The Archive is a Series of Systems: 7 Questions with Johann Yamin & Morgan Sammut

October 10, 2023
Introduction and editing by Sarah Sgro 

7 Questions is a Palah Light Lab interview series that pairs up cohort members to discuss their artistic practices, interests, and personal histories. Members are guided by the following list of queries while exploring the lucky conversations and connections that emerge along the way:

1. What are you working on right now? 
2. What practices outside of this work energize you (hobbies, habits, other artistic practices)?
   
3. Describe a dream collaboration (with a living or nonliving human, animal, vegetable, natural phenomenon, microbe, technological device).
4. What does the word “archive” mean to you?
5. What are you reading/watching/listening to?
6. An exercise in brevity: choose three words of any kind that describe your work and/or fixations.
   
7. What does community look and feel like to you?

How do video games, artistic projects, and creative communities mimic the “wood wide” networks of mycelia? In what ways can we energize our digital practices with distinctly tactile ones? And whose spectral hand is replacing those cartons of milk at the grocery store? In the first installment of 7 Questions, multimedia artists and Palah Light Lab members Johann Yamin and Morgan Sammut discuss pink oyster mushrooms as dream co-collaborators, the critical distinctions between sewing and crocheting, and finding inspiration in the dairy aisle.

Both accomplished game creators and emerging digital scholars, Yamin and Sammut converge meaningfully in their commemoration of interactive digital spaces as early outlets for kinship and self-discovery. Whether by playing games for fun or creating their own fictional hypertexts, they uplift the desire to return to the online worlds that first nourished them—and still do. Simultaneously, navigating linked questions of myth, place, and identity, they interrogate the paradoxes of return that arise in their own personal and creative practices. Why do we come back to stories with fated ends, or to games that feel boring or difficult? As Sammut asks in their own re-telling of Orpheus and Eurydice, to what extent is looking back an act of love?

If looking back is indeed a loving act, then Yamin and Sammut locate in the word “community” the acts of looking out for and also looking at with care. Similar to games and mycelia, they describe their diverse creative communities as intricate systems infused with attentiveness, support, and growth—what Yamin calls a “deliberate kind of interaction that is meant to draw out a more complex version of each other.” As each artist suggests, these wide-ranging networks of nourishment transcend binaries of the academic versus the personal to form expansive, collaborative and markedly queer archives.

Johann Yamin
How has summer been for you so far?

Morgan Sammut
It's been busy! I'm working two jobs right now. One of them is at a Trader Joe's, and then I also work at a local independent bookstore. What are you doing?

Johann Yamin
I'm working remotely for people back in Singapore as an artist assistant.

Morgan Sammut
I think that's a great segue into what are you working on right now?

Johann Yamin
I'm a cultural worker, and I'm doing my M.A. in Media Studies at the New School. A lot of what I'm interested in is New Media Studies or histories of technology, usually from the perspective of Southeast Asia because I'm from Singapore.

I'm working on this summer school program called the School of Alternate Internets that [takes] a critical approach to Web3 technologies... the overhyped terms like the Metaverse or AI or Blockchain. I'm collaborating with this art and tech artists label in Singapore called Feelers. We're trying to figure out a way to cultivate this space that's thinking about: how do we talk about and engage with these technologies in a way that feels nourishing for artists or people with a creative practice? Because so often it feels like these terms emerge from a profit-driven or a hype-driven incentive.

We are trying to disturb that a little bit and see how we can carve out a nourishing space for ourselves within these discourses as well. I just spent the whole of yesterday looking at the Metaverse and looking at all the ways Crypto Bros are taking over game logics, and it's pretty scary.

Morgan Sammut
Oh my god. Yeah, my previous job was working for this AI in the Liberal Arts Initiative, so it was always really interesting to read these articles that were really focused on how AI is gonna replace us all and…dun dun dun, but then knowing all these different artists and authors that were like, “oh no, absolutely not. It's not the same as human writing at all.” It’s really interesting to get the arts perspective that's missing, because the tech one seems to be just “technology is better, it will always be better.” And it's like, “hey, I don’t think that's necessarily true.”

