Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent

Reynaldo Anderson is an associate professor of communications, executive director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement, and the chair of the Black Caucus of the National Communication Association. He is the co-curator of the exhibition Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination at the Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture and the co-editor of Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri. John Jennings is an associate professor of art and visual studies and an award winning visual artist, designer, and graphic novelist. He is the co-author of Black Comix, Black Kirby, and The Hole. He lives in Buffalo, New York. Greg Tate leads the conducted improvisation ensemble Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber and is a music and popular culture critic and journalist. His work has appeared in many publications including Downbeat, Spin, Vibe, Village Voice, and The Wire. He is the author of Flyboy and Midnight Lightning and the editor of Everything But the Burden. He lives in New York City.

Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent and its inspiration, the ground-breaking exhibition Unveiling Visions, applies a global lens and planetary vision to the black imagination, and brings this context to a wide survey of contemporary works. This book showcases illustrations, graphic design, literature, posters, and mixed-media digital and analog artworks along with insightful analysis by brilliant scholars and amazingly talented creatives. Cosmic Underground serves as a creative, experimental and educational motive force to analyze the growing corpus of work surrounding the nexus between politics and contemporary artistic production. This project includes the areas of black cultural production situated within Afrofuturism, AstroBlackness, the EthnoGothic, Magical Realism, Sword and Soul and the AfroSurreal.