Black

Women
Temporal
PORTAL
GUIDEBOOK

An interactive, open access archive of the Black womanist

temporal technologies Black women, girls, gender non-
conforming, and non-binary people have developed to ensure
our quantum future(s) and uncover our ancestral space-
1
time configurations for survival in the present.
Table of Contents
4 About Black Quantum
Futurism
5 About Black Women Temporal
6 Black Women Temporal
Portal
8 Temporal Meditation Ritual
Camae Ayewa - Moor Mother
10 Space Time Collapse
14 The Black Grandmother
Paradox
Essay by Rasheedah Phillips
23 Black Womanist
Temporalities = Unique,
Intersectional Temporal
Experiences As Black And
Woman
26 Black Women And Femmes Time
Poverty & Reciprocity
Womanist Working Collective
34 The Temporal Disruptors
38 DIY Pocket Time Rituals
40 Black Women Temporal
Inventory & Memory Survey
46 Kindred Temporal Library
Black Womanist Time & Memory Lit,
Films, and Sounds

3
Black Black Quantum Futurism (BQF)
is a new approach to living and
Quantum experiencing reality by way of the
Futurism manipulation of space-time in
order to see into possible futures,
and/or collapse space time into
a desired future in order to bring
about that future's reality.

This vision and practice derives its

facets, tenets, and qualities from
quantum physics and Black/African
cultural traditions of consciousness,
time, and space. Under a BQF
intersectional time orientation,
the past and future are not cut
off from the present - both
dimensions have influence over the
whole of our lives, who we are and
who we become at any particular
point in space-time.

Through various writing, music,

film, visual art, and creative
research projects, BQF Collective
also explores personal, cu tural,
familial, and communal cycles
of experience, and sol tions for
transforming negative cycles into
positive ones using artistic and
wholistic methods of healing.

Our work focuses on recovery,

collection, and preservation of
communal memories, histories, and
stories.

4
Black An online protest statement against
limited conceptions about what "The
Women Future is..." that disincludes Black
Temporal women, femmes, transwomen, and
girls. The statement recognizes the
plurality and quantum nature of
the future(s) where Black women,
femmes, and girls exist and are
safe, loved, and valued. Considering
the unique, intersectional temporal
experiences of Black women and
girls and the ways in which we
are being actively erased from the
objective, linear future, this text,
sound, and image series is part of
a nonlinear timescape/tapestry/
temporal map/toolkit preparing us
for the Black womanist, quantum
future(s). It is an interactive, open
access archive of the temporal
technologies Black women and
girls have developed to ensure our
quantum future(s) and uncover our
ancestral space-time configurations
for survival in the present.

5
 Black Women
Temporal
Portal

6
This is a guide for time
travel. You are about to
embark on a Temporal
Journey.
Considering the unique, intersectional temporal experiences
of Black women and girls and the ways in which we are
being actively erased from the objective, linear future,
this text, sound, and image series is part of a nonlinear
timescape/tapestry/temporal map/toolkit preparing
us for the Black womanist, quantum future(s). It is an
interactive, open access archive of the temporal technologies
Black women and girls have developed to ensure our
quantum future(s) and uncover our ancestral space-time
configurations for survival in the present.

Portal Activation Instructions (IRL)

1. Set the lights to the color palette of your choice using the remote
control.
2. Visit the entanglement listening station and find some soundscapes that
suit your mood.
3. Access Black women, femmes, girls, and NB & GNC temporal
technologies and time tolls by recording oral futures, writing on
the survey wall, doing time travel experiments, giving yourself an
oracle reading, reading in the Kindred Temporal Library, roaming
through blackwomntemporal.net or relaxing and envisioning quantum
future(s) where Black womxn, femmes, girls, non-binary, and gender
nonconforming people exist and are safe, loved, valued, thriving,
liberated, healthy, and have power.

Black Womxn Temporal Portal TV:

https://www.youtube.com/c/AfroFuturistAffair/playlists

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 TEMPORAL
MEDITATION
RITUAL
Camae Ayewa - Moor Mother

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How do we prepare to die, prepare to leave?
How do we participate in our own beginning?
When do we collect our past things?
Those things lingering around in our minds.
I am Building time
a loop station
with my eyes on high reverb and my heart on delay
Things needed:
Blood Water Darkness
All gathered at the root of my stomach
In search of a destination
Which way is home?
How do I get to the beginning?
Only my memory remembers the past
I can sometimes feel it on the back of my neck
chanting symbols
I'm not from this time
this time was not built for me
See, I built my own time
High above everything
Just can't figure out how to get back up there
I've lost track of everything
Can't use they clock
Never seems to be working
Always 2 minutes past
or a quarter till
These minutes and seconds
disappear and reappear with each step who is collecting
on this invisible currency?

9
 Space Time
Collapse
The terminology below will help you along
your Temporal Journey

10
Black Grandmother Paradoxes
A non-linear bootstrapping/ quantum pre-destination paradox no-
ticeably present in stories where Black women are the time travelers,
and where cause/effect appears to be open up to multiple, non-lin-
ear influences. The paradox also acknowledges the ways in which
time feels layered in Afrodiasporan traditions, where the past is
always layered over the present moment - our ancestors reside with
and within us, even if on a different temporal plane/scale. For the
purposes of the stories featuring the Black Grandmother Paradox,
the phenomenon apparently resolves the grandfather paradox that
otherwise limits time travel or deems it impossible.

