Christopher Wilson is a passionate cultural futurist and artist-researcher with a wealth of experience in the arts & culture and non-profit sectors. His practice is guided by curiosity and shaped by ancestral wisdom and radical possibilities, where he is committed to futures in which Black folks are not only seen but listened to. With a Master’s of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation and currently pursuing his PhD in Cultural Studies at Queen's University, his research focuses on the alter-archives of Black sound recordings from the 1960s to the early 2000s. This recent work reflects a dedication to exploring how we envision and utilize our collective futures to build connected, more meaningful communities that are better equipped to navigate the obstacles and possibilities of the future. Let us see ourselves in the future as an act of knowing, of being, and of becoming to reimagine the past and present as pathways to inspire future possibilities for Black folks.
Magnetic Memory: Cassette Tape Archives, Black Sonic Practices, and the Imagination of Black Diasporic Futures in Canada.
Black diasporic histories in Canada often remain undocumented, vulnerable, and dispersed across informal archives. Many of these stories were never preserved in institutions but instead captured on cassette tapes, recordings of basement jams, block parties, radio shows, and community events where Black immigrants gathered to make meaning, build kinship, and imagine new futures. These tapes are not nostalgic relics; they are technologies of Black sonic memory whose material fragility mirrors the precarity of the histories they carry. My research investigates how cassette tapes functioned as dynamic sites of Black cultural production between the 1960s and 2000s, sustaining community memory, transmitting cultural knowledge, and shaping diasporic identity across generations. Drawing on Alexander Weheliye’s concept of “sonic Afro-modernity,” I position Black sonic practices as modes of knowing that operate beyond the limits of the visual archive. These recordings materialize the improvisational, fluid, and relational aspects of Black life, qualities that Stuart Hall identifies as central to diasporic cultural production, shaped by tension, movement, and negotiation. Created in a sociopolitical landscape that routinely marginalized Black voices, these tapes nonetheless nurtured political consciousness, artistic experimentation, and transnational forms of belonging rooted in the shifting conditions of decolonization, migration, and global media circulation. A major creative output will be a sound-based exhibition applying Paul O’Neill’s “curator-auteur” approach, treating curatorial practice as a form of authorship and critical inquiry. The exhibition will layer archival recordings with contemporary reflections and speculative narratives, transforming sonic fragments of the past into living sites of memory and imagination. Interactive listening stations, reflective prompts, and facilitated discussions will invite participants to respond to the sonic environment, making audience engagement a core part of the research. I will develop public listening sessions, community workshops, and partnerships with cultural organizations. These spaces will serve as both dissemination events and participatory extensions of the research, ensuring that Black sonic histories are returned to the communities from which they came.
