No audiotranscription yet

Hello friends and welcome to this episode

of In the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI.

This podcast series focuses on our very

first curated residency where we explored

the theme of AI, time and temporality.

We started with an in-person kickoff week

and digital residency throughout

the summer and a symposium happening

in fall in Kampnagel, Hamburg,

Germany to close the residency.

Our selected residents were the fabulous

and amazing humans in the name

of Kira Xonorika, Dera Luce,

Noam Youngrak Son, Bretas,

and hiba ali.

And they were in creative sparring

partnerships with the talented and beloved

mentors, and in the name of Vanessa A.

Opoku, Petja Ivanova, Idil Galip, Neema

Githere, and Moises Hortà Valenzuela.

In the digital world and apps and the way

that technology circulates, there's a lot

around quickness, fastness, immediacy.

I want to think about digital networks

and technology as sites of healing.

We yield best when we go at our

own pace and center slowness.

In this episode,

you'll hear from our resident, hiba ali,

who's a producer of moving images,

sounds, garments, and words.

Their project for the residency is named

"Cultivate the Somatic Oasis",

a web VR project that uses the immediacy

of technologies and somatic techniques

to slow down time and through three

somatic techniques: looking, rocking,

and breathing restores slowness back

into our bodies by regulating

the nervous system.

This episode was recorded during

the kickoff week of the residency,

where we all together gathered in this

gorgeous house in the nature not

too far from Hamburg in Germany.

It was a beautiful morning where people

were chilling outside, brainstorming,

having some creative ideation,

some other were chilling.

You might hear a lot of background noise

here and there throughout these episodes

because we were trying

to keep it real and real.

Yeah, so enjoy the episodes.

I'm hiba ali.

I'm a digital artist

and thinker and an educator who

uses 3D animation and world-building

as part of my practice.

The work I've been making with digital art

lately has been around

slowing downtime because the digital world

and apps and the way that technology

circulates is a lot around quickness,

fastness, immediacy.

I want to think about

digital networks and technology as sites

of healing affirming

ourselves and practice of world-building

because we can build the world

where there is slowness.

We can build the world.

There is a space for healing.

We don't have to work,

work, work, work, work all the time.

I've been thinking about

that in relation to my project

for the residency.

Do you want to say more about your

personal relationship to time?

Because I know we had some quite funny

conversations actually with the mentors

when we had the very first meeting.

What's up with everyone?

Everybody's like, Oh,

it's a bit f*** up.

How do we show up and also sometimes not

fit the stereotypical expectations

that white supremacy has put on to us.

We are lazy and late

and slow and whatever.

But also it's just tricky in capitalism to

just have a healthy relationship to time.

I don't want to make your

reflections on that.

I grew up as an immigrant who's working

class, grew up for working class in

and outside of Chicago.

I think the need to work and to be

financially stable was a lot of sacrifice

for my parents, and in turn,

changed the way that the idea of family

and community could not be practiced.

A lot of isolation and working all

the time, there tends to be a price that capitalism

extracts, whether it's through lack

of connection, lack of family time,

and other manifestations

that really shape us towards

being isolationist and towards scarcity.

Especially growing up,

financially struggling,

we internalize precarity as a norm.

I will always be struggling,

things like that.

There are messages we tell ourselves,

and we live in those worlds.

Getting older and having the access to see

other ways of being that don't center

that, especially as a Black and Brown

people, being able to not center those

ways of being, we can take and imagine

worlds where and enact those things

that we don't need to speed up,

we can slow down,

and the idea of scarcity,

we don't need to internalize.

It's a journey to get there.

But when we...

And we're always on that path.

I think that's the challenge because the world

continues to, and the way capitalism,

the way extraction,

it's about speeding up-time and taking,

and to not only taking from us,

but also we internalize that mindset.

Now we are enacting that balance, taking

from others so we can lift ourselves up.

It's a lot of work, and it requires to be

present in our bodies,

because that's what capitalism also does.

It takes us away from our bodies into our

minds, and into compartmentalizing

and putting everything away.

What does it take to open that up,

to be more present fully in our whole

bodies, and use that as a space

to imagine and enact?

Because the imagination gives us

inspiration and then enact to our body

and our spirit for a different, a more

loving, maybe more calming way of being.

I love that.

Thanks so much.

And just like, observations,

reflections as to how has the residency

been for you this three or four days

that we've been spending together?

Two more sleeps before the end?

Yeah, it's unbelievable.

It's really unbelievable.

I feel like I'm in some fantasy

world, and I don't want to go.

It feels like I've been here way longer

because time has slowed down, and I

feel so much more rested and present.

My future self is like,

What are the lessons and what are the

experiences of having hair that I want to

hold with me and find a way to practice?

It's like change of scenery,

change of people can change your

whole outlook on the world.

I'm seeing possibilities that I

didn't think were possible for me.

And I find that what's the most endearing

that I'm like,

especially here from the US,

and I'm like, Oh, it's better elsewhere.

It must be better elsewhere.

And then I'm like, oh,

it's same but different.

Meaning the challenges

for the decolonization,

the challenges around racism,

the challenges around classism,

they're here too, and they

just look slightly different.

I have been thinking about the idea

of horizontal solidarities because

the fight, the challenges are everywhere.

And what that looks like can look very

different if we're isolated in

relation to having community and

sharing our challenges together,

sharing our healing together

has to be collective.

Everyone's been so welcoming

and so kind, and it's so sweet.

And then I'm like, Oh,

it's going over our soon?

I feel full of light and I feel full of...

We did a workshop with Care a few days

ago, and we talked about how

we feel when we're leaving.

I'm also like, how did I

feel when I first came, too?

I'm like, I want to...

I want everything to freeze.

That's what I want right now.

But then also I'm like,

I want to take these experiences and hold

them with me as I make the work,

work with my mentor,

and I also think about as mind-expanding

experiences and to hold that with me,

because soon it will feel like

a dream, a really good dream.

So yeah, that's how it's been

my experience at the residency.

Amazing.

Can I give you a hug?

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

That was beautiful.

I love that we have an archive of that.

Thank you so much for listening to this

episode of In the Loop,

by Dreaming Beyond AI,

a residency project made possible by ifa,

Deichtorhallen, and Kampnagel.

Make sure to subscribe on your

favorite podcast platform.

Share that episode with a loved

one who you think would enjoy it.

We'd love to have you as an Instagram

follower, a newsletter subscriber,

and a community lover.

Also, never hesitate to reach out

if you have questions or ideas.

We are at hello@dreaming beyond.ai

tchous and take care.

Hello friends and welcome to this episode

of In the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI.

This podcast series focuses on our very

first curated residency where we explored

the theme of AI, time and temporality.

We started with an in-person kick-off week

and digital residency throughout

the summer and a symposium happening

in fall in Kampnagel, Hamburg,

Germany to close the residency.

Our selected residents were the fabulous

and amazing humans in the name

of Kira Xonorika, Dera Luce,

Noam Youngrak Son, Bretas,

and hiba ali.

And they were in creative sparring

partnerships with the talented and beloved

mentors, in the name of Vanessa A.

Opoku, Petja Ivanova, Idil Galip, Neema,

Githere, and Moises Hortà Valenzuela.

I feel like unionizing with AI

is inevitably a very speculative process

and just like a lot of other circumstances

that we faced in this

late modern capitalism.

In this third episode of In the Loop

by Dreaming Beyond AI,

you will hear from Noam Youngrak Son,

who's a communication designer practicing

queer publishing,

and explore through their work

revolutionary methods

of disseminating deviant narratives.

For the residency,

the project is named "Unionizing

the Speculative: Speculative Fundraising

Towards Generative AI

Creative Worker Unionization".

The project is an urgent response

to the urgent questions such as,

how can creative workers

unionize with generative AI?

How can we, as creative workers,

be accountable to AI-led automation?

What is the role and limitation

of speculation as a strategy in this?

This episode was also recorded during our

kick of week in this really

spacious house in rural Germany.

I gathered with Noam one afternoon and we

went up to this really spacious,

beautiful room full of lights

to just have a conversation.

Again, a lot of background noise here,

some birds, people creating in the

background, walking around, taking naps.

So don't mind that and enjoy the episode.

Hi, subscribers

of Dreaming Beyond AI Podcast.

My name is Noam Youngrak Son.

I'm a communication designer who practice

queer publishing, by which I mean not only

the publishing that involves queer bodies,

but some deviant forms of

spreading information that does not

conform to the capitalist, colonial,

successful patriarchal norms.

I am trained as a communication designer.

I, so as I introduced, I make books.

I facilitate public workshops.

I'm also an occasional writer and a cook.

That's all the different names that I've

been introduced by institutions.

But yeah, that's me.

I am very excited

to document this conversation.

I am very interested in different

implications of speculation.

As a figurative, as an economic.