Black Space-Time
Or CP Time has been developed within Black and Afrodiasporan
communities as both a survival mechanism for individual and com-
munal trauma under the conditions of racial terror and oppresion,
and a harkening back to pre-colonial Afrodiasporan temporal-spa-
tial frameworks that are more beneficial to our survial.

NonLocality
Not of, affecting, or confined to a limited area or part. In quantum
physics, it means that two entangled particles behave as a single
physical object, no matter how far apart they are.

Quantum Event Map

The quantum event map mimics African and Asian diasporic cultur-
al practices and perspectives on time and space, bringing together
the micro (or quantum) events that like to "happen in time together"
to construct future moments/events or re-examine past moments/
events as individuals or as groups and communities. Through this
method of mapping, event memory (both future and past memory)
is not attached to a specific calendar date or clock time, and mem-
ories are not formed in regard to a specific date or time. Rather,
time and date are made a part of the memory, so it is embedded
or weaved in and controllable in future memory. The date or time of
your choosing is embedded in the map as a part of your memory,
which means you can forecast or backcast events. Time becomes
something remembered, not something that defines and predates the
memory. The quantum event mapmaker becomes the active agent in
the synchronicity/focal point, instead of time being the active agent
defining the synchronicity.

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Retrocurrences
An event whose influence or effect is not discrete and timebound-it
extends in all possible directions and encompasses all possible time
modes. We use retrocurrences to investigate how memory waves
spread across time and space, reaching backward in time and for-
ward in time, simultaneously, to include everything that has hap-
pened, could happen, could have happened, and will happen, and all
the permutations therein. This dynamic event process takes on fea-
tures and characteristics reminiscent of quantum matter, where time
is reversible and information can flow in both directions, much like
the flow of information within Octavia Butler's novel Kindred (1979),
and the layered and entangled temporalities etched upon Dana's
movement on the timeline as she travels back and forth between her
home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation.

Reverse time-binding
Merriam-Webster defines time-binding as "the characteristical-
ly human activity of transmitting experience from one generation to
another especially through the use of symbols." The Black Quantum
Futurist proposes "reverse time-binding" to specifically describe the
process that is amplifying and transmitting symbols and signals
from the future(s) backward into time. Much as it is the role of the
griot to reach back into the past to pull it forward and link it to the
present, Black futurists must play a role in transmitting the future(s)
backward to support information flow through the entangled tem-
poral networks necessary to sustain Black communal temporalities.
In my 2017 short graphic novelette The Telescoping Effect Pt. 1, I
demonstrate such a reverse time-binding between 2019; the ra-
cial terror during the Red Summer of 1919 that left scores of Black
people lynched and maimed, and the solar eclipse of 1919 confirm-
ing the theory of relativity and revolutionizing the way the [Western]
world regards space and time.To speak of a backward casting/
reverse time-binding is to offer a small concession to the time-
line which we find ourselves on, hitched to the arrow of progress,
speeding one second by one second forward. Reverse time-binding
uses quantum physics and ancient Afrodiasporan temporal technol-
ogies to open up access to those spatial-temporal regions that the
hegemonic classical progress narrative has displaced us from.

12
Sasa Time
Sasa Time: According to John Mbiti it is "an experiential extension of
the now/moment stretched into the near future and into the unlim-
ited past (or Zamani). Sasa is not mathematically nor numerically
constant...The community also has its own Sasa, which is greater
than that of the individual."

Sonic Empathy
A process of sonic excavation, applying a Black Quantum Futurism
gaze to the afterlife of events and astrological influences, where
astrological events are reversed and act retrocausally from the cos-
mic future to influence present events that will be subsequently writ-
ten on the fabric of the past by light and sound.

Space-Time Collapse
A wave or particle, initially in a superposition of all of its theoreti-
cally possible states-appears to reduce to a single state after inter-
action with an observer, or, measured, gives a result corresponding
to only one of the possible configurations. For Black people, we are
"measured" or observed under the white gaze, collapsing our space-
times into the Western linear time-line, and limiting our possible
configurations. Unobserved, unmeasured, and left to act on our in-
finite possibilities, we exist in all states.

Space Time Compression

Any phenomenon that alters the qualities of and relationship between
space and time.

Zamani Time (denial of death)

(Swahili) deeper, more infinite past. According to John Mbiti,
"Zamani is not limited to what in English is called the past. It also
has its own "past," "present," and "future," but on a wider scale.
We might call it the Macro-Time (Big Time). Zamani overlaps with
Sasa [the Micro-Time] and the two are not separable. Sasa feeds or
disappears into Zamani. But before events become incorporated into
the Zamani, they have to become realized or actualized within the
Sasa dimension. When this has taken place, then the events "move"
backward from the Sasa into the Zamani. So Zamanibecomes the
period beyond which nothing can go. Zamani is the graveyard of
time, the period of termination, the dimension in which everything
finds its halting point. It is the final store- house for all phenom-
ena and events, the ocean of time in which everything becomes ab-
sorbed into a reality which is neither after nor before."

13
 The Black
Grandmother
Paradox
Essay by Rasheedah Phillips

14
Ritual for Retrocurrences
"Memory, prehistoric memory, has no time." - Author Toni
Morrison (1987)

Outside of time, the journey has already happened and hasn't

happened yet.

