Kodwo Eshun (born 1967) is a British-Ghanaian writer, theorist and filmmaker. He is perhaps best known for his 1998 bookMore Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction and his association with the art collective The Otolith Group, which he co-founded in 2002 withAnjalika Sagar.

Eshun teaches on theMA in Contemporary Art Theory in the Department of Visual Cultures atGoldsmiths College,University of London, and at CCC Research Master Program of the Visual Arts Department atHEAD (Geneva University of Art and Design).

Kodwo Eshun was born and raised in the far northern suburbs of London. His father was a prominent diplomat to the United Kingdom. His family is of theFante people ofGhana, and his younger brother is the author and journalistEkow Eshun.

As a youth, Eshun undertook a study of comic books,J. G. Ballard, and rock music. According to his brother,^{[citation needed]} Eshun was heavily disturbed and influenced by the 1979 coup of Ghana carried out byJ. J. Rawlings.

He studiedEnglish Literature (BA Hons,MA Hons) at University College, Oxford University, and a Romanticism and Modernism Masters atSouthampton University.

In his first book, Kodwo Eshun devised a unique page-numbering system, beginning in negative numbers. On page −01[-017], he wrote:

At 17, Kodwo Eshun won an Open Scholarship to read Law at University College, Oxford. After eight days he switched to Literary Theory, magazine journalism and running clubs. He is not a cultural critic or cultural commentator so much as a concept engineer, an imagineer at the millennium's end writing on electronic music, science fiction, technoculture, gameculture, drug culture, post war movies and post war art forThe Face, The Wire, i-D, Melody Maker, Spin, Arena andThe Guardian.^[1]

He later described his decision to pursue music journalism professionally as adevotional act that included avow of poverty.^[2]

Eshun's writing deals withcyberculture, science fiction and music with a particular focus on where these ideas intersect with theAfrican diaspora. He has contributed to a wide range of publications, includingThe Guardian,The Face,The Wire,i-D,Melody Maker,Spin,Arena,Frieze,CR: The New Centennial Review and032c. As of 2002, he has quit music journalism. He now publishes academically, and teaches atGoldsmiths, University of London, in the Department of Visual Cultures, founded byIrit Rogoff. In the 1990s, he was affiliated with theCybernetic Culture Research Unit, a cross-disciplinary research group out of theUniversity of Warwick.^[3][4]

Eshun's bookMore Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction was published in 1998 and is "At its simplest ... a study of visions of the future in music fromSun Ra to4 Hero".^[5] Written in a style that makes extensive use ofneologism, re-appropriatedjargon andcompound words, the book explores the intersection of black music and science fiction from anafrofuturist viewpoint.

Architechtronics is a collaboration by Kodwo Eshun andFranz Pomassl recorded live at the AR-60-Studio (ORF/FM4)Vienna in 1998. Eshun's contribution is the recitation of a text entitled "Black Atlantic Turns on the Flow Line", which condenses much of the thematic content ofMore Brilliant Than The Sun.

Eshun's article "Further Considerations on Afrofuturism" was published inCR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 3, Number 2, Summer 2003. Through this article, he expounds upon the history and trajectory ofAfrofuturism. He illuminates the specific functions of this genre, specifically its ability "to engineer feedback between [a] preferred future and [a] becoming present" and "to encourage a process of disalienation." Eshun deploys an unconventional framing device, inviting the reader to imagine "a team of African archaeologists from the future" attempting to reconstruct 20th-century Afrodiasporic subjectivity through a comparative study of various cultural media and artefacts. This framing technique can be read in terms of Eshun's notion of the "chronopolitical," the "temporal complications and anachronistic episodes that disturb the linear time of progress, adjust[ing] the temporal logics that condemned black subjects to prehistory."

FollowingToni Morrison among others, Eshun positions African slaves as the first modern subjects, as well as “real world” subjects of science-fiction scenarios. Thus, while hegemonic future projections implicitly or explicitly exclude black subjects from (post)modernity and its attendant techno-scientific innovations and alienations, Afrofuturism highlights the Afrodiasporic subject's fundamental role in initiating and producing modernity. In other words, Afrofuturism "reorient[s] history", in part in order to offer counter- or alternative futures.^[6] This article can be used as a lens through which to read prominent Afrofuturistic texts, such asIshmael Reed'sMumbo Jumbo (1972) andSamuel Delany'sStars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984). The essay is available in the bookBoogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism (Strange Attractor, 2022), edited by Roy Christopher.

In 2002, Eshun co-founded withAnjalika Sagar The Otolith Group,^[7] its name derived froma structure found in the inner ear that establishes our sense of gravity and orientation.^[8] Based in London, the group's work engages with archival materials, with futurity and with the histories oftransnationality.^[9] The group's projects include film production and exhibition curation as part of an integrated practice with the intended aim to "build a new film culture".^[10] The group was nominated forthe Turner Prize in 2010 for its projectA Long Time Between Suns.^[11][12]

• More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books. 1998.ISBN 0-7043-8025-0
• "The Microrhythmic Pneumacosm of Hype Williams" inCinesonic: cinema and the sound of music, edited by Philip Brophy. Sydney: Australian film, television, and radio school. 2000.ISBN 978-1-876351-09-0
• "Operating System for the Redesign of Sonic Reality" inAudio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, edited by Christoph Cox & Daniel Warner. London: Continuum Books. 2004.ISBN 0-8264-1615-2
• "Learning from Lagos: A Dialogue on the Poetics of Informal Habitation" inDavid Adjaye: Making Public Buildings: Specificity Customization Imbrication, edited by Peter Allison. London: Thames & Hudson. 2006.ISBN 0-500-28648-5
• "Drawing the Forms of Things Unknown" and "John Akomfrah in conversation with Kodwo Eshun" inThe Ghosts Of Songs: The Film Art of The Black Audio Film Collective. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2007.ISBN 978-1-84631-014-0
• Post-Punk Then and Now (co-editor, withMark Fisher andGavin Butt). London:Repeater Books. 2016.^[13]

• The Otolith Group homepageArchived 30 January 2020 at theWayback Machine
• Interview with Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun (The Otolith Group) about their works at the MACBA Collection (2011).MP3
• "Archive Portal: Kodwo Eshun's columns",The Wire; October 2015 ("Derek Walmsley picks six columns by Kodwo Eshun in which the future Turner Prize nominee forged a new style of writing about dance music and club culture.")
• Geert Lovink (25 July 2000),"'Everything was to be done. All the adventures are still there' – A Speculative Dialogue with Kodwo Eshun", originally published inTelepolis.
• Dirk Van Weelden,"Some Excursions into Sonic Fiction – A two-step with Kodwo Eshun", Mediamatic.
• Christoph Cox,"Afrofuturism, Afro-Pessimism and the Politics of Abstraction: An Interview with Kodwo Eshun".

• Living people
• 1967 births
• Academics of Goldsmiths, University of London
• Afrofuturists
• Alumni of the University of Southampton
• Alumni of University College, Oxford
• Black British artists
• Black British writers
• British music critics
• English people of Ghanaian descent
• Film people from London
• Philosophers of technology
• The Wire (magazine) writers

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