Jan 26

Jan 26 Instruments for Multiple Words

Summary:

In this episode, we speak with Jeffrey Yoo Warren an artist, community scientist, illustrator, and researcher. Jeffrey’s work aims to disrupt and dismantle the dominant framing of knowledge production by connecting with predecessor science and creating instruments for multiple worlds.

Connect with Jeffrey Yoo Warren:

Website: unterbahn.com

Instagram: @unterbahn

Twitter: @jywarren

Jeffery’s Go To’s:

Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru - Ballard Of The Spirits

Transcript (Please excuse any errors):

Please see mentions/resources list at the end.

[Music Intro ♫]

LaToya [LS]: Hey listeners, welcome to Abolition Science Radio. We're your hosts, I'm LaToya Strong.

Aderinsola [AG]: And I'm Aderinsola Gilbert, and we're here to discuss science, math, technology, and other things.

LS: And their relationship to colonialism.

AG: Oppression.

LS: Resistance.

AG: Education.

LS: And liberation.

AG: All through the lens of abolition.

LS: Join us as we learn and unlearn.

AG: Critique and create.

LS: All while building community.

[ ♫ Music fade out.]

[00:39]

AG: And we’re back. Heyy! It has been a minute, but guess what, we are here. It is December, the last month of 2020.

LS: It is the last month of 2020! It is a Monday, we are tired. Tiredt.

AG: Yep, I feel it in my bones. Ha ha. This year, 2020, I think there was so much intention that was set for this year…

LS: Mhmm.

AG: And, there was so much that was beyond my control.

LS: Mhmm.

AG: And so it just seemed that, as soon as February, March hit, everything just went left, right.

LS: Mhmm.

AG: You’re here, in the midst of a pandemic, civil unrest, election year, and it’s just – I’m tired.

LS: Mhmm. Yes, and we’re in a second wave of the pandemic, government still ain’t cancelled nobody’s rent or mortgage. Still ain’t gave nobody all the free healthcare. Still not giving out all the free food to the people that need it.

AG: Nope.

LS: Indoor dining closed back down again today, but the outdoor dining – so many restaurants have built these outdoor dining structures which has essentially made outdoor dining indoor dining.

AG: Mhmm. I see the saran wrap, yup.

[1:45]

LS: Yep. Still ain’t give all these vacant houses to houseless people.

AG: Mhmm.

LS: And there’s – ok, these apartments weren’t vacant just because of the pandemic. There was a lot of vacant apartments in NYC pre-pandemic that we still could have given out to houseless people.

AG: Yep.

LS: So, in conclusion, the government is trash.

AG: Facts.

LS: And stop going to superspreader events.

AG: Please, and thank you.

(Both laugh.)

AG: Please and thank you.

[2:20]

LS: But, the vaccine is here. And, I think it’s something like 50% of FDNY, which is the fire department of New York City said that they’re not taking the vaccine.

AG: Wait wait wait.. what?

LS: Yeah, they were like – they don’t wanna take it.

AG: Hmm. I didn’t hear that. What’s the reason behind not wanting to take the vaccine?

[2:46]

LS: They don’t trust it.

AG: Mmm. (Sigh) Yeah. I mean…can’t blame them. But when did the race for the vaccine even start? This is the ones of the fastest turnarounds we’ve had.

LS: Ohhh. It is. They birthed a baby. Ha ha ha ha, it’s been nine months.

AG: Nine months?! Wow.

LS: I think so. Somebody should google and fact check us.

AG: Mmm.

LS: But what’s killing me right now with the vaccine is the response to Black people lack of trust in the vaccine.

AG: Mmm.

LS: And so, what I’ve seen is two things, that people automatically labeling Black folks as anti-vaxxers.

AG: Mmm.

LS: Um. And the other response is like – not to label them as anti-vaxxers but to whitesplain why Black folks should not be distrustful of this vaccine. So, what it brings up for me is, one, what it shows and proves is that many of y’all non-Black folks really do only care about Black people when we’re dying. I’m convinced that y’all are sitting at your computer waiting for a Black person to die so that you can hashtag their name and prove how woke you are. That’s what I’m convinced of, because being for Black people also means understanding the conditions of what we say and why we say it. So, yes, people don’t trust the vaccine because it’s been a short turnaround time.