I think the most

widely used definitions of the word

speculate is, first of all,

more of a figurative speculation,

which is used in the cases, for example,

speculative design, speculative fiction.

It's like a subjective

imagination of the author about

the things that haven't happened yet.

Whereas there's also

financial definition of the word,

which I find really interesting

in relation to the first meaning

of the word, the word,

speculate that I just introduced,

which means to invest in stock or

real estate with hopes for profit

and also bearing the risk for loss.

I think that's

really the area where I find

also AI, which is the topic

of the residency,

really interesting in the sense that...

Well, I think AI was first very widely

involved in the second definition of

speculate in the financial sector that for

a while it has been the machines, these

complex apparatus of exchange

that has been automatically exchanged.

It has been exchanging stocks

at a rate that an average human brain

cannot even trace, which is,

in my understanding, responsible

for also a lot of financial crisis.

I think we are in the phase

where we are

also increasingly being introduced

to forms of AI that are involved

in the first definition of more figurative

speculation by the introduction

of DALL-E and ChatGPT.

I'm just very interested in

what this means, what this intersection

between AIs being involved

in different notions of speculation.

Back to your remark on baking Speculoos.

It's also interesting.

Speculoos, that shares etymology

with speculation, also has two meanings.

From what I understood,

more than one meaning,

like the definition that I was more

familiar with is

this type of spicy biscuit that they have,

the type of gingerbread that they have

in the Dutch speaking part,

like the Netherlands and Flanders and also

in some region of West Germany,

from what I understood.

They're called Speculoos because

they're formed from this mold that has

some relief, a pattern

so that if you cast a biscuit from a mold,

it mirrors the image that the mold

used to contain.

But the other meaning of speculos is

this tool used by gynecologist to open

vagina to be able to see what's happening

inside,

which is the word that I didn't know

in prior, but only realized I didn't know

that those tools were called speculos,

which all relates to the etymology

of speculation to see, to foresee,

to look through, to reflect.

One

of my very serious artistic proposal

that I had for this residency was indeed

to bake Speculoos cookies

and see what can be done about it,

not necessarily bringing into that

horrible, giant opening tool.

But

yeah, maybe this extends to what I

anticipated for the scope of research

that I anticipated for this residency,

which was

unionization with AI in the sense that as

these figurative and generative AI tool

became more available to artists,

I see this

rhetoric increasingly circulating

in the art world, "collaboration with AI".

As an artist, I collaborated with this AI

to create these images that I show in this

gallery, blah, blah, blah,

which has irritated me so much

in the sense that it is deceptive,

first of all,

as if

AI had a certain agency in those artistic

projects,

where what usually happened in most

of the cases was just an artist

subscribing to an AI service.

I think it creates

this confusion between collaboration

that supposes mutual agency in a project

that is fundamentally different from

the relationship of a paid service

provider and the recipient.

Second of all, yes, it indeed

contradicts to what I understand as

a sustainable model of collaboration

that I've been experiencing, which

involves so many other nuances than mere

relationship of paying for the service.

But in fact, it includes

a lot of facilitation work,

managing each other's expectation,

and negotiation and mediation when those

significantly differs from one another.

Also ongoing,

usually unpaid labor of care.

That's why this phrase

seemed so problematic to me

and that made me start questioning

then what it actually means to collaborate

with AI or we're more, fundamentally

speaking, to be able to unionize with AI

in a way that is not anthropomorphic.

I feel like,

as I described the issue of speculation

earlier is largely

a speculative process

in the sense that

I think it's related to this strategy

of colonial capitalism that always

moves the bodies that it exploits

very far from each other to prevent

possible

chances of unionization

and the encounters of solidarity,

so that freelance workers no longer work

in the same office and interact

with each other on a daily basis.

This relates to also some challenges that

I faced when I started thinking about

unionization with AI in the sense that

it unfortunately converges

into the question of resource

and affordability of unionization that I

cannot afford

reaching out and

actively forming relationship with

a lot of workers that are

involved in the ecosystem of AI.

I cannot afford at this point,

unfortunately, going to the labeling

factory that are usually located

in Global South,

exploiting their labor,

extensive labor of

labeling images with tags and flagging

inappropriate statements generated by AI.

I feel like unionizing with AI

is inevitably a very speculative process

and just like a lot of other circumstances

that we faced in this

late modern capitalism.

I think that's the aspect

of this research question that made me

inquisitive about speculation.

I just try to question then what is

the most

accountable way of speculating in this

sense and question if speculation can be

a gesture of unionization.

And if so,

how that can bring us, I mean, us,

the workers in the neoliberal systems

of financialization,

how speculation can bring us

back together or at least a bit closer

what we are,

how we are distributed by the system.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about

how do you feel about

the residency so far?

What are your impressions, things that

you're feeling, interaction with others?

It's chill, which I really appreciate

because in a lot of other residenciess

that I've been, there has been very

strong utilitarian

approach to artistic labor

and this atmosphere of we spend so much

money to bring you artists here together

and you should be

productive in return by creating a lot

of presentable artworks, which

has been very tiring, to be honest.

But so far, the past few days has been

moderated in a very humane way

so that we are in this beautiful house in

rural Germany surrounded by trees,

frogs and snails, and

seeing all those through big windows.

It's very peaceful.

Sometimes it

really matters in this environment,

like the food that we're eating,

the mattress, having

non-leaking bathrooms.

Sometimes it's just so frustrating

that those overpower the pedagogy.

On the one hand, on their very strong

utilitarian pressure of making things, but

also oftentimes not

fully provided with certain human

condition that makes my body available

for that work by living somewhere else.

But so far, that has been managed so

beautifully here, so considerably.

I don't know why this keeps falling

in this loop of institutional critique.

When I was asked about how my experience

here in this residency has been so far.

But I guess it's like a sign of

appreciation that

a lot of things here are working

in the way that things ideally should

work, which I appreciate so much.

It's still sometimes surprising to realize

that this is only the introduction week.

I feel like we've been here for so long

together and did so much together,

even though we have some months of period

that starts

as soon as we return to our home bases

from here, which I'm

also very excited about.

So far, I just have a lot of

loosely bound strands of information

and questions

that by the end of the period will be

hopefully formed into

not necessarily something useful,

but something meaningful, maybe.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening to this

episode of In the Loop

by Dreaming Beyond AI,

a residency project made possible by ifa,

Deichtorhallen, and Kampnagel.

Make sure to subscribe on your

favorite podcast platform.

Share that episode with the loved

one who you think would enjoy it.

We'd love to have you as an Instagram

follower, a newsletter subscriber,

and a community lover.

Also, never hesitate to reach out

if you have questions or ideas.

We are at hello@dreaming beyond.ai

Tchous and take care!

Hello friends, and welcome to this episode

of in the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI.

This podcast series focuses on our very

first curated residency where we explored

the theme of AI, time and temporality.

We started with an in person kickoff week

and digital residency throughout

the summer and a symposium happening

in full in Kampnagel, Hamburg,

Germany to close the residency.

Our selected residents were the fabulous

and amazing humans in the name

of Kira Xonorika, Dera Luce,

Noam Youngrak Son, Bretas and hiba ali.

And they were in creative sparing

partnerships with the talented and beloved

mentors in the name of Vanessa A. Opoku,

Petja Ivanova, Idil Galip,

Neema Githere and Moises Horta Valenzuela.

I like to think about memory as

exercise that we do on the present,

about the past.

So memory is not history, but what we can

do with it in the present,

do with it as political practice,

social practice as well.

In this episode you'll hear from Bretas

who is a visual artist and researcher

whose artistic work revolves around

the imagery of memory, combining politics,

technology and history

in multiple formats.

Among his works,

the creation of AI deepfakes stands out as

a tool for intervening in African

and indigenous memory in Brazil using

artificial intelligence to tension

temporalities and imaginaries.

The first project for the residency is

"The Eye that Portrays" a close up made via

AI upscaling into the eye of an old

Black woman from Bahia, Brazil.

And the second one is “Self-Archive”,

a video art where Bretas used AI deepfakes

to performatively interact

with the archive cloning the 150 years old

portrait faces into his

own, as digital masks.

So I'm Bretas, Brazilian,

24 years old, quite young I think.

Actually I'm trained as an architect,

actually still undergraduate.

I'm a researcher,

mostly research in my artwork as well.

In my academic

my academic work, I research mostly memory

within this research,

photography as a way of assessing this

memory and also archives

and this kind of stuff mostly

portrayed depictions of Black Brazilians

and those archives relating to it as well.

These archives' circulation within Brazil

and Europe and all these kinds of stuff.

Super.

Thank you so much.

Now, we've been talking a lot about time,

temporality, you know tech, algorithm, AI of course,

as the theme of the residency.

So just like your relationship to time

within your work, but also personally,

if you want to share

a little bit about that.

Yeah, my relation to time is certainly

close to my relation to photography.

