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ANANSI Revolutionary Collective
2022︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
INTERNATIONAL
The ANANSI Revolutionary Collective (ARC000) is a pro-Black, pan-African arts collective that stewards a commons of material resources, infrastructure, people-power, and knowledge. The collective is the steward of the emergent ANANSI philosophy, which is one of Black holistic distribution, seeking to disrupt mass centralization across various disciplines. The collective continually experiments with an emergent collection of collaborative praxis, including collective budgeting, consensus-based decision making, rotational responsibility, reparational funding, and collective mythmaking. We are building a governance model structured around a participatory protocol, which will include guidelines around membership, voting, praxis and project management, and altering the protocol.
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DisCO.coop
2022
BALTIMORE
AMSTERDAM
SPAIN
NAIROBI
DisCO.coop is a non-profit cooperative that produces models for ethical collaborative productive labor in the digital era. They incubate and promote practices that integrate care-based cultural practices, guided learning journeys, and DLT-based technological tools.
They are the creators and stewards of the DisCO (Distributed Cooperative Organisation) philosophy, an organisational model for cooperative groups that combines ideas and practices from cooperativism, the commons, P2P and feminist economics.
During my time with DisCO.coop, I co-designed and facilitated workshops in Baltimore, Amsterdam, and Cape Town; provided my expertise on techno-politics and digital tools both internally and in consideration for the pending Pink Paper; connected the organization with my network of ethical technologists and changemakers; and offered continual highly considered feedback on the outward facing and inwardly practiced philosophy and praxis.
During my time with DisCO.coop, I co-designed and facilitated workshops in Baltimore, Amsterdam, and Cape Town; provided my expertise on techno-politics and digital tools both internally and in consideration for the pending Pink Paper; connected the organization with my network of ethical technologists and changemakers; and offered continual highly considered feedback on the outward facing and inwardly practiced philosophy and praxis.
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Currents.fm
2021
INTERNATIONAL
Currents.fm is an online music streaming platform designed to create sustainable financial support for musicians and collectives. Rather than paying into the platform, fans subscribe or pay one-off “tips” to artists directly. In addition to the namesake music platform, Currents also developed COMMON, a digital club venue that enabled viewers to tip and subscribe to artists during their performances, and to discover new music organically by navigating the site much like one would a festival grounds.
As one of the first employees of the company, I played a critical role in its founding, and saw my job shapeshifting to fit the needs of our artists. My primary focus was on creating a real, caring community. I developed and maintained various initiatives to support and connect artists, including: hosting regular "town hall" events to provide a safe environment for artists to connect with each other on a personal level, establishing and maintaining an asynchronous chat server for ongoing conversations between artists, and experimenting with scheduled and adhoc community events. I also conducted research and experimentation with decentralized and distributed networks, as well as virtual, physical, and hybrid artist communities. From a more creative stand point, I regularly produced, curated, and assisted with our digital festivals including A Moment In Between and 黑美.
As one of the first employees of the company, I played a critical role in its founding, and saw my job shapeshifting to fit the needs of our artists. My primary focus was on creating a real, caring community. I developed and maintained various initiatives to support and connect artists, including: hosting regular "town hall" events to provide a safe environment for artists to connect with each other on a personal level, establishing and maintaining an asynchronous chat server for ongoing conversations between artists, and experimenting with scheduled and adhoc community events. I also conducted research and experimentation with decentralized and distributed networks, as well as virtual, physical, and hybrid artist communities. From a more creative stand point, I regularly produced, curated, and assisted with our digital festivals including A Moment In Between and 黑美.
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Virtual Violence: Vectoralist Class Warfare and Abstract Antagonism
2022
In 2022, my essay Virtual Violence: Vectoralist Class Warfare and Abstract Antagonism was published in Kernel Magazine. In the essay, I put the philosophy of McKenzie Wark, Slavoj Žižek, feminist scholars, Web3 participants, and the techno-skeptical in conversation with one another to define what violence means in this new virtual, vectorlist era. From there, I analyzed the Web3 ecosystem, a battlefield on the frontlines of this disguised evolution, in order to see how “virtual violences” shape our lived reality to ensure that power remains in the hands of a finite elite.
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A Moment In Between
2021
INTERNATIONAL
24 hour Afrofuturist Juneteenth celebration, featuring an international line up of visionary Black artists, activists, and academics. Held virtually in the COMMON Multiverse, the event featured live performances from the Currents community, five themed planets, four embedded WebXR projects from the Traveling the Interstitium series, an experiment in time traveling through past COMMONs, and the Moment In Between stage hosted by The Guild of Future Architects.
Following the event, Martha Pazienti-Caidan and I produced a retrospective of the festival for Resident Advisor’s The Exchange--the first ever two-part episode for the series.
Following the event, Martha Pazienti-Caidan and I produced a retrospective of the festival for Resident Advisor’s The Exchange--the first ever two-part episode for the series.