Johann Yamin  
Absolutely. And the resourcefulness of artists to be able to adapt these tools into ways that enrich their work as well… bouncing between technological determinism and what we can do to socially construct technology, and finding that sweet spot in between. I'm a little bit nervous to see how people in Singapore will react to these arguments, because I know these are very contested technologies. It feels very intense to discuss in the US. I've noticed that it's very polarizing, so I think we're really trying to create a space [where] people can feel like they're learning and engaging in a productive, regenerative way.

Morgan Sammut
I've mostly been hearing about this from a US perspective...the Western perspective of AI. And I'm wondering, is it different in Singapore? Are there different cultural concerns that people tend to have?

Johann Yamin  
I can only speak for Singapore and it's a very specific and small and tiny context, within Asia itself. In Singapore, everyone also speaks English so I think sometimes we tend to receive a lot of cues from the US as well. What I've noticed is that our institutions in the US have taken to Web 3 technologies very quickly, actually. A lot faster than Singapore. I think it's also because of [how] US institutions tend to move more reactively to where capital is flowing. Whereas [in] Singapore, I think there's a lot more safeguards in place and a lot more general cautiousness when it comes to these things.

But younger artists, I realized—early to mid-career artists who are figuring out, how do I make an art practice work while being able to sustain myself economically—have taken to it without echoing or replicating much of the critique that we hear in the US… It’s more of a quiet, personal kind of just acceptance, and it never gets as polarizing as in the US, even though there are these discussions.

[What are you working on?]

Morgan Sammut
I’m not currently in school anywhere, but my focus is on interactive fiction, and I'm really into hypertext in particular. Critically, I'm really interested in this idea of looking at performance mixed with literary studies and thinking about the involvement of the reader/player in relation to works and how that impacts reading. I love form so I feel like this is just a continuation of thinking about form and what this form has to offer specifically and what I feel like draws me to it, as opposed to traditional prose, which I also love and really enjoy.

As I mentioned, I'm doing two jobs right now. So there isn't as much time for the creative, which has been a little sad, but also, there's been a lot of opportunity while I'm at work to be thinking about different short story ideas.

The projects that I currently have opened—like the tabs open in my brain, if you will—are an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling. I always hear people being like, “I simply wouldn't look back if I was Orpheus,” and kind of I want to push [against that] like, okay, at what point would you look back though? And is looking back an act of love? And…especially for a story where everyone knows exactly how it's going to end–why do you continue to engage in this narrative? What continues to be revealing about it that we want to return to it?

I also really want to start on a Bitsy game because of you…so, I’m gonna take the plunge, which is based on this prompt I saw called “Extraterrestrial Boyfriend.” I love this idea of you and your lover in a space opera kind of thing.

Johann Yamin
That sounds amazing. It reminds me of some K-dramas I've heard of.

Morgan Sammut 
Anytime I hear the word space opera, I'm like, “Yes! Heart! Full in!”

So [at Trader Joe’s] there's this room we call The Box where you're behind all the milks and stuff. And you have to push them forward from behind and so sometimes people see you, right? [Or] they see the milks moving forward. And what I've been scared of is accidentally scaring a little kid by having them see my hands. So that's kind of been my idea, like, “oh, I think I want to write a story that starts with this fear of seeing hands in the box, like hands coming out.” And then having it devolve into this narrative of “my mother works at a grocery store,” and then this idea of the fear of being trapped, and then also focusing on hands. I know I end up looking at hands a lot and expanding that out.

Johann Yamin
That's so amazing. I feel like you're taking from such diverse sources of inspiration, whether it's mythology or personal experience. I'm wondering, how do you usually operate in terms of your practice? Where do you find inspiration?

Morgan Sammut
I think, at least for me, a lot of [inspiration] coming from mythology usually has…some sort of question I have attached to that myth and that's why I'm revisiting it…like my hypertext that you've seen is based on the myth of Galatea. For that one, it was like, “okay, a lot of people see it as a very misogynistic myth.” So I was kind of like, “oh, if I make the creator a woman, how does that impact that dynamic? And how can I make it healthy? How can I make it like an interesting one?”

Usually my work is just coming from questions. And I feel like I don't really have answers in my work, I'm just kind of asking more questions. And I'm trying to help other people see the way that I'm thinking and maybe also come up with…some kinds of answers.

Johann Yamin
Yeah, absolutely. I love the idea [of] posing these questions to the universe and just finding a medium to send them out. And for both of us it kind of tends towards janky games and building hypertext fictions.

