with Ayana Zaire Cotton.
We know this place as the North Carolina Black River, they know it as Cykofa. A parallel universe suspended among past and future — where cornrows are cryptography keys, data farms are data forests, the weaving loom is a computer, a cloth is a document, and chain link fencing from demolished prisons are used as architectural membrane woven with plant life. In Cykofa the trees have learned to communicate using the data Cykofians have encoded in the tree’s DNA and tree ring memory.
Cykofa is a speculative world Ayana has built inspired by the biotechnology research of Grow Your Own Cloud, abolitionist imaginaries and decolonial aesthetics. Synthesizing the concepts learned over this series of Dweb sessions she will invite you to leverage the power of worldbuilding to imagine, speculate and design a parallel universe suspended between the past and the future where decentralization is an ancient reality. We will explore expansive modes of decentralization that might have nothing to do with hardware or computer interfaces as we know them. Now that we know the critiques and the possibilities of Dweb, what world do we want to build in response? This praxis session will help us remember another one is possible…
- Learn how connecting to our ancestry might provide design frameworks for belonging and being we can encoded into our dreams of tomorrow’s technologies.
- Learn how to leverage the possibilities of speculative design frameworks to imagine worlds with decolonial approaches to Dweb.
- Learn how to mine our ancestry to speculate Dweb futures in collaboration with ecosystems and bodies as interfaces instead of computers and hardware as we know it.
- Learn how to synthesize Dweb critiques with Dweb possibilities to inspire agency, generative conversations and possible DWeb adoption in our communities.
- A computer or device with Zoom installed, with camera and microphone.
- Recommended Pre-work: Interview family members to learn more about your ancestry. We will tap into our ancestral spirit and lineage as seed data for our speculative worlds.
- Slides: DWeb Worldbuilding + Speculative Design
- Workshop Instructions: DWeb Worldbuilding + Speculative Design
- The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto by Martine Syms Published on Rhizome.org
- Iyapo Repository // Artist Talk, 3/20/2017 Iyapo Repository founders Salome Asega and Ayodamola Okunseinde published by The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
- Octavia's Brood Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements Edited by adrienne maree brown & Walidah Imarisha Published by AK Press
- Alisha B Wormsley on Radical World Building through Collective Dreaming Alisha B Wormsley Feminist Publishing and Tech Speaker Series
- Lo—TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism by Julia Watson published by Taschen
- Rewriting The Future: Using Science Fiction To Re-Envision Justice by Walidah Imarisha