I'm really fascinated about the fact that

portrait photography is always like trying

to have a moment in time that is I

said that is like frozen in time.

This moment really fascinates me how we

can - true photography to portrays assess

this frozen time after 200 years or so

of photography being taken.

And

I really think he has also to deal for me

with ancestry and how ancestry

relates to time in that sense.

Here I would really like to quote

Joy Buolamwini, that MIT researcher from AJL (Algorithmic Justice League)

that says that we always think about

AI as something from the future,

far thinking, but actually AI is based

on data, and data is history

and so on is memory as well.

I like to think about memory as

exercise that we do on the present,

about the past.

So memory is not history, but what we can

do with it in the present.

Do with it as political practice

or social practice as well.

Super.

Thank you so much.

And now, just like your impression

interactions with others,

we are now having almost

the last day of the residency.

How has it been for you?

The experience, for your body, for your

mind, for your work, inspiration?

Anything that you feel like sharing

about the residency itself?

Nice.

So, yeah, the residency has been amazing.

I came here really stressed and really,

really anxious about all those things.

Actually, it's my first time in Europe,

so, yeah, it was really a new experience

to be here and like, traveling many

airplanes, connections

and all this kind of stuff.

And it was so nice to

get here and realize that this resonance

was not so much about what we can do

with our computers or whatever,

but how is our relation with our bodies

and how it helps us to think about time

and AI together and how to

have a different approach on our

production as artists.

And also try to think it in ways that are

not like,

different ways that AI is usually

presented, that tends to have a really

non-material approach and also

approach that has to do with liberal

ideas of how should we be productive.

I really felt that this residency was

something different from it in a sense

that I felt

engaged in being a better person,

not like a more productive

artist or these kind of things.

Yeah, that's it.

Lindo.

Damo, maravir Gracida,

communication to congressional pleasure.

Thank you so much for listening to this

episode of In the Loop

by Dreaming Beyond AI,

a residency project made possible

by ifa, Deichtorhallenand Kampnagel.

Make sure to subscribe on your

favorite podcast platform.

Share that episode with a loved one

who you think would enjoy it,

and we'd love to have you as an Instagram

follower, a newsletter subscriber,

and a community lover.

Also, never hesitate to reach out

if you have questions or ideas.

We are at hello@dreamingbeyond.ai

tchuss and take care!

Hi, friends, and welcome to this episode

of In the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI.

This podcast series focuses on our very

first curated residency where we explored

the theme of AI, time, and temporality.

Rather than approaching time as an

abstract,

homogeneous measure of universal movement

along a singular axis,

we can think of it as plural, less as

a temporality, than temporalities.

From this perspective,

there is no singular unfolding of time,

but instead very temporal formations

that have their own rhythms,

patterns of consistency and transformation

that emerge immanently out

of the multifaceted and shifted sets

of relationships that constitute those

formations and out of the interactions

among those formations.

This was an extract from the book

"Beyond Settler Time:

Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous

Self-Determination" by Mark Rifkin.

We started our artistic residency

with an in-person kick-off week and

digital residency throughout the summer.

And a symposium is happening

in Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany,

close to the residency.

Our selected residents were the fabulous

and amazing humans in the name

of Kira Xonorika, Dera Luce,

Noom Youngrak Son, Bretas, and hiba ali.

They were in creative sparring

partnerships with the talented and beloved

mentors in the name of Vanessa A.

Opoku, Petya Ivanova, Idil Galip,

Neema Githere and Moisés Hortà Valenzuela.

To me, art is a sacred expression.

It's like sacred transmission.

I'm thinking of the words of

indigenous queer artists, Edgar Fabián Frías

talks about art being this

very magical vehicle to transform your

reality, but also art having the potential

to transmute certain things.

That is really where I've been

with everything and especially with AI.

In this episode of In the Loop

by Dreaming Beyond AI,

you will hear from Kira Xonorika.

Kira Xonorika is an interdisciplinary

artist and writer.

Their work explores multidimensional

connections between ancestry,

futurity, and magic.

Through transcultural, feminist,

and AI-collaborative frameworks,

Xonorika weaves worlds that center

multispecies intelligence to decolonize

binary relations in history.

I'm an artist and writer, researcher.

In my work, I explore

the multidimensional connections between

ancestry, temporality, gender-expansive

constellations, magic, and regalia.

Through transcultural, feminist,

and AI collaborative frameworks,

I weave worlds that center multispecies

intelligence and think about

decolonising history and identity.

Can you tell us a little bit

more about what you're working on,

what we can see in October during

the physical residency in Hamburg?

Yes, I am creating a portal

that will bring together

images of ancestors and images of

bodies that are invoking a refuge

for safety, a refuge for abundance,

a refuge for love for trans

and Indigenous peoples.

It's going to be my first time diving

into moving image, but also sound,

and I'm very excited about that.

It is something that we are talking about

with my mentor, Neema Githere,

who I love so much.

I am just so deeply

inspired by their practice.

It's going to be very

magical, very colorful.

Can you tell us a little bit about what's

your relationship to -or

how it resonates for you-

the theme of this residency,

which is time, temporality,

and its intersection with AI,

how do you see it?

What are the first reflections

that come to your mind?

Well, temporality is something

that I've always been interested.

As a trans-indigenous person,

I have seen that time

for me and for my community where I come

from, it goes at a different

pace in regards to people who are in close

proximity to the colonial

matrix of subjectivity.

It

has really been a process of understanding

how I navigate space with my body,

but also how to jump into other timelines.

I've been thinking a lot for a long time.

My practice has been informed by

Black Quantum Futurism.

There's this phrase that Rasheeda Phillips,

who is part of the collective, has and

they say that to live confinement, you

need to understand the conditions of it.

I really associate that to temporality

and my earlier practice about writing and

theorizing about trans issues

and indigenous issues within arts

to jump into something else.

Because yeah, I feel like that's really

the thing with

epistemic injustice and I

would say just injustice in general is

that it can

make everything cloudy for you or like

very confusing as you navigate life.

And then you understand that,

Oh, this is a system.

How can we challenge it or how can

we move towards something else?

So for many of those reasons, I've been

interested in thinking about temporality.

This response to obviously medical

pathologisation, religious demonisation,

and economic disparity,

and that informs the ways people

can access certain things in life.

And when you have those conditions

in countries in the Global South,

in the Global Majority

that have been called the Global South,

you have a different sense of time

and the things that you can achieve

and the places where you get to be.

In a way, with my practice,

what I want to do is to speculate,

but alchemise those things

from a different plane of existence.

Something that I find very interesting

about my practice is that it

involves a lot of magic.

In a way, I have seen those

changes in my life as well.

So to me, art is a sacred expression.

It's like sacred transmission.

I'm thinking of the words of

indigenous queer artists,

Edgar Fabián Frías, who talks about

art being this very magical vehicle to transform your

reality, but also art having the potential

to transmute certain things.

That is really where I've been with

everything and especially with AI.

That being said, I think that it's important that we are

critical in the ways that AI

has been used and the way AI has been

created from very unethical ways of dealing

with the Earth, of extraction

and displacement as well.

In my practice, I'm interested

in reframing that relationship

in ethical ways.

Thank you so much.

My last question is, how was the

artistic residency for you?

How did you experience it?

Oh, the artistic residency

was like dreaming truly.

It was a lovely space to hang out

with people from all walks of life.

It was just a very warm environment.

It made me realize certain things because

I remember that I wrote in my application

that I want to create new memories and

I couldn't find the words

to articulate that.

Then I met Neema, and Neema talks about

"reindigenizing as a process of rememory".

The first part of that is being the

decomposition of the colonial systems.

I am learning so much from

all the mentors, but also all

the people who are not mentors.

The relationships that we got to build

were very meaningful.

I am looking forward to more.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode

of In the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI,

a residency project made

possible by ifa, Deichtorhallen and Kampnagel.

Make sure to subscribe on your

favorite podcast platform.

Share the episode with someone who you

think would enjoy it,

and connect with us on Instagram, via our

newsletter, and be part of our community.

If you have any questions or ideas,

we are at hello@dreamingbeyond.ai

Until next time, take care!

Hello friends and welcome to this episode

of In the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI.

This podcast series focuses on our very

first curated residency where we explored

the theme of AI, time and temporality.

We started with an in-person kickoff week

and digital residency throughout

the summer and a symposium happening

in fall in Kampnagel, Hamburg,

Germany to close the residency.

Our selected residents were the fabulous

and amazing humans in the name

of Kira Xonorika, Dera Luce,

Noam Youngrak Son, Bretas,

and hiba ali.

And they were in creative sparring

partnerships with the talented and beloved

mentors, and in the name of Vanessa A.

Opoku, Petra Ivanova, Idil Galip, Neema Githere and Moises Hortà Valenzuela.

