Practical Projects
The theoretical, contextual, and historical writings that form the bulk of the work that is documented on this site are supplements to (and are supplemented by) various doings and makings; the writings serve as relays between many different practical projects that I am engaged in.
Here you will find brief descriptive introductions to my ongoing practical projects, alongside links to more demonstrative introductions to my projects and the reference texts that relay between them.
Spectral / The Gift & the Ledger
REFERENCES: Probing Economics / Revaluation & Reparative Economy / Planning to Flee From Financing / Anthropologies Beyond the Human
The Gift & the Ledger and Spectral are projects dealing with the pernicious manner in which symbolic signification has been privileged over and against other modes of signification in the realm of economic relations in Western(ized) societies.
The double-entry accounting ledger, which prevails over many significant economic relations today, is a particular and peculiar mode of symbolic signification. Its widespread adoption cannot be entirely dis-imbricated from, as Karl Marx put it, the “the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, [and] the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, [all of which] signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”
Every Western(ized) anthropologist knows that gestural signification was pivotal to economic relations in many, if not most, societies prior to Western(ized) capitalist hegemony. Indeed, often eschewing the keeping of symbolic accounts, economic relations have often been signified by and through ideals and practices of gift giving as gesture of solidarity, supplication, supremacy, etc.
Developed in collaboration with my partner, the profoundly talented theatre-maker Ylfa Muindi, The Gift & the Ledger is a performative workshop that casts participants as “spect-actors” in a series of improvised contact dramas investigating gestural gift economies, symbolic ledgered economies, and the ways that people become entangled with one another in exchange relations. Working from the proposition that ecologies precede, exceed, and succeed all economies, the workshop looks to the socio-ecological practices of non-human others for models and points of departure.
Spectral is a project that deconstructs ledgered economies and reconstructs gift economies by sonifying the data from ledgers and inviting people to “trade by ear” and negotiate transactions in sonic terms that are “anexact yet rigorous” as opposed to exact numerical terms.
Almanacs & Arbiters
REFERENCES: Freeing Time / Planning to Flee From Calendaring & Clocking
All powers first establish themselves over us by determining the rhythm and tempo of our lives. This is to say, in other words, that power can only rule, discipline, normalize, and optimize our lives if it succeeds in ruling, disciplining, normalizing, and optimizing the rhythm and tempo of our lives.
I hold that calendars and clocks are exemplars of the statements and implements that powers deploy to establish themselves over us. I use the term “calendar” to refer to the tabular division of concrete sunrises and sunsets, new moons and full moons, equinoxes and solstices, and seasonal life cycles into abstract days, months, and years; and I use the term “clock” to refer to mechanical measures of time.
Almanacs & Arbiters is a fugitive planning project for people endeavoring to flee from calendaring and clocking. The project aims to design statements (timing protocols) and implements (timing devices) that would enable peoples to live closer to nature, in accord with concrete turns of sunrises and sunsets, new moons and full moons, equinoxes and solstices, and seasonal life cycles (as opposed to abstract tabulations of days, months, and years), and in accord with metabolic measures of time and seasonally varying circadian rhythms (as opposed to mechanical measures of time).
The Process Germ Bank
REFERENCES: Planning to Flee From Schooling / Planning to Flee From Profiling / Towards Genuine Intellectual Freedom
“Can collaborative research-creation practices be organized so that they are singular to the specific individuals, institutions, and milieus that they involve but, at the same time, remain accessible and communicable to general publics that might repurpose and revalue them?”
Inspired by “seed banks” developed and maintained by horticulturalists and ecologists, I have been the lead on the Process Germ Bank project, designing an experimental practice and infrastructure for sharing "germs" of research-creation practices and for developing signature methods for probing and promoting diversity within different knowledge ecologies. This project is part of the Alter-Eco and Prototyping Social Forms research streams at the Synthesis Center.
The basic premise for the Process Germ Bank project is this: trans-porting processed plant products and knowledge products between two different places/times is one practice; trans-planting established plants and knowledges between two different places/times is another practice; and growing plants and knowledges from "germ to fruit" in two different places/times is yet another practice. Practices and infrastructures that privilege trans-porting and trans-planting knowledges tend to be extractive and colonial — as opposed to (re-)generative — with (dis)respect to peoples and places/times where plants and knowledges are situated.
The Process Germ Bank seeks to engage (re-)generatively with respect to peoples and places/times where knowledges are situated. As such, the project is interested in investigating whether/how specific knowledges may be grown from "germ to fruit" by different peoples in different places/times. Inspired by metabolic, horticultural, and ecological relations, rather than mechanical, cybernetic, and networked relations, one of the project’s aims is to create spaces for depositing germs of research-creation practices that are more like teaching gardens and plant nurseries and less like bureaucratic and museological archives. In being geared towards (re)generative rather than extractive practices and infrastructures, the project aims to be “counter-colonial”.
The Urban Guerrilla Permaculture Campaign
REFERENCES: Fugitive Planning / Ecoregionalism / TEK & the Technosphere
The Urban Guerrilla Permaculture Campaign promotes and practices direct action and fugitive planning in order to feed diverse peoples and regenerate diverse habitats. It aims to practice guerrilla permaculture as a form of guerrilla art — growing guerrilla gardens that double as art installations and developing guerrilla gardening practices that double as performance art practices.
This project is currently on hold due to uncertainties regarding where I will be living in the near future, given the fact that the project is, by nature, site-specific and oriented toward the long-term Nevertheless, in the meantime, the website for the project is being built out as a theoretical resource for those interested in launching similar initiatives.
