“To create high art—work that is functional and aesthetically “cool” or pleasing—in the face of those who would deny its very existence, declaim it as “primitive,”… is itself an act of resistance that subverts the master narrative that suggests our work is imitative or inconsequential, incapable of rising to the level of “the universal” or incapable of being seen unless they frame it so”.- Sheree Renée Thomas

Organized by co-curator Reynaldo Anderson and New York Live Arts, the symposium seeks to create a temporal space to celebrate Black Speculative Art at the intersection of accelerating technological innovation, a rising tide of neo-fascism, Jim Crow 2.0, and a world ravaged by the pandemic. New York Live Arts and the Black Speculative Arts Movement are rushing into the future to explore and imagine a world of alternative possibilities.