I returned to games as something that was a very fundamental part of my childhood and adolescence, and also a way for someone to find kinship online. I felt like online spaces were a really important way for me to feel like I was part of something even when maybe there were things in real life that didn't make us feel like we belonged in certain spaces. Digital games and worlds are important to me in that sense and…I keep returning to them because they feel like a nourishing space. No matter how dry or logistical art making can become.

Morgan Sammut
Do you have any [other] hobbies that also help or energize you or contribute to your practice in any way?

Johann Yamin
I've actually been trying to learn how to sew plush animals, like stuffed toys. I think because I spend so much time on digital interfaces, I just felt like I needed to do something really material, and I like cute things. I've just been watching YouTube videos and buying up all the fabric and just trying little shapes first.

Morgan Sammut
I took up crochet also because I'm online so much. I love having a physical project to work on. And actually, I am going to be working on a little stuffed pitbull for my partner. But when you were like, “I'm making little stuffed animals!” I was like, “oh, my goodness. Look at this. Look at the connection!”

Johann Yamin  
Yeah! Is crochet more intensive as a process? Because it's different, right, from sewing?

Morgan Sammut  
I think [crochet is]… less intimidating for me personally, because you can unravel it. If I make a mistake, I can just unravel it. And that's what scares me about sewing is if I make a mistake, I have cut that fabric and I'm done. That can be a little frightening to me.

Johann Yamin  
That's fascinating. I hadn't thought of that… I love that conceptually you can undo it if you want to redo something.

“What are the informal kind of archives that can also take root in everyday and personal histories? These queer histories and archives of the material and the ephemeral left behind.”

Morgan Sammut
Yeah, and I think for me, at least, [having] a lot of physical practices is what kind of helps me feel excited or energized… I really like to read physical books. I like that physicality.

My partner and I are long distance right now, so we like to write letters back and forth to each other, and I also usually like to copy down a poem that I love and include it. And I also do that for myself. I have a journal that's just full of poetry that I love. And that's something that can feel really grounding and … gives me a more personal and more intimate connection with the poem.

Johann Yamin
When you talk about poetry, I feel like that's something that I've been reconnecting with recently. Especially after being part of the Palah Light Lab, Margaret [Rhee]'s work has been so reinvigorating for me and is making me return to literature as something that I considered taking as an undergrad major, but decided against in the end. It's been nice, just going through poetry… returning to that mode of thinking and writing and analyzing text. The physicality of books is something that I've also been trying to return to.

Morgan Sammut
Especially if you're doing Metaverse work.

Johann Yamin
Like, please get me out of here! Is there anything I can cling to?!

I was wondering, if games are such a large part of your personal practice, do you also try to keep away from them in your personal time and just do other things instead?

Morgan Sammut
I really have not played video games in so long which makes me so sad…. usually, when I engage with them, it's for fun, it's not as a literary practice. I haven't done that in a long time. But I have actually been watching some playthroughs of—have you heard of the game Pathologic?

It's this game that was produced by this studio a few years ago and then there was a remake, Pathologic 2, that's the same one but the graphics and the gameplay are slightly better. But I watched an analysis of it and it was talking a lot about these ideas that I'm interested in about performance, and it gets very meta at times.

There are three characters and each one is trying to cure this plague, but the game is intentionally very difficult and the mechanics are very difficult to play with. So, what keeps you coming back to it? One reviewer put it as, “what if a game wasn't fun?” Like, what keeps you going when the game isn't fun?

Johann Yamin
I think I've shied away from really difficult games as well. For the longest time I've been drawn to games that have like, no objectives, you just chill and do what you want and retry as many times as you want. But [games] like Cuphead, where it rewards a skill, kind of reconnected me to that feeling of, “this is so frustrating, but I want to get good enough to engage with this piece of media.” And I think that's a very different kind of sensation that's very interesting as well.

Okay, question three: “Describe your dream collaboration with a living or nonliving human animal, vegetable, natural phenomenon, microbe or technological device.”

Morgan Sammut
I'll give you my original answers from when I first did this [during our lab meeting]. First, it was my partner, and then I was like, “that can't be my answer, because I can just ask them to collaborate with me.”

And then my answer was “no, it's a robot.” And then I was like, “no, you want a robot because you want answers.” And that's not a good collaboration…“I have questions and you're gonna give me answers.”

