In this lecture, curator J. Benjamin Burney (Zoid Hæm) explores how the artists in Out of Time engage with time through painting, photography, and sculpture, collapsing Western ideals of past, present, and future into the timeless dimension inhabited by the artist. By doing so, artists reveal the malleability of how we define time, place, and value, challenging the fixed structures that shape history, futurity, and our humanity.
About Out of Time
Time, as we know it, is an imposed structure—measured, quantified, and weaponized. Yet, for those whose histories have been fragmented, erased, or rewritten, time is something to be reclaimed, stretched, and reconfigured. Out of Time: Imagining the Future of America is an exhibition that interrogates temporal dislocation, mythic memory, and speculative futures through photography, painting, and sculpture. It explores how artists resist the linear constraints of Western historiography, instead forging cyclical, nonlinear, and parallel dimensions of time that shape identity, belonging, and nationhood.
J. Benjamin Burney
J. Benjamin Burney (he/him) is a Creative Technologist, photographer, curator, and world-builder whose work fuses photography, film, poetry, digital art, and immersive media. Rooted in Afrofuturism and auto-ethnography, his practice reimagines Black cultural narratives through myth, technology, and speculative design.
As the first student to earn a dual master’s in art Practices and Business from CU Boulder, Benjamin explores the intersection of art, historiography, and economic innovation. Photography is central to his work, serving as both documentary tool and portal, capturing history while distorting time and memory. His lens constructs living archives and speculative ecosystems that challenge dominant narratives.
As the founder of Zoid Art Haus (ZAH), he integrates storytelling, AI, and interactive design to create communal spaces—both digital and physical—where art, economics, and culture intersect. His ultimate aim is to build visual mythologies that redefine Black history, identity, and futurity.