Charles Tonderai Mudede, “What Can We Learn From Black Robots?”

Join us at e-flux on Thursday, May 8 at 7pm for “What Can We Learn From Black Robots?,” a lecture by Charles Tonderai Mudede.

“It is without question that the most profound episode of the science fiction anthology Electric Dreams (Amazon Studios’ attempt to replicate, in 2018, the success of Netflix’s Black Mirror) is ‘Autofac.‘ There are several reasons for this, the main of which is the robot played by the pop star Janelle Monae. She plays Alice, a customer service robot for a corporation that in many ways resembles the one that produced the TV series. But what makes Alice exceptional, and what adds unusual depth to ‘Autofac,’ is precisely Monae’s color: black. The racial history of the US means a black robot cannot be a mere robot. It adds another enigma. We sense something deeper in this figure, and, as it turns out, even explosive. We can learn a lot from the black robot Jeff Bezos paid to create. And when we combine Alice with the exo-terrestrial black machines we find in Sondra Perry’s work, we can finally appreciate what Grace Jones meant when she sang: ‘Don’t cry, it’s only the rhythm.’”
—Charles Mudede

This lecture is the follow-up to “Will AI Also Remember the Days of Slavery?”

Bio

Charles Tonderai Mudede is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, filmmaker, college lecturer, and writer. He is senior staff writer of The Stranger, a lecturer at Cornish College of the Arts, and director of the feature film Thin Skin (2023). He has collaborated with director Robinson Devor on three films, two of which, Police Beat (2005, now part of MoMA’s permanent collection) and Zoo (2007, also screened at Cannes) premiered at Sundance; the most recent, Suburban Fury, premiered at New York Film Festival 2024.

For more information, please contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.