Idea Museum: Time Zone Protocols by Black Quantum Futurism

The Leeum Museum of Art, operated by the Samsung Foundation of Culture (Chairman Hwang-sik Kim), launches the third edition of its Idea Museum, the multi-year public initiative supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund from September 4 through September 28, 2025 at the M2. This edition presents Time Zone Protocols, a project by Black Quantum Futurism (BQF), the Philadelphia-based artist collective founded by Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother) and Rasheedah Phillips.

Black Quantum Futurism is an interdisciplinary art practice that intersects quantum physics and temporalities rooted in Black diasporic experiences and African cultural contexts to imagine frameworks for alternative temporal politics. They critically analyze how the time systems constructed by colonialism and capitalism have impacted the temporal autonomy and memory formation of Black communities, continuing their collaboration through experimental forms such as performance, installation, music, writing, and community projects.

 “The Idea Museum symposium “Somewhere in Between” in November 2024 invited reflections on new, liminal languages through the lens of gender and diversity,” said Helen Jungyeon Ku, Head of Research and Public Programs at the Leeum Museum of Art. “This year, Time Zone Protocols by Black Quantum Futurism offers a space to imagine and experiment with a world where multiple temporalities coexist—opening up ways to understand the diverse times, senses, rhythms, and modes of existence shaped by different histories and cultures.”

Time Zone Protocols reimagines and rewrites the protocols that govern time, reclaiming and reconfiguring time zones while critically decolonizing the world’s standard time system imposed by imperial power structures. Grounded in the thought and practice of Black Quantum Futurism, the collective points to the 1884 International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. as a point of departure. At the conference, the British Greenwich Meridian was designated as the global prime meridian, restructuring time around a Western-centered framework. This project challenges standardized time systems and linear perceptions of time, illuminating the multilayered and embodied temporalities that operate within the histories and memories of Black and African communities. Its project space features a timeline revealing the racial and social oppression tied to time, video works that speculatively explore the entanglement of time, space, and place alongside cyclical temporality, as well as a library installation. Visitors are invited into a space where they can experience time through their own rhythms, senses, and memories.

As part of this project, Prime Meridian Unconference will be held from September 4 to 6. Reconsidering the Greenwich Prime Meridian, which has long served as the global reference point for standard time, the gathering explores intersections between Black Quantum Futurism and Asian temporalities within the context of Seoul, opening up new approaches to plural time. Through this, we seek to envision alternative futures where diverse temporalities intersect and coexist, and to expand philosophical and scientific imaginings of the future beyond conventional conceptions of time, drawing on quantum thought that embraces nonlinearity and indeterminacy.

Participants include Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips; Noise Practitioner Ada Adhiyatma (madam data); Scholar of Religion Lee Chang Yick; London-based Artist, Researcher and Founder of Foreshadowing Youngsook Choi; Malaysia-based Co-Founder of Gerimis Art Wen Di Sia; Herbalist and Organizational Ecologist Asia Dorsey; Professor at Princeton University School of Architecture V. Mitch McEwen; and the AfroAsia Collective, founded by artist CHE Onejoon and curator Sun A MOON.

Programs require prior registration via the Leeum Museum of Art website and are free of charge. 

Supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund, the Idea Museum pursues core values of inclusivity, diversity, equality, and access, using artistic imagination to confront pressing contemporary issues.

Press contact, Minsun Park (Communication Team minsunn.park@samsung.com).