Within that liminality lies all of the space-time needed to

create an experience or an event.

You must traverse the terrain to know it - you create time

by your own pacing and rhythms, that become entangled with
others.

Let your imagination lead you, it knows everything you don't

know yet and can't be aware of as our common reality unfolds
linearly.

15
Listen to your body deeply - it holds the time and memory of
all your mothers and grandmothers before and they have been
everywhere you will be and have been and so there is never a
wrong place or time for you.

Allow time to emerge from its timeless degrees of freedom,

and take up as much space within the moment as desired and
needed, stretching it out and filling it up to accommodate you.

Shadow of the Black Hole//

Reverse Time-Binding Ritual
"Shadows (like other holes) can survive the destruction of their
originators. Consider a tree that is constantly illuminated as it
petrifies into stone. The stone continues the shadow begun by
the tree." - Philosopher Roy Sorensen (2008)

Our own shadows mimic the shadow of a black hole.

The shadow is the keeper of memories and possibilities,

actively recording every moment it is with you, using the light
emanating off the body like a camera.

It also captures the alternate world/possibility of any choice not

chosen.

Some shadow worlds can be trapped/captured in the form

of events, and tapped into for brief moments of time. The
"matter" of our body is merely the hologram between the
shadow and the light.

The shadow self records and mirrors your every action. In the
mirror it is amplified. You can tap into that recording, if you
find the shadow memory.

Activate the shadow as the time machine of the self. Use the
shadow to retrieve hidden information lost at the point of
space-time collapse.

16
If you jump all the way through the black hole and reached the
other side, would you be turned inside out? Could you start all
over?

What symbols would you send back to communicate with past

selves, what would penetrate the veil of the motionless present?

What are Black

Grandmother Paradoxes?
A non-linear bootstrapping/ quantum pre-destination paradox
noticeably present in stories where Black women are the time
travelers, and where cause/effect appears to be open up to
multiple, non-linear influences. The paradox also acknowledges
the ways in which time feels layered in Afrodiasporan traditions,
where the past is always layered over the present moment -
our ancestors reside with and within us, even if on a different
temporal plane/scale. For the purposes of the stories
featuring the Black Grandmother Paradox, the phenomenon
apparently resolves the grandfather paradox that otherwise
limits time travel or deems it impossible. Examples include
Kindred by Octavia Butler and The Telescoping Effect, Pt. 1
by Rasheedah Phillips. Both works emphasize matrilineal or
matricurvature timelines.

I frequently use the concept of Black womanist temporalities

and the Black Grandmother Paradox to create and analyze Afro
Diasporan temporal landscapes in Black speculative literature
and Black womxn created films (see: Kindred Temporal
Library). Black womanist temporalities emphasize matrilineal or
matri-curvature timelines that are feminine and communally-
generated, and in which personal, familial, and communal
space-times are enmeshed. These communally-generated,
non-linear temporalities allow the future(s) to emerge into
the past by way of dreams, omens, prophecies, and symbols.
The past remains a space of open possibility, speculation,
and active revision by matrilineal descendants of multiple
generations of people.

17
18
In Kindred, Octavia Butler's time-traveling protagonist Dana
lands 200 years into her relative past, pulled back by a soon-
to-become slave-owning ancestor whom she must choose to
continue to save in order to ensure her own time/bloodline,
invoking memory and the urgency of survival as a vehicle to
carry Dana back and forth between time. In some sense,
this continual birthing of her own timeline by saving, instead
of killing her grandfather helps to defeat the Grandfather
Paradox, or perhaps avoids it altogether. The very act continues
to restore balance to the universe, sets it right. This works
to elevate the relevance of personal, familial, and communal
narratives versus that of a recorded historical narrative shaped
by a privileged few. Time travel in Kindred does not merely
involve some event at some specific point in Western linear
time, but asks from whose perspective that event is shaped,
and how that influences the traveler.​

The Telescoping Effect tells the story of a convergence of

events spanning 100 years on the timeliine of a Black woman
scientist at the turn of the twentieth century . On the brink
of the 100 year anniversary of the Red Summer of 1919 and
the Solar Eclipse of 1919 that would confirm the theory of
relativity, an anthropologist seeking to dig up her own family
roots becomes entangled in a web of retrocurrences that
touches upon all of these events. She will discover, in turn, how
each of these events have not only shaped the curve of her own
family tree, but how they have shifted the very fabric of space-
time. The story considers the ways in which the genetics of our
great. great grandparents is fused into our bodies, providing a
highway of sorts upon which we can travel backward into their
time periods.

The grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel in

which inconsistencies emerge when the past is changed. The
consistency paradox or grandfather paradox occurs when
a future event prevents the occurrence of a past event that
was partly or entirely the cause of the future event, thereby
preventing the future event from occurring, thus creating a

19
contradiction. The name derives from some variation of a
narrative where a person travels to the past and kills their own
grandfather before their father or mother is born, which would
then prevent the time traveler's existence, thus preventing his
ability to travel back into time in the first place. This paradox
is generally used to refute the possibility of time travel. Films
with this paradox present include Back to the Future.

