'Astro Black: A History of Hip-Hop (Episodes 0-2)' (2007-08) is 3-channel video work that is constructed entirely from audio and video footage sampled from existing film and music sources. Drawing on the insights of Afrofuturism, this work positions the sci-fi aspects of hip-hop as a form of social politics by reworking the 1974 film "Space is the Place". In this film, 'cosmic jazz' musician Sun Ra visits earth in his music-powered U.F.O to confront the racial oppression of 1970's America.

'Astro Black' extends this narrative both backwards and forwards in time, exploring the intergalactic origins of Sun Ra's musical style and how the science fiction elements of his practice are reflected in the future generation of hip-hop musicians. In this sonic fiction, turntablism is exposed as an extraterrestrial language that was delivered to the Bronx through the alien abduction of DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaattaa and Grandmaster Flash. Public Enemy also feature in a later episode, returning from the future to battle against the armageddon of Ronald Reagan's presidency.

Both the narrative and sample-based structure of 'Astro Black' are premised on a temporal constellation that combines a retrospective and futuristic movement. By engineering counter futures from the cultural material of the past, this project investigates the potential for a form of temporal politics that ruptures linear progress-driven accounts of history. The 3-channel video is installed with each episode as a large-scale projection on the walls of a darkened space. Each episode plays consecutively with the remaining two channels displaying an overhead shot of a record spinning on a phonograph.

Astro Black: A History of Hip-Hop (Episodes 0-2) 2007-08 3-channel video installation Digital video, Dur: 21 minutes Post production with Sam Smith

Astro Black: A History of Hip-Hop (Episodes 0-2) 2007-08 3-channel video installation 'Primavera 08', Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Photo: Jenni Carter