And I was like, Okay, now I get it.

I understand how by being present,

you could still affect

the past and the future.

Because if you are connected to everything

at once, then healing in the present

is affecting those spaces as well.

So when I think about generations,

then it's like, okay, then I understand

how you can affect your ancestors.

Your ancestors are affecting you

and your descendants and all of this.

And so with HealGPT,

I want to explore this idea further.

In

this episode of In the Loop by Dreaming

Beyond AI, you will hear from Dera Luce

Dera Luce is a Nigerian-American essayist,

speculative fiction writer,

and multidisciplinary artist

who calls Berlin home.

His stories explore queerness,

linguistics, shifting realities,

and other extraordinary experiences

that he is still finding the words for.

Dera is currently writing a novel

for black, queer, and trans young adults.

Hey.

Hi, Dera

hi.

Welcome to the Dreaming Beyond AI: In

the Loop podcast.

We're so happy to have you here and I'm

really looking forward to the conversation

that we're going to have together.

I'm also looking forward to it.

Awesome.

Okay.

I'm really happy to have you

and the listeners cannot see,

but we have big smiles on our screen.

My first question is going to be,

could you tell us a little bit

of yourself, who you are,

where you're coming from,

what person you are, anything

that you want to mention, really.

Yeah, okay.

My name is Dera Luce.

I'm an artist.

Interestingly,

I used to identify primarily as a writer,

but these days, especially this year,

I've been doing so many different things.

With Dreaming Beyond AI,

my project is actually a music project.

And then I've also gotten into the idea

of woodworking this year.

I'm trying to learn how to do this.

And what else do I do?

I make videos, and I used to do that,

especially when COVID started

and I had nothing to do.

I was just making YouTube videos.

I would like to maybe get back into doing

this at some point, but there's no rush.

And when I got back from the residency

kickoff, then I was filming

for a TV show and I was an extra.

But maybe now I'm doing some- acting?

-small acting things.

I don't know, I just say artist now

because that encompasses a lot of stuff.

Then my next question is you're an artist

and you are one of the Dreamig and Beyond AI

In the Loop artists this year.

Can you tell us a little bit about your

work and particularly your

work for Dreaming and Beyond AI?

Yeah, can I read the thing

that I wrote for my project?

Because I think that's the most

succinct way to describe it.

Okay.

My project is called Heal GPT,

Slowed Plus Re verb.

It's a music project about healing

generational, physical,

and psychological trauma.

So that's what the GPT

stands for in this case.

The lyrics written in English

and machine-translated Ebo, Ebo is my

family's language,

explores the shape of time as it relates

to the nebulous borders of generations.

Our present healing

reverberates through time.

Neither time nor healing is linear.

We can access peace if we are brave

enough to process the echoes of our pain.

Using the language of artificial neural

networks and machine translation as

a mirror for EMDR, rem sleep,

and trauma/data processing,

I interrogate the pace at which we

expect healing to happen.

Actually, when I saw the open call

for this, I was like,

Oh, this is so exciting.

This is perfect for me.

I was just like, Yeah,

I'm going to get this.

I'll be there.

I put the dates in my calendar.

I didn't really know exactly what

my project was going to be,

and it actually changed.

I don't even remember

what my first idea was.

But I know when I was emailing Nushin

and I was like, Can I just submit now?

Because I'm so excited.

It was a completely different project,

and I didn't submit that one.

Then I actually had a dream and I woke up

and I was like, Oh, I need

to change this completely.

That's the project that I have now.

I don't really remember what that dream

was, but it was literally from a dream.

I was like, Oh, that's good.

I have a therapist who we meet

online and we do EMDR also online.

Emdr is like,

it's a form of therapy that's

specifically for processing trauma.

And the cool thing about it is you can

process trauma a lot faster than you

could with just talk therapy alone.

And it involves bilateral stimulation.

So you can either move your eyes back

and forth while describing the experience

or thinking about the experience,

or you can tap.

So I tap my shoulders at a certain

speed that my therapist sets.

I think when I got this idea,

maybe that night I had

been doing EMDR with my therapist

and something was being processed.

I was just like,

Oh, yeah, I think I had been nervous about

what would come up because EMDR really

just opens new things.

Maybe during the session, you don't...

Either I could be really overwhelmed

and cry and all these things and flooded

with the things I was not processing,

or you do the session and you're like,

Huh, that's not what I expected.

Then maybe it didn't work.

But then later you find out,

yeah, actually it's working.

Maybe with this case,

it was that I didn't feel so much and I

thought, okay, maybe it's not working.

Then I was scared then, well, then what's

going to come up when I'm on my own?

I don't really want to go to sleep because

what if I have terrible dreams about

this stuff I'm trying to process?

Well, then actually,

it was really nice because what happened

is I went to sleep,

and then I woke up in the middle

of the night and just was having

a bunch of memories about that time.

I had been processing a traumatic thing,

but actually what

came up was all the positive memories

that I forgot from that time.

It was really nice.

When I say, Well, we can access peace if

we're brave enough to process the echoes

of our pain, it's like, yeah,

because I was scared to do

this to dive into the pain.

But then actually, the thing that I

was afraid of didn't happen.

What came out was all these

things that made me smile.

I was remembering the first time

I went to a queer bar in St.

Louis and just all these

really wonderful things.

I also find it interesting,

generational trauma.

Why is it that we feel things

that is maybe not just our own,

but it's stuff that was passed down

and there's epigenetics, but it's more,

I think, than just what's

happening at the cellular level?

Because I knew about this open call,

I kept thinking about time,

and I realized, yeah, healing really

isn't linear and neither is time.

This is already something...

These are things that I believe that now

and I was putting them together.

I was even thinking with a generation,

what is a generation?

Why is it if you think about

people asking, Am I Gen Z?

Am I a millennial?

We don't really know.

Even this is very nebulous.

Then if you think about

when people say that you can heal

by healing yourself,

you can also do the work of healing seven

generations back and seven

generations forward.

Many cultures have this idea.

Then I was like, How does that work?

How are you feeling

backwards and forwards?

But then the more I thought of it,

I was like, Well, it's not

really backwards and forwards.

It's not a line.

If you think of it as maybe a spiral

or everything happening all at once.

The time that I've experienced

that was when I was meditating.

At that time in my life, I was

feeling really stressed about

financial security, housing security.

I meditated.

In that meditative space,

I actually felt very safe.

I realized, yeah, I feel abundant and I

don't have to stress about not having

the apartment that I want or the money

because I know in the

future I will have it.

In that meditative space,

it felt like I have it now because I was

connected to the future self as well.

I was like, okay, now I get it.

I understand how by being present,

you could still affect the past

and the future because if you are

connected to everything at once,

then healing in the present is

affecting those spaces as well.

So when I think about generations,

then it's like, okay, then I understand

how you can affect your ancestors.

Your ancestors are affecting you,

and your descendants and all of this.

And so with HealGPT,

I want to explore this idea further and

think about

just all the ways that we're connected

and how doing the work of healing one's

own trauma also affects

your entire family and...

Yeah, I'm still playing with it.

I think the AI aspect, so I talked

about using machine translated Ebo.

My family is Nigerian,

but specifically our tribe is Ebo,

and that existed before Nigeria

was even created, right?

That's what I identify

with more as my family's tribe.

I don't speak Ebo because many

reasons, but it's sad for me,

and I would love to learn it.

But since I don't really have access

to that right now, what I could

do is use Google translate.

Ibo is on there.

I could put things on there,

and it would not be very accurate,

and it wouldn't even be in my dialect.

But I was thinking if I do that, I'll

just be like, Yeah, it is what it is.

And because of colonialism and all sorts

of things,

diaspora, having to move,

I don't have access

as much as I want to my family's language,

but I can use what I have and just

send it out as it is like an imperfect

version of me speaking

my heritage language.

Love it, especially when you said

healing is

processing the echoes of your pain

and then all the other parts of

that moment also comes

up and maybe you have...

It's a whole now.

It's not like this fragmented,

only painful experience and memory,

but it's something more complex

and that contains also pain, but also

maybe happy, or other emotions and so on.

How is this going to be a music

project and how is it going right now?

Yeah.

I play piano and I can sing,

but the technological aspect

of it is very new to me.

I wanted to play with electronic music,

but also a specific sound of electronic

music, which is slowed and reverb.

Whatever the sound ends up sounding like,

whatever this song ends up sounding like,

I will then slow it down.

I want to have this reverb because

this is also a sound of our time.

In the last few years,

it's really caught up.

Whether it's a slowdown song or a sped-up

song, this is something that is

really speaking to us right now.

I want to include that in the analysis

or whatever I'm doing.

I still have to learn

a lot of things, actually.

I have to learn how to use these tools

to do all the sound modifications.

But I know I can do it.

I'm excited.

That's also where the AI can come

into play because actually,

my mentor, Moises, was showing me

this software called Music Gen.