What I landed on is I would want to work with a microchip. Because for one, I think, all the different metals that it's made of, and all the materials, they each have their own history and story. I think that would give it a really interesting kind of perspective and personal history to talk about.

Johann Yamin  
I feel like sometimes collaborations engender more collaborations, and it feels like, with a microchip, you need additional people to kind of [figure out], “how do we engage with this piece of technology? And how do we make this legible in further ways? To other projects and other people?” Maybe that's the most productive collaboration of all because it opens up so many other points of connection.

Initially when we came across this question during one of the Palah meetings, I was thinking of mycelium… During the pandemic, I actually got one of those mushroom grow kits. It was kind of fun.

Morgan Sammut
What kind of mushroom?

Johann Yamin
Pink oyster mushrooms. They were this lovely shade of light pink and they were delicious. Highly recommended.

It's really nice to figure out the entire process of a piece of dirt...that the mycelia enacts on as substrate, and then just watching them fruit and flower and create these mushrooms and grow in such a strange way. The fascination isn't so much conceptual for me, but it's just [that] it looks so fascinating and alien and exciting. There were other kind of tendons to that, like how mycelia or essentially the root network of the mushrooms can kind of act as this “wood wide web” of trees. So I think it felt very media studies to be like, "ah yes, mycelia as media."

Morgan Sammut
I love this idea too that it would be connecting over [webs] ... “So what's your web like? This is what my web’s like.” How is that different, and how is that the same? Also… that's such a cute [sentiment] to be like, “my dream collaboration is with a pink oyster.”

Johann Yamin
Yeah, they're pretty.

Morgan Sammut
And frankly, that's all that matters. All right, next up, what does the word archive mean to you?

Johann Yamin
I feel like because I spend so much time with PhD history students–my roommates are all doing PhDs in history–the archive to me feels like a place where a very kind of loving practice is enacted, where you're taking the time to create this practice where you engage with materials from the past to discover something about the present, which is… a very linear relationship to what the archive is.

But I'm at the point where history feels like an important field to draw upon in my practice, as well. I think sometimes media theory can feel a bit unmoored and returning back to history, and citing it in contexts, I think is really important. I'm also trying to do that from the context of Southeast Asia, because I think a lot of the times the media history I receive, it's very linear, and it takes from a Western kind of development perspective.

I'm curious to see how we can think of nonlinear histories of technology in relation to Asia, because sometimes different forms of technology aren't even considered technology because they aren't modern in the same way that Western technology is. How do we kind of reintroduce them and rethink these practices as well? I feel like returning to the archive is the best way to do that. How about you?

Morgan Sammut
I really like that idea of [the archive] being loving…

Also, at least for me, I think a lot too about different mediums. Usually when I think of an archive...it'd be research papers, but then also different photographs. And then I'm trying to [reconcile] archived content online...an archive of old issues. How does that feed into what I think of an archive as being?

I think also there's some kind of commonality [to an archive], whether it's like, this is old pieces from a journal or this is specifically a queer archive…there's some kind of goal or shared theme around them.

Johann Yamin  
That’s really important and really beautiful as well, because I think I immediately went to the idea of this institutional archive, and for a formal research kind of purpose. But I think you've kind of brought in and expanded it to: what are the informal kind of archives that can also take root in everyday and personal histories? These queer histories and archives of the material and the ephemeral left behind.

Morgan Sammut
If it makes you feel better, part of the reason I thought of that is because I went to an academic conference where someone's project was [on] these kinds of archives. So there are ways that the institutional and personal are being mixed. And I think that's a really, really beautiful thing because I hate that the institutional ends up being so separate.

Johann Yamin 
What's important to me is that we also recognize that we have agency to shape these practices as well. That archives might connote an institutional kind of thing, but obviously, there's been a lot more work being done to resurface these informal archives or archives of diverse material.

So, I feel like that also kind of relates to what we've been reading, watching, listening to, right?

Morgan Sammut
Yeah! What's your personal archive?

Johann Yamin 
Oh my god, yeah, your personal archive of influences. Since it's right here on the ledge, I've been reading this book… called This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who is one of the foremost modernist Indonesian writers. It's a quartet, so there are four books and this is the first one. The book was composed while he was a political prisoner, essentially, and he was orating the texts. And it was written down and that was how it was published.

