Monad, Database, Remix: Manners of Unfolding in The Last Angel of History

Black Audio Film Collective’s The Last Angel of History (1996) sketches the artistic and intellectual movements that have come to be called Afrofuturism, which argues that since the great rupture of the Middle Passage, African diaspora people have been doing science fiction, assembling futures from fragments of the past. The film’s creative and intellectual energy lie in its manners of unfolding, that is, forms of historiography that would make sense of perceptible artifacts. This essay examines several manners of unfolding, includinganiconism, unfolding from fragments, unfolding from a database, fabulation, and unfolding deep history.