Rasheedah Phillips presents "Dismantling the Master's Clock" in conversation w/Jason Harris

Rasheedah Phillips presents "Dismantling the Master's Clock" in conversation w/Jason Harris

Thursday, March 20th 2025
7:00 pm
Red Emma's
A radical new treatise on time, quantum physics, and racial justice from world-renowned artist and advocate Rasheedah Phillips of Black Quantum Futurism.

Why do some processes—like aging, birth, and car crashes—occur in only one direction in time, when by the fundamental symmetry of the universe, we should experience time both forward and backward? Our dominant perception of time owes more to Western history and social order than to a fact of nature, argues writer Rasheedah Phillips, delving into Black and Afrodiasporic conceptions of time, where the past, present, and future interact in more numerous constellations. Phillips unfolds the history of time and its legacy of racial oppression, from colonial exploration and the plantation system to the establishment of Daylight Savings. Yet Black communities have long subverted space-time through such tools of resistance as Juneteenth, tenant organizing, ritual, and time travel. What could Black liberation look like if the past were as changeable as the future? Drawing on philosophy, archival research, quantum physics, and Phillips’s own art practice and work on housing policy, Dismantling the Master’s Clock expands the horizons of what can be imagined and, ultimately, achieved. "The straightening and whitening of time are as viciously colonial, as brutally geocidal and genocidal, as the settling and owning of space. Rasheedah Phillips brilliantly and rigorously alerts us to this condition while also showing us how we walk with and wait on one another in rhythm. Dismantling the Master’s Clock is a queer, black, reconstructive tour de force." —Fred Moten, author of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study "In this well-researched and expansive text, Rasheedah Phillips offers a detailed history of how standardized colonial time constricts Black life and decolonial freedom ... The time you will spend with this book will not drag you from point A to point B; it will expand into the field of deep black contemplation we've been waiting for." —Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

Rasheedah Phillips is a queer housing advocate, parent, writer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural producer who uses web-based projects,zines, short film, archival practices, experimental non-fiction, speculative fiction, printmaking, performance, social practice, installation and creative research to explore the construct of time, temporalities, and community futurisms through a Black futurist cultural lens and experience. Phillips' writing and artwork has appeared in The Funambulist Magazine, e-flux Architecture, Flash Art Magazine, Philadelphia Inquirer, Recess Arts, and more. Phillips is the founder of The AfroFuturist Affair, founding member of Metropolarity Queer Speculative Fiction Collective, co-founder of Black Quantum Futurism, co-creator of the Community Futures Lab, and creator of the Black Women Temporal Portal, Time Zone Protocols, and Black Time Belt projects. Phillips also recently created the Spatial Futures Initiative, housed at PolicyLink.

Phillips currently serves as Director of Housing Futures and Land Justice at PolicyLink, leading its national advocacy to support the growing tenants’ rights, housing, and land use movements in partnership with grassroots partners, movement leaders, industry, and government leaders. Previously serving as Managing Attorney of Housing Policy at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, Rasheedah has led various housing policy campaigns that resulted in significant legislative changes, including a right to counsel for tenants in Philadelphia, and the Renter’s Access Act, one of the strongest laws in the nation to address blanket ban eviction policies having a disparate impact on renters of color. Rasheedah has trained on racial justice and housing law issues and skills throughout the country, previously serving as the Senior Advocate Resources & Training Attorney at Shriver Center on Poverty Law. Rasheedah’s leadership has been recognized with the recipient of the 2017 National Housing Law Project Housing Justice Award, the 2017 City & State Pennsylvania 40 Under 40 Rising Star Award, the 2018 Temple University Black Law Student Association Alumni Award, and more.

Phillips is a 2016 Fellow of Shriver Center Racial Justice Institute, 2018 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity, and 2021 PolicyLink Ambassador for Health Equity. As part of BQF and as a solo artist, Phillips has been awarded an Arts at CERN Collide Artists Residency, Vera List Center Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, United States Artist, among others, and has exhibited, presented at, been in residence, and performed at Institute of Contemporary Art London, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Serpentine Gallery, Red Bull Arts, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Counterpublic, Manifesta 13 Biennale, documenta fifteen, and more.

Jason Harris is a Baltimore based futurist, educator and cultural activist. He is the founder and facilitator of the BlkRobot Project, a long term educational art effort designed to place multi-functional art of scale in predominantly Black neighborhoods. He spent 20 years working as an IT professional, and the past 18 years building a his practice as a writer, futurist and artist in Baltimore City. In 2003, he co-founded the Baltimore based study group of the International Capoeira Angola Foundation, a cultural arts group that teaches and propagates the martial art Capoeira Angola. Jason is a writer whose work has appeared in Black Enterprise magazine, Catalyst Literary journal, BmoreArt.com and various online publications. He self-published the speculative fiction anthology entitled, “Redlines: Baltimore 2028′′ in 2012, and is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. For five years, Jason served as the director of creative services for the Living Well Center in Baltimore, where he curated and managed projects centered around Baltimore's indigenous community arts, diaspora arts, and alternative education projects.

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