What is the heart of Atlanta? If we look at the city’s attractions, we might think it can be found in the contemporary exhibits at the High Museum of Art or in the lasting tradition of performances at the Fox Theatre; however, perhaps the answer lies underground — specifically, in Underground Atlanta. Within the next year, this area is set to be home to one of the first Afrofuturist labs, Subsume Studios, a space dedicated to placing Black narratives and experiences at the forefront of the narratives of tomorrow.
What is Afrofuturism? The foundation of Subsume Studios is directly based in Afrofuturism, a trend prevalent in speculative fiction across the country. Lisa Yaszek, a Regents Professor of Science Fiction Studies in the Georgia Tech School of Literature, Media, and Communication, defines Afrofuturism as “an aesthetic practice that enables artists to communicate the experience of science, technology, and race across centuries, continents, and cultures.”
Black Afrofuturist artists create media that challenges how we think about the interactions between the technological and social aspects of our past, present, and future. Yaszek described how this multigenerational and multimedia tradition allows Black artists to “blend science fiction, fantasy, and horror techniques with Afrodiasporic histories and African cosmologies to tell exciting and thought-provoking stories that enrich our understanding of history and imagine futures in full color.”
Within the Atlanta community, Afrofuturism thrives: Atlanta authors and artists part of the “Atlantafuturism” movement have created some of the most impressive modern Afrofuturist media and have contributed to the trend for decades. From the experimental jazz and cosmic compositions of Le Sony’r “Sun” Ra in the twentieth century to the contemporary speculative fiction of Kyoko M. and Violette L. Meier, Atlanta has a tradition of fostering creatives who share and celebrate marginalized narratives. Now, with the opening of Subsume Studios, modern Black artists have a space to share their new imagined futures right in the heart of the city.
Subsume Studios is dedicated to Afrofuturism through a combination of art, culture, gaming, and technology emphasizing Black stories and experiences. The space focuses on using a variety of technological and artistic mediums — virtual and augmented reality, metaverse, game development, animation, comics, and graphic novels — to feed the minds of the creative class within Atlanta. In this way, the studio works in both the digital and physical worlds of design to create ways which bring new voices into larger digital solutions.
The space was founded by Dedren Snead, a tech entrepreneur who uses artificial intelligence, augmented reality, animation, gaming, and graphic novels to create inclusive storytelling platforms garnering social change. As a Black man from Atlanta, Snead personally understands the talent that resides in Black and brown communities which can often be left untapped because of a lack of opportunity. With this studio, he hopes to foster connections and engagement between educators and students through a creative approach, garnering technical and creative careers for Black artists in the Atlanta area. His studio emphasizes accessibility and equity, as he believes that knowledge and learning need to be accessible to everyone, especially in an area such as Atlanta. With the technological hub that makes up the city, as well as the wealth of culture found within it, Snead wants the studio to be where the community can come together to galvanize individual experiences and change the future for everyone.
Ultimately, Subsume Studios is targeting the young and the young at heart. Situated so close to college campuses in Atlanta — especially Georgia State University — the space acts as an opportunity for students and young adults to interact with Afrofuturist stories and technology in a new light.
To Yaszek, the new studio is extremely exciting. She has followed the creation of Subsume closely, believing it has the potential to contribute to the Altantafuturism movement in an incredibly influential way. She explained how Afrofuturism, at its core, acts as an “extension of the historical recovery projects that black Atlantic intellectuals have engaged in for over two hundred years,” and Subsume will provide a new space for this recovery and innovation to flourish. Yaszek’s interest in Afrofuturism comes from her work as a science fiction scholar, and she noted how it “reminds us that humans can intervene in the material and social world and create a whole host of futures, many of which depart from the futures-as-usual that we get from the mainstream media.” As someone who interacts with many students at Georgia Tech, she places these ideas of new imagined futures at the forefront of their minds.
Georgia Tech is not unfamiliar with the practice of Afrofuturism: the Georgia Tech Library holds one of the largest science fiction collections in the world, including hundreds of books on Afrofuturism and pieces of Black speculative fiction. The Institute is also home to multiple experts in the area, with faculty such as Susana Morris, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication. Morris and Yaszek both work in areas studying speculative fiction and Black media, publishing anthologies and articles related to Afrofuturism, science fiction, and marginalized communities. Georgia Tech’s emphasis on questioning the experience of science, technology, and race across cultures will only be amplified by Subsume, which hopes to draw in even more creative expressions of Afrofuturist media.
At the core of Subsume Studios, people can find a focus on creativity, technology, and community, all aspects of the environment found at Georgia Tech. But if we look even farther, these values can act as more so a reflection of Atlanta itself: a center for technological innovation settled within a culturally rich community home to creatives and pioneers of change. In this way, the studio’s location in underground Atlanta is almost metaphorical — the heart of Atlanta will soon be pulsing with Black artists positioning themselves at the center of the solutions of tomorrow.