The Predestination/Ontological/Bootstrap Paradox is a related

time travel logic which has a Causal loop of events that predate
their travel back into time. A causal loop is a paradox of
time travel that occurs when a future event is the cause of
a past event, which in turn is the cause of the future event.
Both events then exist in spacetime, but their origin cannot
be determined. A causal loop may involve an event, a person
or object, or information. (via Wikipedia). This means that
instruments or objects exist without having been created. After
information or an object is sent back in time, it is recovered
in the present and becomes the very object or info that was
initially brought back in time in the first place. Interstellar,
Predestination (based on short story "All You Zombies" by
RobertHeinlein).

In traditional [Eurocentric] science fiction films, TV shows

(and of course, books and short stories since the genre first

20
emerged) that feature time travel or temporal displacement
usually have one or more of the following features that I've
observed. (non-exhaustive list with exceptions that is not
getting into issues of parallel timelines/universes):

„ Treats the past as "dead," fixed, unalterable, and the future

typically as deterministic, or as the result of a set of causes
and effects that are easily pinpointed and measured. Even
when the traveler(s) are changing the future, that future
still typically needs to follow a pre-determined path or set
of cause and effect factors in order to land on the "right"
future

„ Treats temporal paradoxes, temporal queerness, or temporal

conflicts as undesirable, and capable of ripping apart the
fabric of space-time. Literally, queer and trans people
rarely ever depicted as time travelers or time displaced. The
universe must always be set right or balanced, which usually
involves a linear trajectory centered around white patriarchal,
cisgendered, heterosexual histories and timelines, and
ensuring a future that maintains that status quo

„ Time traveler is typically white male, often a scientist or

astrophysicist or other privileged white male (genetics);
travel is centered around his wants or needs and his
traveling is allowed to disrupt reality (for love or to
manipulate love, to get that job he wanted, to keep starting
over until he gets it right, to pick that particular point in
history that he deems important enough to interfere with or
alter)

„ Women time travelers are often traveling or are time-

displaced involuntarily - they usually cannot control when
and where it happens or where they go, or don't choose to
have it happen. Usually men are in control of when and/or
where they travel to. Black women time travelers depicted in
film are exceedingly rare.

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„ Time travel is often enabled by a High tech Machine
that only a privileged few can have access to. The time
traveler(s) or inventors in possession of the machine are
somehow endowed with the wisdom and moral righteousness
to know when, how, and what to use it for (and while this is
often a plot point that includes the lesson that they should
not be tinkering with time travel for that exact reason, this
lesson is often undermined by the happy endings where the
guy gets the girl or gets the job or sets the universe back
on course as he thinks it should have been, and no real or
earth-shattering consequences -existential, moral, economic
or otherwise - are suffered)

Some of the time travel shows and films that contain some
of these descriptors include The Time Traveler's Wife, Dark
(Netflix), About Time, Terminator, Project Almanac, Looper,
Butterfly Effect, Back to the Future, and the list goes on.
While I find many of these films/shows highly enjoyable and
entertaining, I also hold the dual realities that they are often
problematic, have dated notions of time and time travel, and
their values around time travel are often steeped in white
supremacy and Western cultural notions of time and space,
including layered colonial, global, and capitalist times.

22
Black Womanist
Temporalities
= Unique,
Intersectional
Temporal
Experiences
As Black And
Woman

23
Womanist and feminist movements articulate unique modes of
temporality as natural alternatives to temporalities informed
by linear fatalistic timelines - temporalities that "reveal
to us [time's] multifaceted and multiform nature" from the
perspectives and experiences of women. Womanist and feminist
movements have studied temporal issues and tools to theorize
on such issues as "time, age, change, choice, self-image, and
the related implications of women's changing roles." In the
essay Femalear Explorations: Temporality in Women's Writing,
Irma Garcia notes that "women's time is purely affective time,
disrupting pre-established schemas and structures," and how in
feminine time in general, "notions of the past/present/future
are interdependent and blend into each other."

The time traveling, Black woman protagonist Dana in Octavia

Butler's speculative novel Kindred demonstrates this blended,
affective temporality well. Dana had to ensure the continuation
of her family's timeline in the Antebellum South, and by
extension, her own birth, several hundred years into the
future. Michelle M. Wright highlights how Butler and other
Black womanist writers, such as Alice Walker, create "bold
new models for self-defined or internally defined notion of
tradition, one Black and female." Tradition as understood
here emphasizes an overlapping past and present temporal
dimensions, and in relationship of those two dimensions
to each other, necessarily involves a future trajectory, if
considered within a traditional linear temporal construct of
forward, progressive movement. I would argue in support of
an articulated theory of Black womanist temporalities, given
our unique, intersectional temporal experiences as Black and
woman.

​ he Black women protagonists and the world(s) within

T
Octavia Butler's stories embody diverse chronotopes, while the
characters are experiencing varied timescapes or engaging
in negotiations of chronopolitics. Looking at such examples
as Kindred, where she turns the classical time travel trope,
the Grandfather Paradox, on its head, and the chronopolitical

24
landscapes encompassed in the Patternist series, Butler's works
disrupt, interact with, or agree with the dominant Western,
linear progress narrative and the racialized chronotope of the
American future.

Chronotopes and timescapes in Butler's multiverse seemingly

employ indigenous African notions of time, space, and
futurity. In agreement with modern day quantum physics,
such spatiotemporal constructs resolve many of the tropes and
paradoxes presented by a linear time construct, allow access
to the past or the future in a way that linear temporality and
obedience to mechanical and digital clock time cannot. Such
access provides for a unique opportunity to survey the ways
in which collective and personal pasts continue to affect us,
how intergenerational trauma cycles throughout our personal
lives and within the larger communities and societies that we
participate in, and how we can break or shift these cycles. This
works to elevate the power of personal and collective memory
of the many as being just as important, if not more, than a
recorded history shaped by a privileged few.

