The Unarrival Experiments
The Unarrival Experiments is a constellation of art/works that center dark matter and dark energy through a Black Queer and Transembodied lens. In dialogue with Astrophysics, and Black and African Diasporic spiritual cosmologies, this multi-site, multi-form expanse invokes the cosmic dark as a medicine, map, and technology.
The Works/Experiments
Illumination Catalogue
An ambitious ceremony series and archive centering the magics of Trans living and lives. IC asks through ritual and a digital Black Trans Cosmic Map, “How were the exquisite births of Black Trans, GNC, and Intersex folx recorded in the sky?” and “How does the land and the cosmos respond to our traumatic deaths?”
Transtraterrestrial
Transtraterrestrial, prequel and premiere of The Unarrival Experiments – Unconcealment Ceremonies is a new live multimedia performance installation work designed to amplify the dark. In dialogue with Yorùbá Cosmology, Astrophysics, and research on the “blackest black,” the work centers the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens. Dark matter and dark energy serve as portals to interrogating spaces of the unknown, yet have an unequivocated impact on the composition of the universe. The performance and its environment takes an audience through an otherworldly dive into the dark. Led by space conductor, Trans Trappist the Extraterrestrial, this work traverses the dark as an ancestor, embodied transgender technology, and cosmic intervention. Transtraterrestrial happens inside and outside of a custom-built space|ship, which is uniquely designed as a futuristic space vessel surrounded by painted organic matter. Its design and fabrication aids in visualizing darkness while also allowing for the seamless integration of immersive VR, projection, and spatial audio. The space|ship cradles performers and witnesses in encounter, collectivity, medicines, and invisibilities.
Adaptations & Dark Dives
Dark Matter Cyphers
Improvisational collaborations with scientists, artists, and thinkers in pitch-black spaces. Place, process, and collectivizing strategy, Dark Matter Cyphers gather the ideas within and encompassing darkness cultivated by The Unarrival Experiments, with a range of practitioners interjecting queer and trans Black dreaming in astrophysics theorizations.
Book & Lecture/ Performances
The first book project of The Unarrival Experiments forwards counterproposals and queered poetics of science-at-large, astrophysics, and the phenomena of darkness. It is a hybrid text that explores the research through the intersections of corporeality, dreaming, criticality, and archive.
Trans Trappist
the Extraterrestrial
Trans Trappist the Extraterrestrial
This project reclaims the language of Trappist (system of seven earth-sized exoplanets including one nicknamed “Earth 2.0”) while Queering the Black lexicon of Trap, and puts Transness at the forefront of galactic travel and “discovery”. While current space travel efforts mimic to near exactitude the imperial aspirations of colonial powers, Trans Trappist intervenes with Black Trans magic. Trappist aspires to necessitate a future different and asserts that the presence of Black Trans people in space is a necessary offering back to the cosmos and our universe(s) toward our liberated futures.
