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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!

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.

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