25
 Black Women
and Femmes
Time Poverty &
Reciprocity
Womanist Working Collective

26
Kiana Marcus & Time
Poverty: A Vignette
Mondays 4:30 pm

Meet Kiana Marcus, a Black woman and mother working 2 part-

time, low-wage jobs. Her day job is being a nanny to a child
of a wealthy white couple downtown, while her evening hours
are spent at a local fast food restaurant where she is usually
scheduled to close down the business at the end of the night.
These two jobs usually averages out to between 60-75 hours
per week, including weekends and not counting commute time
which adds an additional 2.5 hours to her day.

Kiana raises her children in her ailing mother's 2 bedroom

apartment, which allows her to make sure her only living
parent is being taken care of. Her mother also watched Kiana's
children afterschool while she is at her second job. The
apartment is very cramped with 4 people sharing 2 rooms, but
after gentrification displaced her and her children, this was
all she can afford even combined with her mother's dwindling
social security benefits. Moving way on the outskirts of town,
where it takes an hour to get into the city, was the only way to
ensure neither of them became homeless.

27
One day at work, she got a phone call from the hospital
explaining that her mother had just been rushed to the
emergency room after collapsing. This was also an issue since
the kids would be getting home from school pretty soon and
there would be no one there to watch them and they were too
young to stay alone the rest of the night. So she contacts her
first employer to explain why she must head home immediately
and is permitted to leave but warned that if she didn't return
the next day or find another nanny to cover for her then she'd
be fired. She then calls her night job to inform them they she
must call-off because there is no one there to watch her kids,
except here she faces an immediate termination because this
would be her third time calling out this month.

Earlier in the month, her kids were very sick and needed to be
taken to an urgent care clinic or wouldn't be permitted back to
school and of course their health could worsen if untreated.
Since her mother is very ill herself and practically immobile,
Kiana had to call out of work to take them to see a doctor
immediately. The kids were kept overnight, resulting in her two
unexcused absences and since she lives in an At-will state, her
employer can fire her at anytime for any reason.

She doesn't have much of a support system, just her mom,

and doesn't have any additional time to spend building
relationships with any of her neighbors which could potentially
be a source of support and emergency childcare. Right now,

28
she just knows that she can't afford a babysitter and doesn't
really know anyone well enough to trust them watching her
children. So she stays home with her kids the rest of the
evening, loses her second job and spends the night applying to
new job listings on her phone.

In between applying for jobs, Kiana scrolls her social media

only to see memes stating "I'll sleep when I'm dead", "Keep
up the grind or get left behind", and "if you strugglin' then
you ain't workin hard enough". Even the music she has playing
in the background is singing "...I'm a boss, you're a worker
b*tch..." and "...if you ain't got no money, take yo' broke ass
home..." and "...Everyday I spend my time...Drinking wine,
feeling fine...". These media messages serve as a constant
reminders that she is not where she aspires to be and can't
even see a way out of this cycle, which adds to her lowering
self-esteem.

All of this causes Kiana's societally-induced anxiety and

depression to skyrocket while her physical health declines. She
has no time for herself, her kids, her mother or her community
and that is what we call Time Poverty.

The Problem of Time

Poverty for Black Women
and Femmes
Tuesdays 10:00 am

As Black women and femmes we're experiencing time poverty as

a result of Neo-liberalism's scarcity culture. While Capitalism
ensures that those who own the means of production are
positioned securely at the top, neo-liberalism prioritizes the
needs of these same wealthy people, their corporations and all
things private above the needs of the people, the public and the
health of our planet. In relation to time poverty, neoliberalism
and capitalism creates a Culture of Neglect in which everything
we need to thrive in life in positioned out of our reach,

29
expecting us to merely survive as workers, consumption-addicts
and mindless drones.

Most folks living in this society are not immune to the effects
of Capitalism or it's very intentional and strategically created
scarcity culture, however, folks without many marginalized
intersecting identities don't experience this at the same
severity. For many Black women and femmes, the inequality
we experience due to our gender/perceived gender identity,
class, sexual orientation, education background, employment
status, marital status, disability status and general ability to
navigate this White Supremacist society are all identities that
are intensified by our Blackness. The racialization of all of
our overlapping experiences leaves us vulnerable to increase
violence, subjugation, anti-blackness, anti-woman rhetoric,
femme phobia and every other attack associated with our other
marginalized identities.

What makes time poverty so insidious and not just a "time

shortage" is its function to have us spending majority of our
time meeting very basic needs and possibility of pulling yourself
out is very difficult. It keeps us stuck constantly moving
between what psychologist Abraham Maslow described as the

30
Physiological needs (Stage #1) and Safety needs (Stage #2).
And similar to socio-economic poverty, the solution according
to the elitist, neo-liberalists and time wealthy bourgeoisie is
to "use your time more efficiently" and "do more with less"
and "spend time pulling yourself up by your bootstraps". These
aren't real solutions to any problem...