It's this really complex look at colonial era Indonesia and relationships...how an indigenous person in Indonesia, for instance, relates to someone who is of mixed ancestry, in relation to someone who is a Dutch colonial officer. It was really interesting to look at these dynamics and how colonialism is actually experienced in that lived way.

I've been trying to read more and learn more about Indonesian history and literature as well. I think it's just always been a point of curiosity for me, because my dad's from Indonesia, so it's a way for me to learn more about… these kinds of personal genealogies as well.

Morgan Sammut
Right now, I'm reading Blow-Up by Julio Cortázar. It's a collection of short stories, and the reason I picked it up is Cortázar also wrote this book called Hopscotch or Rayuela, which is this novel from the 60s, that you can either read straight through or at the end of each page, and it'll tell you which page to go to next. You're supposed to be able to read it in whatever order you want, so you don't have to follow either of those.

I started trying to read it a while ago, and actually it was the book that the art exhibition that my piece was accepted to was centered on. I tried to read it, and I wasn't very successful. So I was like, “okay, so this book is short stories. Okay, I'll pick this up and this will be my introduction to Cortázar.”

I also just read Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel, which is a series of short stories that's all very trans, very queer, very anti capitalist, like sci-fi mythology stuff, which was really cool. I also just read a very short retelling of Galatea, so I've been doing a lot of short stories. That’s been energizing to me to be like, “not all my short stories in prose need to be these big, long things. Sometimes they can just be short little moments.”

In Cortázar’s Blowup, the first short story is this one about an axolotl, and literally, the short story is just about a guy who keeps going to the aquarium to stare at them.

Johann Yamin
I feel like I should change my answer of nonhuman collaborator to axolotl.

Morgan Sammut
Another pink one!

Johann Yamin
Cute as well….

Maybe that's a good segue as well for an exercise in brevity… choosing three words of any kind that describe your work and or fixations.

Morgan Sammut
I know for me, “queer” is definitely one of them. Queer…tends to be always what I gravitate towards and where I always feel the most seen, and so that's always what I want to have in my work. Maybe “mechanical,” because I think that’s also the way that I approach things. Maybe “dissecting.” I'll do “queer,” “mechanical,” “dissection.”

Johann Yamin
Wow… that's a potent combination of words. No, I can't beat that.

Morgan Sammut
You don't have to beat it!

Johann Yamin  
Yeah, it's not a competition.

Morgan Sammut
No, it's a collaboration.

Johann Yamin
Absolutely. I can't think of words that work together. I think the first word that comes to mind is always “strange.” I think strange is a good way to put it. And…I was thinking with the word “machinic.” And the word “gameful” is something that I'm thinking of. Not necessarily about games, but about creating these systems [in] that way it can exist within. I don't know if “strange,” “machinic,” and “gameful” work together as potently as a mix of words, but I think that will suffice.

Morgan Sammut
You say that and I'm like, “sign me up! I want to see this work.” I really like also the description of it as systems, like games [are] just a series of systems that are working together.

And that's coming back to the mushrooms, isn't it?

Johann Yamin
Yes, these nonhuman collaborations!

Morgan Sammut
Okay, and then so the final question: what does community look and feel like to you?

Johann Yamin
That's something I'm thinking a lot about at this moment in time. I still don't really have an answer for it. I feel like community kind of emerges when you need it to.

I feel like sometimes nourishment comes in such different forms. Some communities might feel a bit more gentle, some communities might feel a bit more pronounced in their jagged edges, but I think it always coalesces around you at a specific moment in time and speaks to your needs and your allegiances at a particular moment.

Palah Light Lab is a really great community. It's so important to me at this moment, and it's so different from a lot of things I've encountered before. So I'm just happy to keep the answer to that open and welcome all the forms of community that I can come across in this life.

Morgan Sammut
I was trying to think about what communities I'm in, and can I figure out what makes them feel that way? I think for me… it ends up being about caring. Some kind of affection is necessary for there to be a community. Whether it's my friends–I feel like we're a little community–or larger communities that I'm part of, like the queer or trans community, there's this general love and understanding there.

And then I was thinking about working at Trader Joe's, as silly as it sounds. There's this community there and I feel like there's this care that everyone has for each other. And most of us are friends...I think that's such a big part of it.

