I can go ahead. My name is Sophie Kovel. My pronouns are she and they. I’m an artist, a writer and a translator working between English and French primarily.
I’m Char Stiles. My pronouns are she and they. I am a computational artist and also learning to be a teacher.
My name is Alonso Castro. My pronouns are he/him. I’m a learner, uh, a deep learner [laughter]. Yeah, I’m an artist and designer and I also teach sometimes. I’m very excited to be here, actually. Um, I’m so happy to be part of what has happened in Code Societies so far. It’s pretty cool.
My name is Mehrnaz Rohbakhsh and I’m an interdisciplinary artist. Pronouns are she/her. Likewise grateful to be here.
My name is César Neri. Um, pronouns he/him they/them. I do stuff surrounding architecture, UX design and sometimes computation. And I’m also very excited to be learning from everyone at Code Societies.
When I arrived at Soft Surplus today, I connected with actually one of its founders and we were talking about how we were similarly in this place of incredible consumption and this sort of image of sediment came up between us where—learning and sort of knowledge production felt like we were building up all these layers that ultimately would form some sort of terrain, which I thought was a really beautiful image because I feel like each workshop class has been so focused and has shaped and and sort of reshaped and carved out new possibilities.
There’s one part for me which yeah, the last three days have been overwhelming and heavy. When I go home, I’m just so hyper from all the thoughts and I end up staying up all night and thinking about it [...] [--] but then there’s another part of me that’s almost relieved like it’s released, like we’ve discussed it and put it out in the open cause it’s conversations that don’t normally happen—that definitely doesn’t happen within my family, within my friend circles too, but to have all these people, who at the very least are open to listening about everyone’s input, it’s been really relieving to know that that’s a possibility, but heavy, yeah.
I feel like this was needed for a long time, because I’ve had a lot of questions and I feel like they’re getting answered. Although at the moment, I feel very thick and I still have to learn from it. So, yeah.
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Thank you, Neta. I’m Ladipo Famoudu. Pronouns he/him/his. And I’m a researcher, artist and futurist in between jobs at the moment, but living in Chicago, happy to be in New York for this program, and yeah.
So, we were talking about the intensity of the past three days that, uh we’ve been experiencing and last we left off, I said I was feeling thick and I wanted to say that the reason I said that is cause I feel like I had a lot of questions answered and it’s going to take me a while for it to absorb into it, like I’m a thick layer of soil [laughter] and seeds are growing down their roots into it—and I’m just digesting it.
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I've been thinking a lot about how there is strength in humor and a lot of times, um I think a big realization in my life I like have like many people around us, a lot of anxiety and I think, um, something a big realization for me in my life was learning to make myself laugh and figuring out what makes me laugh helps me get through you know, get through it—and I feel like that also helps—and I see that helping on like a bigger scale—sometimes, you know, it's like when Ruha showed that video—who also showed that video?
Simone! [Laughter]
Simone, I was like, 'yes!' With that video that it's like it's it's using humor to talk about this like, super dense issue and it's like sometimes humor it is like making yeah [--] And that was something that we were also experienced. I was like, 'what if the thing we made was like, a rock' instead of technology?