Missing a weeks worth of pay or even being several hours

short on a paychecks can be the difference between us who
experience time poverty losing our housing, utilities being cut
off, losing access to reliable and timely transportation, not
having quality food or unqualified for health insurance through
an employer which already places us in many potentially
vulnerable situations. However, when you add that to the
dwindling amount of time you're technically "off-the-clock"
(or simply not being paid for like caring for loved ones or
providing emotional labor to others), then what is being created
is a Culture of Neglect in which you don't even have enough
time to build new or nurture existing Support Systems to help
alleviate some of our burdens. And yet, the biggest trap is there
isn't even enough time to fight back against the very systems
(Capitalism, Neo-liberalism, Imperialism and White Supremacy
just to name a few) that contribute to our time poverty in the
first place.

An Interactive Activity
Saturdays 11:30 am

Use the Liberation Health Framework to identify a few more

ways in which Kiana is experiencing time poverty. In the bulleted
section below, list 2 examples for each section: Personal/
Internal, Cultural/Community & Institutional/Systemic. When
you're done, reflect back on our answers and your own to
imagine what real support and radical transformation could
look like for Black women and femmes who experience time
poverty.​

31
Vocabulary
„ Liberation Health Framework: A theory of human behavior
which conceptualizes that the problems of individuals
and families cannot be understood in isolation from the
economic, political, cultural, and historical conditions
which give rise to them. A method of practice which helps
individuals, families and communities understand the
personal, cultural and institutional factors that contribute to
their problem and act to change these conditions; to liberate
themselves from both internal and external oppressions.
„ Time Poverty: Having an insufficient amount of time to
thrive typically outside of paid labor (read: Capitalism
structures) that demands our life force in order to survive;
not having enough time to acquire or build resources to
sustain yourself, health or wellness outside of this system
„ Time Wealth: Alternatively, someone could also be time
wealthy, which means having and abundance of time that
doesn't have to be dedicated towards working to survive.
For many people this is time spent thriving which can look
like building new or strengthening existing relationships with
people, participating in activism or local politics, having
hobbies, practicing self-care or just enjoying leisure time.

Sections
(Pathos) Personal/Internal(ized):
„ Physiological impacts on her mental health and physical
health; Depression, anxiety, isolation, stress
„ Feelings of hopelessness because she can't see a way out of
this cycle
„ Guilt, for not "working as hard or long enough" to escape
time and economic poverty; guilt for not spending enough
time with friends, family or community

Institutional/Systemic
„ Ronald Reagan's Welfare Queen Trope permeating the
dominant consciousness causing social stigma around
asking for government support; Institutional misogynoir
„ Neoliberalist policies that allow corporations/employers to

32
 fire employees At-will for hindering their profits
„ Devolution of welfare programs like cuts to social security
for seniors

Cultural/Community
„ Grind Culture in our media (a derivative of Capitalism)
perpetuates the idea that we must always be working to be
valuable and attain success; the memes and music that
Kiana engages with support this
„ Community Breakdown occurs when Kiana doesn't have
a support system also known as a core economy; Edgar
Caan's defines the Core Economy as the love and caring,
coming to each other's rescue, democracy and social
justice, which is expressed from family, friends, neighbors
and one's own community
„ Societal consciousness that Capitalism is the only acceptable
way of life

33
 The Temporal
Disruptors

34
Named for the contributions of Black women scientists,
healers, and inventors, The Temporal Disruptors is a collection
of watches specially re-crafted by Black Quantum Futurism
to embody the temporal features of Black womxn and Black
quantum futurist time(s). The series is also inspired by
RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣ Time Stoppers temporal displacement devices.
The watches are paired with keys that can be unlocked at a
computer to access sonic passageways, and paired with mirrors
for use in conducting Black womxnist temporal rituals.

Mae Watches I & II + Black Space Agency

Key
Named for Astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison, this watch Facilitates
inner & Outer space travel, Astral Projection, stretching,
decoupling, fusing space-time

Key Features:
„ Mae Showers sound exploration by Sammus

35
„ Black Space Agency Materials
Caroline V. Still Anderson mirror
Experiments #1, 3 on pocket time rituals

Shirley Ann Watches I & II + Telescoping

Effect Key
Named for physicist shirley ann jackson, this watch Facilitates
quantum entanglement, space-time collapse, + non-linear
temporal shifts

Key Features:
„ Telescoping Effect graphic novellette and soundscapes

Jewel Plummer Cobb mirror

Experiments #2, 3 on Pocket time rituals

Caroline Virginia Watch + Space-Time

Collapse key
Named for dr. caroline Virginia still anderson, this watch
Facilitates temporal abolition and temporal justice, and
seeks the time of freedom. Dr. anderson co-founded berean
institute with Rev. Matthew Anderson in philadelphia in 1899.

Keys:
„ Space-Time Collapse I Soundscape
„ bqf Visual Astrolabe

Experiments: shadow of the black hole/reverse time binding

ritual

36
37
 DIY
Pocket Time
Rituals
TIME MATERIALS
As long as needed Quiet space, clock or watch

Step #000
Stare at the clock as you relax your mind and body. After you feel
completely relaxed, close your eyes and visualize a future or past
memory, an activity, or a goal with intense clarity. Experience the
thing you are visualizing completely, with all your senses.

Step #001
Once you have achieved that feeling completely, open your eyes
and look at the clock again. Do the hands or numbers on the
clock stick or pause? Repeat Steps 1 and 2 to test your ability to
slow down or stop the clock.