Basically, you can just type some

keywords that describe the

sound that you have in your head,

and then it will do its best to produce

that, and it produces

it in 30-second clips.

Basically, the way this works is if

on Spotify or whatever,

the songs are tagged,

whether it's by genre,

chill, hip hop, whatever,

you are using those kinds of keywords,

and it's accessing songs that it

knows that are tagged like this.

Then somehow, I don't

know what's going on.

It's making its own version of this based

on a bunch of songs and producing a new

never before heard song or soundbite.

I'll be using this as well, I think,

and seeing what else I can play

with in terms of software.

Then it's great that this is also like

learning and discovery and experimentation

phase for you, which makes it,

I think, all the more exciting.

One other question about

the AI aspect of it.

These tools that we're talking about,

be it Google Translate or other AI tools,

are also problematic on so many levels,

whether it is about the data,

where it's coming from,

the way it is being used,

and who profits from it,

the taxonomies that they're governed by,

so on and so forth.

How do you deal with this aspect

when you are bringing these tools

into such also, I think maybe personal,

vulnerable, or even spiritual or

sacred part of your being and feeling.

Yeah, that's a good question,

and it's something that my stance

on it has changed and changes.

I think in the past, I would feel like,

What can I do to get away from Google,

use DeepL instead?

Which is DeepL is actually a better

translator, in my opinion, but also just

feeling really uncomfortable with

these big corporations having all of our

data and not trusting that it

will even be there in the future.

What if the cloud disappears or something?

Just being like, How do we hold

on to these archives and everything?

Then with social media also just feeling

like we're just being sucked in and it's

affecting the way that we think and how

can I manage my relationship with it?

But then this year,

I think things are shifting for me,

where actually my goal for the year

was to become chronically online.

I understand that people want to step

back, but I tend to be someone who does

a lot of processing alone,

and then I just take so much time

and process that I end up

maybe not sharing something.

I wasI want to be more

in the moment, actually.

I want to be able to just post things

on social media in the moment.

I

think it was helpful for me to go

to an extreme so that I can know whether I

like it or not, because if I'm just online

all the time, then I would, I think,

get past some internal hurdle that is

making it hard for me

to interact socially right now.

Then after I've experienced enough

time in that extreme, I could be like,

Okay, now it's easier to dial back

and have a more moderate approach.

But then also when I was surrounded by all

these creative people for the kickoff,

and I was having a conversation with,

I think, Nema and some other people about

social media and how you

can't really just reject it.

I mean, you can, but it's like rejecting

parts of yourself that you don't like.

We're all putting ourselves out there.

If we don't want to address what's going

on in this digital realm,

that's just the same as not

wanting to address things that we

have inside of ourselves.

I was like, Oh, okay, interesting.

With social media and technology,

instead of running away from it

and saying, I don't like how this is

going, even with AI, people are like, Oh,

this is happening too fast,

or it shouldn't happen.

It's happening.

It's happening because we are creating it.

It's coming from us.

What can we do instead of trying to stop

it is just maybe

integrate it and integrate it in a way

that feels safe in the

safest way possible.

That's what I'm thinking now with

Google and all these big companies.

I

just got a new phone and it's a Google

phone and I almost didn't want the Google

phone because then they have all my stuff,

but they already have all my stuff.

I'm just trying to figure out how to

move towards the future where it's like,

yeah, to be honest,

it probably will be very heavily

integrated with technology and how do we

cope with that and how do we

make peace with that also.

Interesting.

Yeah, I guess it's experimenting and

making your own experience and opinion

of it and appropriating it maybe in a way

that makes sense for you

and also using it as a

space where you can push your maybe

boundaries and certain

limitations that you might have about

sharing parts of your

psyche and in your person.

Thank you for sharing that as well.

My last question is,

so we had our artistic residency,

physical residency, which was amazing

in Hamburg a few weeks ago in June.

How did it go for you to be in community

with other artists and mentors and

people from the team.

Did it change anything for you

in terms of where you are?

Yeah, just about your experience.

Oh, my gosh.

This is such a huge question.

I mean, it's a huge question

because the answer feels very huge.

It really changed me.

I knew this going in.

I was like, Yeah, this is a life-changing

opportunity, and that's why I'm

so excited to be a part of it.

But I didn't anticipate exactly

how it would change my life.

So I thought maybe like,

yeah, it's nice that I can be paid

for my work, and that's great.

And also

being seen as an artist and having

a little bit more visibility,

that's also great.

But I think

the huge change that I'm still integrating

right now is that the people that I met

and the experiences that I had at the

kickoff week alone really changed me.

And it actually wasn't easy to do this

because I felt that at the residency,

I was really being myself.

Then that was hard to be seen in that way.

Honestly, the beginning was pretty rough.

I had so much anxiety becauseAnd

I didn't really make the connection that

why I was feeling anxious is because I was

not masking as much as I might

do around some strangers.

So yeah, then I felt very seen

and I felt very vulnerable.

But then I realized, okay, but

me not masking is actually a sign of trust

and trusting myself to do that and also

trusting people that are around me.

And so even that was a healing experience,

because I went through the discomfort

and then towards the middle and the end

of the residency, I

was not feeling this anxiety.

And I just learned so many things.

I had this experience many times where I

would think that someone else is

thinking something unfavorable about me.

And then I would figure out,

find out that actually they thought that I

was thinking something

unfavorable about them.

And then it was like, Oh, my gosh, we

should just not be worrying about this.

Actually, we all like each other

and we're just trying to connect.

The next times when that was happening,

I was like, No, don't think that they're

thinking this because they're not and they

actually likedlike you, so just stop.

That really helped.

Then also this somatic workshop

that we did with Kare, it was...

Wow.

We had this whole thing where it's just

like, Yes, thank you so much, Care.

This thing about just imagining things

in your future self when we were supposed

to imagine what we're like when we walk

out of the house that we were staying in.

It was very near future.

Yeah, I was imagining all these things,

but it actually happened.

All of these ways that I wanted to feel.

I was on the train to Hamburg,

and I could feel it.

I could feel in my body that I was

just different and more confident.

And it has just remained with me.

I just felt like, Oh,

I can't go back to the person that came

that entered the space.

And now I just have to figure out how

to navigate this new person

who is in this body.

And another thing that I got

from the residency is just

the understanding of like, Yeah, I'm

an artist and I'm surrounded by artists.

I really appreciated everyone's

energies at the residency.

Also, everyone's so unique.

I noticed people would not

hide who they were.

They wouldn't try to conform and make

their energies like other people

or show up in a different way.

There were some people who were more quiet

and there were some people

who were more expressive.

Seeing people really just stick

to who they were made me feel more safe

to do that for myself because I was like,

If I'm appreciating this person's

uniqueness,

then I need to be doing the same for

myself and just staying true to who I am.

I also had so many moments during the week

where I would be like, Wow,

this person is so creative,

or I just love their outfit,

or I was not expecting them

to do this really weird thing.

I like to do weird things,

and this person likes to do weird things.

What a great coincidence that I'm in this

place with people who like

these things that I like.

Then it was literally the last night where

I just figured out

that it's not because...

The reason that I was having all these

little pleasant surprises is because I'm

around people who are also artists,

and that's why everyone is so cool.

It's like, Yeah,

because they're all artists,

and that's what artists are like,

and I'm one of those people.

I was also validating for myself

that I'm in the right space and around

people that I want to be with and that,

yeah, I can validate myself as an artist

both internally and externally,

which is something that I was

saying in the workshop with Care.

So really life changing, body changing,

mind changing, everything.

And that was just the beginning

of the residency, so wow.

Wow.

Okay, I need the moment to...

Let's say this...

I love, love, love everything you share.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing these

things with us, your lovely words

and looking forward to the physical

exhibition in October.

Thank you so much, Dera.

Thank you.

Thank

you so much for listening to this episode

of In the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI,

a residency project made possible by ifa,

Deichtorhallen, and Kampnagel.

Make sure to subscribe on your

favorite podcast platform.

Share that episode with the loved

one who you think would enjoy it.

We'd love to have you as an Instagram

follower, a newsletter subscriber,

and a community lover.

Also, never hesitate to reach out

if you have questions or ideas.

We are at hello@dreamingbeyond.ai

Tschüss and take care!

[00:00:00.000] - Speaker 1

I believe that today we see AI as this big terrifying thing without really understanding that it only just represents phases and layers of our own intelligence.