And Palah too has all these people there [that] care about me and my work. When we had the meeting where everybody was talking about my piece, I was like, “oh my gosh, it's crazy to see that all these people, even though I haven't known them for very long, have taken the time to go through my work and let me know what they think of it.” And I was like, “this is so beautiful.”

Johann Yamin 
I totally resonate with the idea of [community] being a restful spot away from the humdrum of life. I think having you share your work with us was such a special moment as well, so I just wanted to thank you.

Morgan Sammut  
Oh my goodness, that's so sweet. Thank you. I literally was writing down everyone's comments [during our meeting] as they were talking because everyone's so kind…like, I never thought of that piece as “gentle.” That was never an adjective that I connected to it. So then hearing you say that immediately, I was like, “oh!” This is a whole new way into my own writing and my own pieces that I hadn't really considered before. And that's something that I think is so beautiful that can come out of communities also–a new way of looking at yourself.

Johann Yamin
Yeah, and that's so important. Having not just a part of yourself reflected back, but engaged with in a way…a deliberate kind of interaction that is meant to draw out a more complex version of each other.

Morgan Sammut
I think that's a beautiful way to put it. That feels very true to me.

Learn more about Johann’s and Morgan’s projects and personal archives below:

• re: definition, a hypertext game by Morgan Sammut, 2022
  
• SpiralScape VI: Radiant Swarm Universe, a Bitsy game by Johann Yamin, 2021
• Galatea, a 2000 text-based interactive fictionhypertext game by Emily Short
  
• “Extraterrestrial Boyfriend” prompt from Black Warrior Review
  
• “The Secrets of the Wood Wide Web,” a 2016 article on mycorrhizal networks
  
• Pathologic Classic and Pathologic 2, 2005 and 2019 first-person survival horror games
  
• Cuphead, a 2017 platformer known for its hand-drawn animation and ’30s cartoon influence
  
• This Earth of Mankind, a 1980 novel by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
  
• Blow Up, a 1963 short story collection by Julio Cortázar
  
• Hopscotch, a 1963 novel by Julio Cortázar
  
• Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel, a 2020 short story collection by Julian K. Jarboe

Johann Yamin’s (he/they) projects have taken shape as essays, moving image installations, and text-based videogames, alongside curatorial work and varied forms of support. His writing and research focus on emerging media, digital cultures, and histories of technology. He was previously Curatorial & Research Resident at the Singapore Art Museum in 2021, and a 2020 Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future Fellow at Eyebeam, New York for co-organising the online project, Pulau Something.

︎ johannyamin.com

Morgan J. Sammut is a nonbinary interactive fiction writer and recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where they studied English and computer science. Their hypertext work re: definition was selected for the International Conference on Interactive Digital Narrative's 2022 art exhibition “Hops Ahead: The Art of Alternate Histories, Presents, and Futures.” They are a member of the Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio, where they act as the mini-grant coordinator, co-curator for the 2023 Buffalo satellite exhibition of Michigan State University's Creativity in the Time of COVID-19, and layout designer for the accompanying catalog What We Made During the Pandemic: A Marginalized Response to COVID-19. Morgan is also on the programming committee for the 2023 International Conference on Interactive Digital Narrative's Virtual Worlds, Performance, Games and Play track. Their current work includes a hypertext piece based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, an article on performance and interactive narratives, and a collection of short stories. In their spare time, Morgan enjoys fencing, baking, and crochet.

About Palah 파랗 Light Lab

Palah 파랗 Light Lab is a creative and critical space that fosters poetry, participation, and pedagogy through technology and equity. As a knowledge-design, new media, and poetry lab, the Palah Light Lab investigates critical questions in cultural criticism along with the networked arts and humanities. Utilizing a feminist and queer-centered approach, we are interested in design anchored in the humanities and scholarship informed by transdisciplinary practices and technology. Palah Light Lab centers the question of equity at the forefront of our work, and we seek to creatively and critically engage new media in experimental ways that address pressing social issues and injustices.

The lab is led by Dr. Margaret Rhee and based between The New School, New York and the University at Buffalo, New York. Student leaders as organizers, researchers, and fellows help co-direct the lab. It was previously funded by the SUNY Diversity Faculty Fellowship and currently funded by The New School Provost Office. The lab promotes feminist creativity, mentorship, and collaboration through a creative space.

Find out more about us here.