[4:16]

AG: Mhmm.

LS: And so some folks are like, you know they’re, and Black people too, are naming like, oh we understand these historical things like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, but here’s all the reasons why you should still trust it because x,y, and z. That is anti-Blackness, whether it’s coming from like – internalized anti-Blackness or anti-Blackness period, because it’s not just a historical thing. Like, we don’t have to go back to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to see why Black people mistrust the medical industry and the government. We can sit here within this pandemic and hear all the stories of all the Black people who said, I went to the doctors, I went to the hospital, they refused me treatment, they refused my mom or uncle, whoever, treatment, and now they’re dead because they wouldn’t listen to us. And so instead of being – sorry, I am like, I don’t know how long I’ve been talking, I’m so sorry – I’m going…

AG: Noo, no, no.

LS: I’m going to stay here, y’all gonna hear this sermon today.

AG: Go ahead.

LS: Like, instead of being upset that Black people don’t trust this damn vaccine, like keep that same energy and question why a medical industry and government exists that creates an environment where people mistrust them. Like, no one is talking about that. No one is talking about that.

[5:32]

AG: Mm.

LS: Or, if they talk about it, they name it. They’re like, we’re naming it and so because we’re naming it, now you should trust it. No. Like nothing that anyone says about any of this. Like, y’all need to be like – what is the plan for trust to happen? Right, so like, what do doctors need to do if Black folks come up and they do get a vaccine?

Because the other issue isn’t just that we don’t trust the vaccine. We don’t trust the government. We don’t trust the medical industry. If someone gets a vaccine and they do get sick, and they do go to the doctor, and they do um, voice like, this is what’s happening in my body – will they be listened to? Will they get the care that they need? Most likely not – because we know this.

[6:14]

AG: Yup.

LS: Here’s some books: Medical Apartheid - ha ha ha ha, you’re laughing at me - by Harriet Washington. Medicalizing Blackness by Rana Hogarth. Just Medicine by Dayna Bowen Matthew.

And then just google – like racial – medical bias, anti-Blackness. Like racial bias and medicine with Black people. Kemi Doll does a lot of this work focusing a lot on like reproductive health and Black women. Cause we get diagnosed later with cancer because doctors don’t listen to us. Uh, we get less pain medicine when we go to the hospital and need surgery cause doctor’s think that we feel pain less. Like, y’all need to be looking at this holistically and stop focusing on just this damn vaccine. Cause I’m finna smack somebody. Period.

[7:01]

AG: Hey. Hey.

LS: Like, it’s making my blood – this stuff – and then it’s like, oh, we want you to know an African-American worked on this vaccine. Or like –

AG: Oh, I heard that. Yup.

LS: Like.. Um Ok…AND?

AG: And? Thank you.

LS: AND tell me how you’re pushing the medical industry to be different. Tell me how you’re pushing the government to be different. If nothing about what you’re saying involves that, or a plan – shut the fuck up.

AG: Mmm. Yes.

[7:30]

LS: Are you gonna take the vaccine?

AG: I’m – ha hey! No, I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I really don’t know. I’m not um – I’m definitely not rushing to nobody’s line, to line up for this vaccine. And yeah, there’s just that deep seated distrust. And also, to know that the timespan of how all of this is being done and even what it takes to test out a vaccine, that all of that has been cut sh– I just, no. There’s too many red flags that I see in it.

[8:09]

LS: Mhmm.

AG: And that’s without putting it into context the history that has been with the medical industrial complex.

LS: Mhmm.

AG: You know. Even the process of just trying to get a test is still janky as hell. So, earlier in the pandemic it was free. You could go to most places and you could get tested. But now, if you have insurance – so if you have insurance, you have to pay in some places. If you don’t have insurance it’s free - rightfully so. But even trying to navigate that, to even establish a place where I can just go get tested routinely...

LS: Mhmm.

AG: Has been a struggle. I just – all around no. I don’t know that I trust it enough to. So I think I’mma with it for a minute. How about you? Do you think you’ll get the vaccine?