[00:00:18.530] - Speaker 2

Hola, lovers and friends of Dreaming Beyond AI! Welcome back to this podcast series, In the Loop. It is really good to be back. It has been a minute, it has been a minute, but you know, episodes come out when episodes come out, because what is time anyways? If you have been here before, welcome back. If you're new here, welcome also. Dreaming Beyond AI is a platform for critical and constructive knowledge, visionary fiction, speculative arts, and community organizing around artificial intelligence. And in this podcast series, we're all about opening up new dimensions of interaction and challenging the current perceptions and narratives around AI, technology, algorithms. And we want to reclaim technology as a space for marginalised bodies and build an archive of alternative realities. I'm your host, Sarah, and I'm so excited today for this episode that is going to be really fantastic with this amazing artist called Zas Ieluhee, who's a visual artist and independent researcher based in France. Their work revolves around memetics, quantum physics, in particular light as a physical phenomenon. And they work with a mix of education with introspections with collages, abstract art, internet memes, and workshops. And you might have heard that name before because Zas Ieluhee was part of the contributors of Dreaming Beyond AI back in the days, with a piece that was called Light Blosons, that was a series made to illustrate how close the human psyche, AI, and machine learning really are.

[00:01:51.160] - Speaker 2

The artist strongly believes that what we call AI today is in reality a one layer of animal/human intelligence. In this episode, we talk about Badushka, who is a digital character representing an introspective influencer that the artist can just play with with no pressure, but who's also the main face of the 'Human dot bot' project. We talked about memetics, we talked about the wealth of black cultures and African spiritualities, among many exciting, beautiful, and meaningful things. So enjoy the episode.

[00:02:27.330] - Speaker 2

So Zas, thank you so much for being part of In the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI for this new podcast recording. I really, really appreciate your time, your presence, your existence. We're going to spend a few minutes together just talking about you, about your work, your inspiration. We've had the privilege of collaborating with you before and being in community a little bit. We just really wanted to take the opportunity to just highlight you and be in conversation with you about the things that you're working on at the moment. Yeah, To start with, maybe just if you could tell us about your artist's name, its origin, how did it came about, and a bit more about who you are.

[00:03:09.150] - Speaker 1

I took a class when I was in second year of business school where you had this old white man teaching us about mythos and their correlation with sounds. And he had me realize that my language, my native language, which is Bamiléké, more specifically, Bayangam, is something that is closely related to ancient Egyptian. And so I decided then to choose my artist's name depending on ancient Egyptian language. And so when I was translating the world, the moon, into ancient Egyptian, it gave me Zas Ieluhee. So that's where it comes from. I have a very close relationship with the moon. I always end up being connected to it somehow. For example, my partner is Algerian, and she's Muslim. At least she was born in a Muslim faith, Muslim confession. And basically, when she asked me what was the name that I would think of if I wanted to be converted into Islam, I said that I wanted to be called Badr بدر. And that is actually a name that I find very beautiful in itself, and it still means the moon, it means full moon. I always end up really connected to the moon.

[00:04:47.600] - Speaker 1

That's where my name comes from.

[00:04:49.510] - Speaker 2

Amazing. Beautiful. I love that. Isn't there a... Because I try to be more and more connected to the moon myself, actually. There's an upcoming moon in Taurus, no? Full Moon in Taurus?

[00:05:00.520] - Speaker 1

There's a full moon coming indeed. I don't know if it's in Taurus, to be very honest, but I usually just work with the different phases of the moon. So usually the full moon is the moment where you want to release energy, where you want to let go of stuff that maybe make you more heavy or you feel are not serving you anymore. And the new moon is the moment where you actually are just affirming intentions and goals and aspirations for the future cycle coming.

[00:05:34.230] - Speaker 2

Beautiful. I try to also be more intentional about that. So yeah, thank you for that.

[00:05:41.090] - Speaker 2

Can you maybe tell us a bit more about your practice? I know that there's a lot of beautiful links. Actually, if we go on your website, which I will link in the description of the episode, there is also, yes, a mention of the moon, but it's very clear that you also work with technology, a bit of AI, visual art as part of your practice. If you can tell us, what are your inspirations? What are you excited about in your practice these days?

[00:06:05.750] - Speaker 1

I am a neurodivergent person, so I think a lot, and I think about a lot of things and connect them together. I think that's why my art somehow touches many different subjects. My main inspiration and my main goal when I was creating was to make sure that black people could identify themselves. And then it became more broad, and that statement became, I just want humans to know what a human is. So that's why I created, for example, my YouTube channel called Human dot bot. That's the name of the original project. And basically there I wanted to maybe study and comment on different phases and different events that took place and are taking place in our lives as human beings living on Earth, whether it be pop culture, political events, climate change, all of that. I wanted us to relate to it in a more incarnated way rather than having this very false idea of what a human is. And then just try to distance yourself from it because you were so traumatized or like disgusted by the culture and people that you may be interacted with. Then on the other side, I also like to research memetics.

[00:07:25.020] - Speaker 1

I love memetics, I got to learn about it, I think about four years ago when I was working with the UN on their study called Metaphors in Domination. And the study that I actually asked them to maybe rephrase and call Metaphors in power because domination is a very strong world. And so from that collaboration, I created a type of language that did not have words. It had colors. It had symbols, and they were taking some type of universal inspiration in different mythos and different sciences all around the world. And from there, I started getting more into memetics and what concepts really meant for human beings. And from there, I became more like an abstract artist.

[00:08:22.500] - Speaker 2

I love how you just dropped that you worked with the UN like that. Please tell us more.

[00:08:29.120] - Speaker 1

I mean, it It was luck. It was not only luck, but it was also network. So I think that it's super important to still state this. I don't think that's just my raw talent that had me work for them. I think it's the fact that I knew people also who worked there and believed in my work. And so I was first offered the proposition to illustrate this specific study. But when I read the study, I could see that it was not in alignment with what I believed in. And so I asked him if I could maybe rewrite it with him and just rework the whole concept and the different images that they were trying to convey. For example, during one of the first sessions, I could read that one of the studies was comparing stuff like crime to a virus. And I was like, you can't really see crime as a virus because crime is not...Things are not outside of their own context. When you put crime into context, crime is a byproduct of poverty, of oppression, and just global violence taking place in people's lives. So because the human mind is reproducing what it is most accustomed to.

[00:09:49.040] - Speaker 1

Of course, if you're treating people with violence, they will become violent themselves. So to me, that's not like a virus. And if we see it as a virus, then there are chances that maybe be you are the person who is creating that virus. So that was one of the very first points that we had to be right together. I don't know if I have the right to say that, but anyways. And then following along the different months that we kept on collaborating, I started becoming more and more interested into using this opportunity as a way to display my attraction and appeal for many different sciences and also for AI, because I believe that today we kind of see AI as this big terrifying things without really understanding that it only just represents phases and layers of our own intelligence. So I took as an event that was my biggest inspiration for this whole series That was the meeting between AlphaGo and one of the first, the best Go player in the world who is Korean. I don't remember his name, but basically a tournament was organized that lasted, I think, six days between AlphaGo and that specific player.

[00:11:19.630] - Speaker 1

And AlphaGo is an intelligence that is still being developed by Google, Google and their labs. And so that very cocky Go player thought that he would win because to him, losing against an AI just wasn't possible. But AlphaGo already beat many people before him. And so when he was confronted to AlphaGo, he lost five times out of six. The only time he actually won was when he believed in luck. Basically, what happened is that he was like, "fuck it, I'm going to play something very random and see how it goes". And because AlphaGo couldn't predict what was happening then, it lost track of the whole game and lost. So they call it the God Hand today, the specific position. And I used it for one of my images, and I actually used the different positions of the little Go pieces to represent different human beings and how they were being developed in the world, depending on where they came from and the atmosphere and all of that. So yeah, that's the main piece of this collaboration to me.

[00:12:45.610] - Speaker 1

Wow. And also just real quick to reframe, because I think we still see these institutions, of course, elitist and prestigious, but really, obviously, clearly from everything that you just described and in general, it's not like, Oh, my God, you work with the UN. It's like, Oh, my God, the UN work with you. They're lucky that they were able to work with you. So let us reframe real quick.

[00:13:08.080] - Speaker 1

Thank you.

[00:13:11.580] - Speaker 2

That's such a wild story as well. The Go platform is still being developed?

[00:13:19.840] - Speaker 2

Yeah. Basically, it's an intelligence that is basically just basic... Sorry. It's basic machine learning. You are confronting one intelligence in front of different players, and from that they learn, and they keep playing against themselves. And because they keep playing against themselves, they can predict tons of different scenarios. I think at the moment that he was playing against this specific player where he had about 10,000 different scenarios playing. And so that's why whatever the player was doing was so predictable, because AlphaGo already knew that and already played that against themselves. So yeah. But to me, it's really just like a faith. It's like allowing one human being to have the time and the luxury to just play with themselves. We don't have that luxury at the moment, so of course, we're not going to get to AlphaGo's level. But if we are ever given that moment and that chance, I think that it wouldn't be so difficult. We have so many intelligent, thoughtful minds living on this one and they had lived on in this world that, I don't know. To me, it's just one layer of intelligence.

