Manifesting Equitable Futures: Building an Anti-Racist Technoculture

Welcome Wednesday

Hosted by Afrotectopia

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

6:00-8:30PM

This event is sold out. If you’d like to join the waitlist, please email [email protected]

Afrotectopia invites you to speculate and design a more equitable future through collaboratively building a manifesto that demands anti-racist technoculture. The evening will begin with a talk by Afrotectopia founder, Ari Melenciano, as she shares her research in a variety of different branches of knowledge from public policy to economics, and how they have collectively operated as a machine for racial oppression. Attendees will then participate in a collective ideation on what the manifesto must include. The night will transform into a social hour, as we build community and connections.

Ari Melenciano is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, designer, creative technologist, researcher, futurist, humanist and educator who is passionate about exploring the relationships between various forms of design and the human experience. She is currently a research resident at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), Creative Technology educator, founder and producer of New Media Arts, Culture and Technology Festival, Afrotectopia, and a Laundromat Project Create Change Fellow. She recently received her master’s from NYU’s ITP, where she explored the possibilities when merging art, design, technology and engineering through creative computation, physical computing and experiential design.

Afrotectopia was created by Ari Melenciano during her last year of graduate school at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), and aims to nurture interdisciplinary innovation and research to build long-lasting social impact and Black empowerment. It began as a new media arts, culture and technology festival designed to recognize the contributions of Black artists, designers, technologists and activists; as well as build community amongst creatives currently working at the intersections of art, design, technology, activism and Blackness.