[8:57]

LS: Uh. Ha ha ha ha. I mean, there’s a limited number of vaccines right now. So they’re focusing on priority groups. I am not in that priority group. I probably wouldn’t be until like, when can these groups of people who are not these priority groups can get it – like, June. Like, April, May, June. That’s the category I fall in. Um, which is fine by me. Because would I get it right now if I could? I wouldn’t. I’mma let y’all do what y’all do, and I’mma see how things roll out.

AG: Mhmm.

LS: And then I’ll get it. When it comes to vaccines, I am very informed. I worked on vaccine development. I get my flu vaccine every year. And so, for me, and even with COVID, like my fear isn’t necessarily getting COVID. My fear is what happens when I have to go to the hospital to get treated for COVID. That is my fear. So, my fear is not the vaccine in and of itself. My fear is, if I get this vaccine and shit happens and I go to the hospital, what is going to happen to me? Cause I do not trust doctors. I’ve not had a good experience with Western medical practices. Um, nor has my family and so that is my fear.

[10:00]

AG: So well stated. So, who’s supposed to be the priority group? I know it’s folks who are working in the medical, um.

LS: Yeah, the medical frontline workers. Elderly folks in nursing homes. The staff in nursing homes. And then, from there – and then I think there’s controversy over like, who should be considered priority or who um, not.

[10:25]

AG: Mm.

LS: So, I don’t know. I just know it’s not me.

AG: Because, that’s one thing in looking at this. I definitely knew that the nursing homes and hospitals would be prioritized. Right, ok. And probably first responders. Great. But then, in the argument of ok, when it comes to some of these public – especially schools, education, right. How are they going to navigate that? From K-12 to higher ed and what will the mandates be around that? Are workers gonna be mandated? Are teachers gonna be mandated? Students gonna be mandated to take the vaccine?

Did you follow the trials in the UK?

[11:04]

LS: No. Oh wait, the trials or the rollout?

AG: Sorry, the roll out.

LS: I mean, I saw when it was like, the first person that gets it. Like, the old – the elderly lady. My thing is, take the vaccine, there’s gonna be people who are mistrustful of the vaccine. Just keep Black people’s name out your mouth. Ha ha. It is as simple as that. Unless you are challenging the medical industrial complex, fighting for good healthcare for Black people, and working to push back against, or undo, or create a new path of a way that the medical industrial complex can be different. Miss me with it.

[11:43]

AG: Mhmm. As someone who is very well informed, you know. So like, where are you going to get your information about the vaccine? Um, especially as people are trying to make that decision for themselves. So, ok, where can I find information that I can trust? About what the reality of this vaccine, these approvals that are coming through?

LS: Um. I think you just have to know how to sift through what is not useful. So there is some useful information. So when people are like, this is why the vaccine is safe - that information is true, but it’s missing the point of why most Black folks don’t trust the vaccine. I mean, we don’t know what’s in most vaccines, so no one is listing the ingredients. So for people to start listing the ingredients to say this is why it’s safe, like you’re completely missing the point.

I don’t know. I be reading peer-reviewed articles. There are Black physicians and Black researchers and Black scientists on twitter and Instagram sharing stuff. I cannot name any of those names off the top of my head. But find those type of people who can give a view that is an informed view, of like, I know this history and here’s what you need to know to be informed about it. But even so, Black people invoking the history and then saying, but trust me just because I’m Black also misses the point of why people don’t trust the vaccine. Um, but that is my suggestion. That’s my suggestion.

[13:15]

AG: Yeah. I think it helps when looking at the information that’s coming out about the vaccine, about what decisions to make for yourselves. Yes.

So, it’s been a minute. So in the midst of all of this as we’re closing out the year, whatcha listening to?

LS: Ooooh. Lemme tell you.

AG: Yes.

LS: So, do you listen to cupcakKe?

AG: I can’t say that I –

LS: Oh my goodness. When I tell you cupcakKe’s got bars, cupcakKe. Has. Bars.

AG: Oh, ok!

LS: And cupcakKe dropped a single called “Elephant” and it is so good. Like, sis went in. All the way in. It’s so good, I have it on repeat.

AG: cupcakKe.

LS: With two k’s. Two k’s, in the cake part.