[00:14:36.960] - Speaker 2

Absolutely. I think also the notion of time and leisure and being able to try things and take our time with things is massive. It's obviously a major focus that Dreaming Beyond AI had over the last few months with our reflections around AI, temporality and time. I also want to dive in one of your projects that's called Universe Other Memories, where there's a focus on time and temporality as well, which I found super interesting. Maybe if you can tell us more about the creation process of that digital exhibition. I know there are also links with mental health, and how do we deal with that as well?

[00:15:17.420] - Speaker 1

So The Universe and Other Memories is a project that I grew over the years. It didn't start with abstract art. It actually started with my first exhibition, physical exhibition. That's how I first called it. And the reason why I call it The Universe and Other Memories was because I was referring to the idea of a mother. During this exhibition, I was showing pieces that I made, collages that I made that really were telling of the story of the divine feminine, and what I believe is the love and affection that you're seeking from a mother. So being what it is, the feminine force, To me, represents God. It represents creation, creation of life, and creation of different stories, because through your children, you are experimenting different spaces of life. So that's where it comes from. That's its origin. Now, when I translated it to the digital world and to IMVU, which is the places where you can actually see the exhibition now, my goal was to make sure that people could kind of get the same feeling without looking at figurative work, but more like abstract work. Those are pieces that for some I didn't, I never showed.

[00:16:42.170] - Speaker 1

And also, those were also pieces that for some I showed on my Instagram, but because they were seen as flat images, people don't really have the time and the opportunity to lose themselves into that. The abstract pieces that I make, they reach to me as being more emotional, emotional base. So I just wanted a place for people to maybe connect with that emotion themselves that they have, they themselves possess and sometimes maybe lost touch with. Because of life in this Earth at the moment, many people, especially Black people, don't have the luxury to deal with their own emotions, even though they have to and they're forced to in order to regulate themselves and not completely be insane. I wanted it to be a place where you can have healing. And also IMVU is a platform where you can, for less than maybe a euro, you can get yourself a very fancy dope outfit. You can just maybe come with your avatar, look very good, and just take pictures in front of great pieces.

[00:17:52.700] - Speaker 2

Amazing. I absolutely love that. You did mention this aspect that specifically for Black people, it is tricky to have access to your emotion. I do see that Blackness, maybe in terms of identity or personal experiences or inspiration, is something that's important in your work. I want to also talk about the importance of Black feminism, specifically, and the influence that this has in your work. I know that you worked with really cool Black-centered platforms. I also saw on your website, Afropunk. For the French people who will be listening, Mwasi, Revue assiégé.E.s who are amazing platform that I super admire, who are a big inspiration to my work and my Black feminist practice as well. In terms of the impact that this has, the things that you may be reading, listening to, the people that you're hanging out with that are embodying this Black feminist practice, how does that look like?

[00:18:45.250] - Speaker 1

So I first was introduced to Black feminism, or more like womanism, when I was about 14 years old. I was on Tumblr, scrolling down stuff, getting more and more interested with the... Specifically the American political climate. And at that time, Black Lives Matter was already something because they were very much concentrated on talking about the violence happening in Harlem or the Bronx. I remember that I was already 14. I already saw people getting shot in the street. But then I was introduced to Audrey Lord, Maryse Condé, Toni Morison, all of those beautiful Black femmes that actually build such a very strong legacy for people today. And so growing up, I already knew that I... Not really that I identify with Black feminism, but I was concerned, and I felt concerned with issues concerning, like regarding Black women and Black femmes all around the world. Now, when it comes to my work with Mwasi, with Science Girls, with Revue Assiég.é.E.s. It's thanks to Fania Noël, I'd say, because Fania Noël is the common denominator in all of those events. Most of them, actually, She created Revue Assiég.é.E.s. She is one of the founding members of Mwasi, and she trusted my work a lot.

[00:20:25.850] - Speaker 1

I even did the cover of her first book. And so, yeah, I think that it's thanks to her believing in me, not only that, but also me collaborating with my partner in those different projects that we were able to build a stronger presence and have a stronger personality for those different projects. When it comes to Afropunk, it was me working in Science Girls. People were very happy with my humor. And I still have in my other home the posture that I was displaying on our stand in the activism role, which was pretty much like an homage to Solange, where you had this big, like wireship, that's basically representing white people wanting to touch people's hair. You can also see it on my website, actually. But And I even translated it because it's a bit of a comic. It's a comics, basically. So that's when I first tried to play with different mediums. Now, when it comes to Revue Assiég.é.E.s, I joined it because I love the concept. I was there for about 2-3 years. The first year, we were talking about the notion of utopias and what they were representing for Black people.

[00:22:00.690] - Speaker 1

And I was so happy because I could first connect with the poems made by Kiyémis, where she also was talking about the different ideas of utopia, not only that, but also Afropessimism, which is a current that I relate more to today than Afro-feminism, to be very honest. I also participated in the creation of the second issue that I worked on, which was the one about transmission. And in that review, in that issue, I was able to first dabble with memetics and write papers on it. And the one that I wrote in it was titled Memetics. And basically, it's a bit between means and ethics. And I was talking about how this notion of memetic warfare, which is colonizing someone without them even realizing, is something that is prevalent and that has started even before that concept was created and developed by NATO. So, yeah, to me, those are different platforms. Films that I was part of for me to share ideas and for me to make sure that people had somehow a broader apprehension of what was happening to them, rather than just focus on this specific idea of I'm a feminist, I'm Afro-pessimist, I'm Afropolitan, all of that.

[00:23:41.990] - Speaker 2

Beautiful. Thanks so much. Just coming back real quick on the concept of memetics that you just mentioned. I know that you have an upcoming article for the University of MIM that you briefly told me about in our exchange while preparing for this episode. If you could tell us more, what's your relationship with that? How did it come I mean, you did mention within the UN story that it was during that time that you started to play around with memes, I believe. But what's up with memetics? What's your relationship with that? And how does it link with your practice?

[00:24:14.350] - Speaker 1

I have many projects coming up in correlation with Black people and memetics. If you are someone that evolves a lot on the Internet, if you're an Internet child just like me, You see that we are at the origin of many viral memes. Black people are always at the center. We make things go around. When African-Americans decided that they did not want to create trends anymore on TikTok, it went blank. No one was active on there. So that's why I also want to focus so much on the medics, because people tend to think that memetics comes from the idea of a viral internet memes. But as actually the opposite. So memetics, the term was created by Dawkins in the '70s or '80s, I believe, where he basically was studying notion of concept as being genes. So instead of influencing somebody's phenotype, they are influencing cultures. So they can die out, mutate, couple together, and all of that. And I really enjoyed that because that's how I already understood means and concept as a whole. So when I decided to maybe... I decided to contact the University of Memes in order to work with them and be part of their next project, I was so happy to see that they accepted me because I actually did not think that that would be possible, but I was very proud.

[00:25:52.940] - Speaker 1

And basically this article, I titled it Light Work. The reason why they wanted it to be called Light Work is because light is such a very interesting phenomenon. It's where reality is engraved. It has to do with Black people, but it's also the idea of lightness and something that doesn't have to be so heavy on people's shoulders, even though the origins and the whole context is heavy itself. So the first half of the article is basically a summary of all the projects and all the research that I've done along those, these past couple of years on YouTube and even for my own development as an artist and a researcher. So I'm basically talking about the origins of meme fragmentation or memetic warfare, because what I call meme fragmentation is a concept that I coined in my first article in Assiég.é.E.s. And basically it relates the idea It comes from the idea of in psychoanalysis, when you traumatize an ego, you fragment it. And so for me fragmentation is the idea that we as colonized people, traumatized people. There are some stuff that we can no longer identify with because our mind is fragmented around that specific notion.

[00:27:23.590] - Speaker 1

For example, the idea of God. I often talk about the idea of God because if you see and talk to interact with different peoples nowadays, they'll be like, I don't believe in God. I'm spiritual. I don't like that idea. I'm not into religions. However, if you get yourself out of the European colonizing context, religions actually have a huge impact and huge importance in societies because they rhythm communal life. They also have you relate more to your environment if you use it right. I remember that I was watching an interview with James Mall for, I think the name of the platform is Ancestral Place. I will look it up and then send it to you. Basically, what I liked was that James Mall said that Black people's religion is science. And when you actually do your research, you can see that when it comes to stuff like quantum physics, something that White people are still starting to dabble with and understand. We have understood that, and we master it. We've mastered it for the past couple of thousand years, not even a couple of thousand years, like 30,000 years. We've mastered that thing. And so I find it unfortunate that we are so disconnected from our cultures that we do not see how wealthy we are when it comes to all that.

