In the summer of 2023, Black Quantum Futurism brought an immersive sound installation, MirrorTimeMirror, to Cologne’s Deutzer Bridge as part of the annual Brückenmusik festival. Since 1995, Brückenmusik has transformed the Deutzer Bridge’s unique 550-meter hollow expanse into a remarkable sound art venue, offering an acoustic experience unlike any other in the region. This year’s Brückenmusik 28, which ran from July 28 to August 6, featured MirrorTimeMirror, a three-channel sound and film installation that challenged viewers to reimagine time, space, and self-perception through the lens of Black speculative thought.
Curated by Black Quantum Futurism, MirrorTimeMirror invited audiences to descend into the layered depths of time, sound, and echo, exploring how light and sound reflections can distort reality and create new temporal dimensions. The installation combined video, text, and sound into an ethereal experience, manipulating the mirror’s reflection to reveal alternate realities that exist parallel to our own. Through reverberating sound waves and fractured visuals, visitors encountered glimpses of alternate histories, shifting presents, and speculative futures, reflecting the Afro-diasporic concept of “quantum time” that Black Quantum Futurism often explores.
As visitors moved through the installation, they were enveloped by reversed, distorted soundscapes that echoed off the bridge’s reflective surfaces. This interplay between the visible and invisible, the real and surreal, immersed them in a space where time felt fluid, bringing to life the Black Quantum Futurist vision of creating “temporal-spatial” planes that disrupt linear perceptions of past, present, and future.
The installation was brought to life by Nicole Wegner and her team from Particular Productions, with additional filming and editing by a talented crew that included Nicole Wegner, Sebastian von der Heide, and sound recording by Björn Castillano, Dirk Specht, and Christian Werthschulte. The final mix, led by Volker Zander, helped shape the atmosphere of MirrorTimeMirror, blending audio layers into the bridge’s resonant structure and crafting an immersive experience for each visitor.
MirrorTimeMirror stands as a powerful act of creative liberation, offering audiences a chance to engage with Black speculative thought that encourages self-reflection and reimagines collective identity through a decolonial lens. This intersection of sound, film, and theory challenged participants to confront and transcend temporal boundaries, resonating with themes of Black empowerment and the reimagining of Black futures.
Through installations like MirrorTimeMirror, Black Quantum Futurism and Brückenmusik remind us of the power of art to break down boundaries—between past and future, reflection and reality—and, ultimately, to inspire new dimensions of freedom.
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