Art and Science Fiction Residency

Thursday, Sept 19th · 7 – 10pm EDT

Join us for a screening and lively group discussion of Neptune Frost, the afrofuturist musical film by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman.

Artengine presents a new series of intimate gatherings to experience and discuss films, art works, games and more. For the first edition of the GroupChat we present the collaborative work of Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman – a impressive and original work of cinema.

We will screen the work in our Studio space to a small gathering and afterwards unpack the heady and complex experience of the film.

Light snacks and beverages will be provided.

Reserve your spot, tickets are Pay-What-You-Can

NEPTUNE FROST (2021), 105 minutes

“Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends.”

This Saturday, join Nommo Award-winning author Suyi Davies Okungbowa for a discussion of his science fiction novel, Lost Ark Dreaming.

📅 Saturday, 1 June 2024, 5PM
📍 Artengine Studio

The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep in this high-octane post-climate disaster novella written by Nommo Award-winning author Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level.

There are also those who were left for dead in the Atlantic, only to be reawakened by an ancient power, and who seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.

Three lives within the towers are pulled to the fore of this conflict: Yekini, an earnest, mid-level rookie analyst; Tuoyo, an undersea mechanic mourning a tremendous loss; and Ngozi, an egotistical bureaucrat from the highest levels of governance. They will need to work together if there is to be any hope of a future that is worth living—for everyone.