AG: Two k’s, ok.

LS: Not like, the k for the cup and the cake – like, two. You know what I’m trying to say.

AG: I hear you.

LS: Ha ha ha ha.

AG: Ok, I’m gonna put that on my list to listen to. Ok.

LS: Who are you listening to? Or, what are you listening to?

[14:22]

AG: I’m scatterbrained right now, but the song that comes up is “Supernova” by uh, I think it’s Sunni Colón.

LS: Ok.

AG: Yeah, I like the instrumentals in it and I just like, the vibe, of the whole song. And the beat is nice.

LS: Yeah. One of the worst movies I ever saw was called Supernova.

AG: Damn. Hahaha.

(Both laugh.)

AG: Oh yeah, what was the plot – what was this?

LS: They were in space. I don’t even remember, but I remember being like, oh that was bad, and I don’t like – like, someone once told me that the reason people keep making bad movies is cause of people like me. I own it, and I thought this movie was bad. So, you know it was bad.

AG: Ok, alright. Supernova. I’m curious as to who was in it – the cast. Don’t worry, we’ll get there.

LS: Yeah, I don’t even remember – yeah, I have no idea what year, it’s just a blur, a blur.

[15:23]

LS: So, what are we doing today? What’s our episode about? What are we digging into today?

AG: We are digging into instruments for multiple worlds. Today’s guest, Jeffrey Yoo Warren, is an artist, community scientist, illustrator, and researcher. He collaboratively creates community science projects which decenter dominant culture in environmental knowledge production. He hosts participatory projects, runs workshops, writes, and gives talks on cultural making, collaborative practice, community science, and open hardware.

LS: Alright then, let’s do it.

[15:59]

[ ♫ Music interlude.]

LS: Jeffrey, thank you for joining us, we’re really excited for this conversation. If you could, take a little bit of time to share with listeners: where you’re calling from, a little bit about yourself, and a song or artist that you’re currently listening to?

[16:16]

Jeffrey Yoo Warren [JYW]: Thank you. Yeah, my name is Jeffrey Yoo Warren. I use he/him pronouns, and I’m Korean-American and biracial. I am an artist, an educator, illustrator and researcher working in Providence, Rhode Island on Narragansett and Wampanoag land. I work to collaboratively create community science projects, although I guess we’ll talk about how my understanding of like – of my work is evolving, but yeah projects that center - decenter dominant culture and environmental knowledge production. I host participatory projects. I run workshops, although those are mostly virtual in the past year of course. Er, actually entirely virtual in the past year. In the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time writing and making things. And planning and also trying to just understand my work better and sort of, the trajectory it’s been taking recently.

As to what I’ve been listening to, my partner has an album by Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru, who’s an Ethiopian pianist. Her music is amazing, it’s repetitive and rhythmic. I play piano, it’s no piano I’ve ever heard played before in style and I really enjoy – it really grounds me and uh, it’s a kind of a quiet place as well. In her music.

[17:35]

LS: Nice, thank you for sharing. I love new-to-me music, so I am so excited to dive into Emahoy and her work.

AG: Yes, definitely looking forward to it. And, with that, we’ll just jump right into it. Um, you mentioned earlier your work with community science. You are community scientist and you do community science. Like, lets break down what is a community scientist and what is community science in practice?

[18:05]

JYW: Yeah, absolutely. So, community science is a model which grew out of the work that Public Lab (https://publiclab.org/) has done over the past ten years. And I’ve cofounded Public Lab with a lot of other people and we really wanted to prototype and develop a type of science which was centered in communities and also focused on environmental issues. But I guess, one way to explain it is by contrasting it with citizen science. And I guess that’s a term that is often used to describe sort of, people getting involved in big bird counting project. Like, helping to do data collection in a really big scientific project, or you know, counting craters on the moon or something like that. I guess, by contrast, in community science, the people who are experiencing a phenomenon, like pollution or environmental harm, are in the driver’s seat or at the center of the diagram, so to speak and that’s certainly not the case in citizen science which usually has as formal researchers at the center and sort of asking for help and sort of recruiting the public into their work. And in community science, certain groups in the public are setting the agenda and determining what the role of the science is and producing knowledge.