[00:28:58.010] - Speaker 1

So That's the main model for that specific research. So the idea of a God and what it means and what it means for people who practice traditional African religions, how we have been painting to be people who believe in different gods rather than one creator, which is something that is extremely false, because when you look at the pantheons of African deities, they all are under one creative force, because those are just incarnating. They are just incarnating different aspects of that creation, but they are not the entire sum of the creation. So that's basically the premises of the article. Then it ends with how this fragmentation have caused us as a community to fight each other, lose empathy and sympathy with each other, attack each other. For example, I'm taking one specific example that is the brick girl, the girl who received... She said that she received the brick in the face from a black man because she refused to give him her number. So I'm talking about that. I'm talking about passport bros. I'm talking about all of those things. I'm talking about, how do you call that? Digital minstrelsy, and how many people Black people, especially black men, who are now seen as famous and influential within white spaces, are actually only doing this specific digital minstrelsy for them to be appreciated and not really disturb the white gaze of what Black people are supposed to be.

[00:30:52.140] - Speaker 1

So yeah, that's basically what the article is about.

[00:30:57.930] - Speaker 2

I cannot wait to read it. When is it coming out?

[00:31:02.080] - Speaker 1

It's coming out on the 17th of May.

[00:31:05.770] - Speaker 2

Oh my God. Amazing. I really want to read that because, I love also what you mentioned, and that's so real, the disconnection and fragmentation and trauma that all of us are experiencing, I mean, have experienced and still are experiencing. I was watching a video from Care, who's an amazing somatic worker, who we had the privilege to work with during our last residency with Dreaming Beyond AI, and they talk about the 14 generations in terms of generational trauma in our tissues that are at play. They were also making their point, yes, there's generational trauma, but also intergenerational knowledge and wisdom and joy that we need to connect to. That makes me think of that. I was also lucky to go to a workshop by Black Quantum Futurism here in Lisbon, actually. I think it was a few months ago. There was also this mention on all of this trajectory and the timeline of basically, like you said, tens of thousands of years of just knowledge and wisdom and creation from Black people when it comes to this topic. So I think that's a really, really important thing to mention. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:32:09.840] - Speaker 1

I would like in the future to maybe touch with the more ancient part of it, because when I was making collages, people often describe my collages as being Afrofuturist, which I didn't like. And I often say on my website, I'm not doing Afrofuturism, I'm doing Afrofantastic because I want black people to see themselves in the realm that is different from the one that we're living in. But it's not the future. It's just a different way to comprehend the aethers. Because even if you're looking about symbolism and dreams and all, it looks fantastic, but it actually has very real tangible meaning. So yeah, I agree with that.

[00:32:47.960] - Speaker 2

Beautiful. But this is so interesting, actually, the notion, because it's true. Even when I went on your Instagram, this is something, yeah, I would... Some of the collages and the art or the things that are depicted, definitely for me, are references to Afrofuturism. But I love what you say, the Afrofantastic. It's actually right now. There's a lot of things that we can connect to in the present as well. So we are arriving slowly at the end of the episode, and I'd love to talk about I don't know if it is Botdushka or Badushka.

[00:33:18.790] - Speaker 1

The name usually is Badushka, but Botdushka, again, it's a little pun. It's just for the term bot to be included into her name. But I I like her name to be Badushka.

[00:33:32.170] - Speaker 2

Okay, cool. Who's Badushka? Let's talk about her. She has the fliest style. She looks so good. She's out there doing her thing. She has the coolest wigs and makeup is on fleek. Who is she?!

[00:33:48.460] - Speaker 1

Badushka, at first, it was just my personal IMVU character. It was just my personal AV. My father kept telling me, You should show her to the world. You should show who she is. And I'm like, No, I like to keep it private for now. And then when I started showing it, I started maybe doing some type of satire of what an influencer is, but I wanted to be a different influencer, which would be an influencer that would be more introspective, still working on the notion of what a human is and what it's not. So I started maybe toying with the idea of the Encanny Valley. And so, for example, if you look at her Instagram, and you look at the different stories, some of the pictures and some of the videos that she takes within the universe of IMVU kind of look oddly real or oddly natural. And I like to play with it. So I think that for me, Badushka is first and foremost, just a place and a person who I can play with without giving myself too much pressure or aspiration to be this specific person. But with time, she also became the main face of the Human dot bot project. She is in the gallery tour video. She's like a representation of me in that specific place. When you look at my first YouTube videos, she's in it. She's the person I'm talking through. I'm talking through her. And so, yeah, Badushka, for me, is really just a place I can be care-free.

[00:35:32.480] - Speaker 2

I love that. Yeah, care-free black babes. Amazing. What's in the future for Badushka? What's up with her? What's going to happen to her? What is she dreaming of?

[00:35:45.750] - Speaker 1

What I want to... I have a few movies that I'm working on with her. I have this specific piece that I've been working on for the past two years with her. It's a short It's not a film. It's only, let's say, three minutes long, but it's a very personal one. So what I want to do with her is for her to become the main star of the different movies that I want to make, basically, even if it's just me reinterpreting different songs. I was thinking of making a series of her playing as Azealia Banks and just suggesting different ideas of what an Azealia Banks music video would be looking like nowadays. So I think that's what I wanted to be more. I'm planning on switching her place with me on my YouTube channel, meaning that I want to become the main person talking to the camera, but I still want her to be featured in the identity, the visual identity the channel.

[00:37:02.640] - Speaker 2

Super. Can't wait to see all of that. Amazing. Beautiful. Maybe just for the closing, if you can share some of your hopes and dreams and vision, things that are in your mind when it comes to the future of technology and AI or the different digital things that you play with and work with in your practice? I know it's a big question, but if anything comes to mind.

[00:37:27.350] - Speaker 1

I think that what comes to mind for me is the idea of still relating even to what seems to be inanimate. When we look at AI and we see it with fear, I think that it's important to appropriate this specific entity so that when the time comes, we know how to dismantle it. If it's becoming too much invasive. I'm also really into quantum computing. I'm also a lot into maybe thinking of different software that we can create together in order for us to master quantum computing as a community, as people who maybe want to create, universes and places where people who look like us are feeling safer and also protected. Looking at it with fear is not something that is going to help us. However, developing, in my opinion, a a proper consciousness and also a true apprehension of what our goals and ideas should be as a community or as different communities, a panel of communities, could be more useful for us. So I plan on working on that myself, and I plan on connecting with people who are seeking to do the same thing. So if you want to work on those different questions and issues, and if my projects are interesting to you, feel free to send me a message.

[00:39:00.490] - Speaker 2

On that, specifically, where can people find you? What does support looks like for you these days? Let us know.

[00:39:07.760] - Speaker 1

People can find me anywhere. You can find me on TikTok, you can find me on YouTube. You can also find me via mail. My mail is on my website, the homepage. You scroll down and you see my email. You just send me a message and I'll be really happy to reach you and connect with you. At the moment, I'm looking to interview Dr. Umar for my next project because I think it would be funny to... I think it would be actually gratifying to actually hear him and exchange with him. So wish me luck on that.

[00:39:47.130] - Speaker 2

For those who don't know if you can say who Dr. Umar is.

[00:39:52.320] - Speaker 1

Dr. Umar is actually... He's a meme for some people, but he actually is a psychologist. He's a psychologist. He's a Pan-African revolutionary. At least that's how he describes himself. And some of the stuff that he says are pretty revolutionary for me, pretty radical as well. I love his presence because I love to offend people in order for them to wake up. I'm really a major advocate for trolling people online, and so he does that perfectly. And that's That's why I love him so much because he will not back off and to just troll a few Black men. And also what's interesting is that when he's actually invited on those podcasts where you have a bunch of men just yapping, he is often the person that brings in the voice of reason. I think that's the type of duality that I like to work with and that I also identify with.

[00:40:56.280] - Speaker 2

Super interesting. He's definitely meme material, for sure. A controversial figure, but okay, yes, you heard it here first. If ever somebody knows somebody who knows somebody who knows Dr. Umar, let us know. Let's let that happen.

[00:41:13.560] - Speaker 1

Yes, please.

[00:41:15.510] - Speaker 2

Super. Zas, thank you so much for your time, for your presence. It's amazing to record with you. I appreciate you. And yes, sending you all the love from where I am to where you are.

[00:41:25.600] - Speaker 1

Yeah, me too. I'm so happy that I finally got to meet you. I spent a very good time, had a very good time with this interview, and I hope that we can connect once again, even if it is not for work.

[00:41:39.070] - Speaker 2

Absolutely. Thank you.

[00:41:40.710] - Speaker 1

Thank you.

[00:41:44.720] - Speaker 2

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of In the Loop by Dreaming Beyond AI, a residency project made possible by Ifa, Deichtorhallen, and Kampnagel. Make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Share that episode with a loved one who you think would enjoy it, and we love to have you as an Instagram Follower, a newsletter subscriber, and a community lover. Also, never hesitate to reach out if you have questions or ideas. We are at hello@dreamingbeyond.ai. Tchuss and take care.