Step #002
After practicing this exercise a few times, you should be able to
slow down or stop time consistently and for longer periods, as
you experience a slower brain wave output. Test your ability to
slow time over periods of up to 10 seconds.

Step #003
Find a phrase to repeat (such as "I am," or "Time is speeding
up/slowing down"), and repeat the phrase over and over at a
steady pace for 10 seconds. Count how many times you can say
the phrase when you are focused on distorting (slowing down or
speeding up time) versus how many times you can repeat the
phrase when you are not actively distorting time.

38
 BLACK
Recall, remember, or visualize

.ecaps latnem ruoy ni sthguoht eht ni sthguoht detaler

ni sthguoht erutuf eht dna uoy

dniheb sthguoht tsap eht erA
,sthguoht eseht redro uoy sA

"tneserp" dna ",tsap" ",erutuf" -tneserp erA ?uoy fo tnorf

eht ecalp uoy erehw eciton dniheb sthguoht tsap eht erA
3 events/memories/thoughts

-tneserp erA ?uoy fo tnorf

WOMEN,

eht ni sthguoht detaler

from any pointremember,
Recall, in ton youror visualize 3
Black events/memories/thoughts
personal or world timeline. from

FEMMES
Women, &
any point in your personal or world
Order thouse
timeline. Order those thoughts/
thoughts/memories/events in terms of their
Femmes
GIRLS

?elddim
Immediate Future
memories/events in
terms ofrelationship
their relationship
to the to
past, present,
& Girls the past, present,
futureand future.
TEMPORAL
and

BLACK
Recall, remember, or visualize
Temporal
RITUALS
No time/Potential
3 events/memories/thoughts No time/Potential
Time/
WOMEN,
Rituals
quantum time mirrors
from any point in ton your
personal or worldFar Future
timeline.
Time/Far Future
FEMMES & Order thouse
thoughts/memories/events in

GIRLS
ecaps latnem ruoy ni ti esrever
nt iossa tneve eht ees uoy taht os
a srever ,erutuf eht tuoba

terms of their relationship to

ti fI .noitcerid eht esrever
dna seirogetac esoht fo eno
.uoy dniheb sa ees uoy taht

rehtie morf thguoht a ekaT

ermaxe rof ,thguoht tsap
srever ,erutuf eht tuobathguoht a roF .uoy fo tnorf

your mental space. Are the

the past, present, and future.
TEMPORAL

thoughts, notice where you

place the "future," "past,"

and the future thoughts in

front your you are present
.ecaps latnem ru

ni sthguoht erutuf eht dna uoy

and "present" thoughts in

past thoughts behind you

,sthguoht es.eecahpts rlaetnderm

"tneserp" dna-t"n,tessa
eht ecalp udonyiheebresh
RITUALS
No time/Potential Time/

related thoughts in the

Far Future

Present
As you order these
Immediate

?elddim
Immediate
FutureFuture
ni sthguoht erutuf eht dna uoy
,sthguoht eseht redro uoy sA

"tneserp" dna ",tsap" ",erutuf"

eht ecalp uoy erehw eciton

eho ty nin
erp
thw

middle?
p "er"A

past as future
stihs
?elddim
guoehct ittso

Immediate
timeFuture
o ru

QUANTUM TIME
quantum MIRRORS
mirrors
gtuh
,e?ruuotyufof"tnorf
uooyynissA

ohgtudo
behind you.
so that you see it as
the future, reverse it
For a thought about
as in front of you.
that you see the event
your mental space so
example, reverse it in
past thought, for
direction. If it is a
either reverse the
Take a thought from

Take one of the past thoughts

ti esrever

apneht erA
tnyortf aht os
tibe

eth
T si o

quantum time mirrors

elvp
.uoy dniheb sa ees uoy taht

rehtie morf thguoht a ekaT

satptsap
f

thguoht

alter
n
r
os ti esrever ,erutuf ehtotsuo

that you have reversed and

o

e
a si ti fI .noitcerid ehteevesr,re

Present
n

ecaps latnem ruoy ni ti esrever

guoht a ekaa o
dna seirogetac esoht fo eno
.uoy dniheb sa ees uoy taht
t

walk into it, as if it is unfamiliar.-

o

ni sa tneve eht ees uoy tah

htoth

t
r
oo
f

h
s

Present are experiencing

i

e
oys fu
y

n
gugou

Presentas if youPAST it for

o

AS FUTURE
s
h
y

Immediate Past
u

e
e
.ue

th
o
.

d
rotF e

off ,t,h
u

dnareshetiieromgoerfttahc

Take one ofthe

the first
past time.
F

thoughts that
r
r
o

e
ah

c
xerro
m
r

you have reversed and walk into it,

t
ht e

past as future
i

past asit future

a

o
e
mxae
n
ni sa tthngeuvoe

as if is unfamiliar as if you are

t

.
thogsutioeh

fI
t
lpa

Take one of theexperiencing

past thoughts it for the first time.
i
a

t
,elp,em

Take
haveone of the past thoughts
l

that you reversed and

s
s

Immediate
a

spacing time/timing space

ecap

walk into it, as if it is unfamiliar.-

that you have reversed and
Past as if you are experiencing it for
Immediate Past walk into
the first it, as if it is unfamiliar.-
time.
as if you are experiencing it for
Immediate Past
spacing time/timing space the first time.
SPACING TIME/TIMING SPACE
Deeper
Past

