the book club, whether it’s through music, going to a conference, going to the exhibition. I want to give people these different opportunities and points of engagement.”
Saturday’s summit, which brought some attendees in for an hour and some in for a full day, provided many of those different avenues of engagement. Downstairs, Aya Beckles Swanson, Anne-Marie Knight and Markeshia Ricks launched into “Building a Black Tomorrow,” focused on how Black people and Black artists can help circulate dollars within their communities.
Swanson, executive director of the LAB at ConnCORP, started by talking about her own struggle to ask for help, which women and particularly women of color have been historically conditioned not to do. As a Black woman tasked with running operations at the LAB, she said, it can be to break that cycle—and how necessary it also is to do so. Knight, the executive director of the Black Business Alliance, agreed.
Aya Beckles Swanson, Anne-Marie-Knight, and moderator Markeshia Ricks.
Upstairs, Hughley bustled around the building’s kitchen space, making himself at home as he bounced between the oven and several condiments that he had brought with him. He joked that he was making mushrooms “à la Stop & Shop,” and attendees giggled at the warmth and relatability.
As he chatted with WNHH radio host and Inner-City News Editor Babz Rawls-Ivy, he tweaked the recipe based on her food sensitivities, which include a severe allergy to dairy. In the audience, food enthusiasts, food lovers, and even a few chefs listened quietly. Within moments, the nutty fragrance of vegetables filled the room, and Hughley promised that a taste wasn’t far off.
Around NXTHVN’s Henry Street building downstairs, several vendors also shared their visions of Black futures. Pretty Afrika’s Sandra Enimil showed off the bright African prints, large, beaded jewelry, woven baskets, and wooden spoons that build the backbone of her small business, now based in pop-up appearances and out of her home in New Haven. On the table, a flag decorated with the Pan-African colors looked out onto the space, vibrant and bold in its mix of gold, black, green, and red.
Top: Sandra Enimil of Pretty Afrika designs. Bottom: Makeda Snow of Makeda Bead & Soul.
Nearby, Makeda Bead & Soul’s Makeda Snow called the summit an honor for her as a Black woman entrepreneur. Three and a half years ago, Snow started the business during the pandemic, after a gentle and supportive push from friends and family. Saturday, she welcomed visitors to the table while working on a new string of waist beads, multitasking as she chatted. Around her, pieces of loc jewelry, bracelets, incense, and loose crystals peeked out, drawing people in to peruse the pieces.
“It’s nice to see people that look like me doing things, expressing themselves in all different facets,” Snow said. “And being able to hear the panelists, from what I can, and yeah, just absorb knowledge and be around like-minded people.”
Her excitement flowed into a keynote from Detroit-based self-described “pleasure activist” Ingrid LaFleur, who brought the summit to its climax on a note of possibility. Taking on the topic of Black futures, LaFleur suggested that people can use the concept of Afrofuturism to tap into both the past—and the ancestors who allowed them to be there—and pace the way to a more liberated future.
LaFleur in her element.
The key, she said, is to let go of capitalism-induced daily burnout, or simply put, survival mode. Black people, she added, must engage in fostering their imagination to create a better future.
“What can we possibly do that hasn’t been done before?” LaFleur asked. “Because whatever we’ve been doing isn’t working. We are facing the same issues or problems that my grandparents faced. Economic inequality, systemic racism, brutality of police.”
“Afrofuture consciousness is the foundation for this type of liberated futures thinking,” she continued. “It is part of the legacy of Black consciousness that incorporates Indigenous knowledge and wisdom and guides us back to our ancestral and metaphysical technology.”
Following the keynote, poet Josh “AnUrbanNerd” Brown asked the audience to close their eyes and take a second and breathe in.
“Be present in the moment,” Brown said. “Be present with your past and be present in your future. Because we experience them at the same time.”
This call to breathe was followed by “6th Dimension,” a poem that Sunday commissioned specifically for the event. after being asked by Juanita to create a piece. As he cruised through time and space from his place at the mic, Brown took the audience on a journey through past, present, and future all at once. It seemed at once like there could not have been a more perfect ending to the day.
“Me, failing my college poetry class. Me, watching my grandkids play and laugh. Me, crying at their wedding. The aliens making contact. You, being surprised that they’re Black. Us, welcoming them back. Me, walking in the revolution. Us, walking in the revolution. All occurring at the same time.”