Deeper Past
spacing time/timing space
Deeper Past MEMORY ENCODING
it. Re-member the
reversed and build

memory encoding
up a memory of

re-experience it
Take one of the

future memory,
future thoughts

as you would a

memory encoding
.yromem tsap a dluowfo yrome
erutuf eht fo eno ekaT

that you have

fo yromem a pu dliuberutuf eht

uoy sa ti ecneirepxe
-er ,yromem erutuf
eht rebmem-eR ,ti
dna desrever evah
uoy taht sthguoht

Deeper Past
memory.
.yromem tsap a
erutuf eht fo en

fo yrom.eyrm

uoy sa ti ecneir
-er ,yromem e
eht rebmem-
dna deusore
uoy tahethsttrh

www.blackquantumfuturism.com
www.blackquantumfuturism.com memory encoding
39
-er ,yrom
d

oma
uoy taht
na desr

yv saetri
em
eb

pu
g

t
 Black Women
Temporal
Inventory &
Memory Survey

40
Directions: The survey asks participants about connections to
time and memory, as well as questions about self, community,
and family, and reflects on the time/durational statements
and everyday ways we talk about think about time in our
communities.

1. An image, sound, smell, or song that reminds me of

some of my earliest memories:

2. What is an event on my personal timeline that I would

alter slightly?

3. Can I create the future? Why or why not?

4. What does it mean to be "on time"? Is this similar or

different from my family would define it? My community
or culture?

5. How does astrology influence my sense of time (if at

all)? How does it influence my sense of universal time?

41
6. What is an event on the world timeline I would change or
alter slightly?

7. My very first memory is:

8. Are there places in my neighborhood where I feel like I

belong? Out of place? What about these spaces makes
me feel these ways?

9. If humanity were able to build a time machine, should

we use it? Why or why not?

10. What kinds of thoughts or feelings come up for me when

I think about the "past"?

11. How would I describe the pace or temporality of my

neighborhood, community, or region?

42
12. Has time sped up as I've gotten older? Has my time
perspective shifted in some other way?

13. When was the first time I felt aware of my identity/

identities? When did I first feel aware of the intersections
of my identities?

14. Growing up how did I envision my future self? Is it

different or the same as the person I came to be?

15. Can I change the past? Why or why not?

16. How far back am I able to trace your roots? What

evidence, artifacts, or documentation do I have of my
ancestry?

17. Does the phrase "time flies when you're having fun"
apply to how I experience time? Why or why not?

43
18. Do other aspects of my identity or culture play a role in
how I view or experience time (i.e. gender, sexuality, age,
race, ability/disability) ? If so, how or why?

19. What are some of my earliest memories? What images

do you remember?

20. What ancestor would pull me back into time like Kindred?
Do I know why?

21. Do your religious or spiritual beliefs (if any) play a role

in how you view time and eternity? If so, how?

22. How do I define the concept of time? How is it similar or

different from how my family or my community defines
it?

44
23. Can I change the future? Why or why not?

24. Create a future memory. Use the quantum event map to

help you do this if needed.

45
 Kindred
Temporal
Library
Black Womanist Time & Memory Lit,
Films, and Sounds

Book and films holding the themes of community, time,

temporality,foresight, memory, future(s), the past(s),
motherhood, & Black womanhood. If you have suggestions
for Black women, femme, girls, and non-binary writers,
books, films, or stories.

Gloria Naylor
„ Mama Day
„ The Women of Brewster Place books and film series

Toni Morrison
„ Beloved (book and film)
„ Jazz

Tananarive Due
„ The Between
„ Like Daughter
„ Ghost Summer Stories

Octavia Butler
„ Kindred
„ The Patternist series

Rasheedah Phillips
„ Recurrence Plot (and Other Time Travel Tales)
„ The Telescoping Effect, Pt. 1

Eve's Bayou
„ Written and directed by Cassi Lemmons

46
Paule Marshall
„ Brown Girl. Brownstones
„ The Chosen Place, The Timeless People
„ Daughters

Toni Cade Bambara

„ The Salt Eaters

Alice Walker
„ Meridian
„ The Color Purple (book and film)

Ursula K. LeGuin
„ The Black woman protagonist in The Lathe of Heaven

The Wiz
„ Diana Ross as Dorothy

Daughters of the Dust

„ Written and Directed by Julie Dash

Beasts of the Southern Wild

„ Quvenzhane Wallis as Hushpuppy

Sankofa
„ Written and Directed by Haile Gerima

Moor Mother
„ Fetish Bones album
„ Analogue Fluids of Sonic Black Holes album

Black Quantum Futurism

„ Constellation 8/∞ (Octonionic Constellation)
„ Temporal Technologies

Nina Simone
„ 33rd Century

Alice Coltrane
„ Translinear Light

47
 Special Thanks
Vox Populi
Ras Cutlass
Oshun’s Mirror
Shivon Pearl Love
Marcelline
Womanist Working Collective
Joyce Hatton
Rocker’s Closet
•••

www.blackquantumfuturism.com
www.blackwomxntemporal.net
www.afrofuturistaffair.com
•••

Name 1
Name 1

www.blackquantumfuturism.com
www.blackwomxntemporal.net
www.afrofuturistaffair.com