[19:20]

AG: Thank you for that. Especially in delineating between community science versus citizen science. What does a community science project look like? Cause you mentioned your work with Public Lab, um – what are some examples?
[19:36]

JYW: So yeah. Public Lab works as a – it’s a non-profit, but also a community and Public Lab organizers work on kind of a network model. So, different people in different places can try to adopt the model and be in dialogue with the rest of the network around a project. And often, what that’ll look like is there will be a pre-existing community with a pre-existing environmental issue that they face. Often, industrial pollution, many of the community may be fenceline communities in environmental justice struggles, and one example would be in New York, in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, there’s a whole bunch of different people who for years now have been trying to document and advocate around the pollution issues that the canal has. In terms of what they have done, they formed a group, kind of a coalition called GLAM, or the Gowanus Low Altitude Mappers. And they were already doing like, canoe tours and what they began to do is to use balloons and kites to take aerial photos of the canal – and of specific spots and moments along the canal that were environmentally important. So, they actually ultimately took pictures of new inflows, like hidden pipes or leaks, things that were going into the canal that the EPA hadn’t caught in their surveys. They submitted them and got those included in the planning for the cleanup. So, that’s kind of a, classic case.

And also, of course, just across the Gulf Coast, where Public Lab began during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster, folks have used kite mapping and things to document oil spills or uh, coal terminal pollution. All sorts of different environmental industrial pollution in that area.

[21:27]

AG: Wow. That’s definitely something I never knew about. And thank you for sharing that and sharing about GLAM. So, shout out to GLAM and the amazing work they’re doing out there.

LS: Yeah, indeed. Sidebar, you mentioned kites, did y’all ever fly kites when y’all were younger?

AG: I’m done, ha ha.

LS: I’m serious!

AG: Yes. Ha, but not so successfully for me.

LS: I was awful. Jeffrey, what about you, did you ever fly kites?
JYW: I have like, memories of frustration, um, you know.

(LS & AG laughing.)

JYW: I think. You know, but having – I’ve spent a lot of time over the years in Public Lab like, flying kites as an adult and also like, with young people, with people of all ages and there’s like an irrepressible desire to run around with a kite.

LS: Oh cool!

(Yes.)

JYW: And it brings joy. Um, I have observed that, actually, a lot of the running is not effective. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not worthwhile. Ha ha.

AG: Ha ha, oh so you mean that I don’t have to run with my kite anymore?

[22:45]

LS: Right, that’s like awful and frustrating as you mentioned but also just joyful. I’m just like imagining myself as an adult, out running even though now I know it’s not effective – thank you for bringing that up.

JYW: Ha ha ha. No, I don’t mean to hate on the running. I like to run around with the kite myself, you know.

AG: Oh.

JYW: No, I actually had to learn a lot about kite flying from other people as an adult helping out in projects with Public Lab. So, I learned a lot from kids in Jerusalem who I was lucky enough to be able to fly kites with to photograph their neighborhood. I learned from a kite flyer in New York named Charles Stewart, who I guess, has a lifetime of kite flying experience and uh, is part of the GLAM coalition. So, yeah, I’ve had a lot of help as an adult learning the skills that I never picked up in the first place.

(Laughing.)

AG: It gives a whole new meaning to ‘let’s go fly a kite.’

JYW: Yeah, and I think really like, for me – there was something special about the kite flying in particular as something that is a tradition in so many parts of the world. Uh, that incorporates materials in ways that are very sensitive to local environment and accessibility and natural materials in many cases. Or unnatural ones, there’s a lot of trash bag kites out there. And there’s just something wonderful about that that, I guess, over the years I felt wasn’t necessarily fully incorporated into the theory that I understood about my own work. And that’s something that I’m hoping to get back in touch with in the most recent phase.

[24:06]

LS: Yeah, another thing that this kite conversation is bringing up for me is, you mentioned the difference between citizen and community science. Is that, and citizen science is, you know, the formal institutionally trained scientists are in the driving seat whereas in community science, the community is. I think this is another example with the youth and the adults from the communities you’re working with are teaching you all how to do this technique. So, that’s really cool, so thank you for sharing that.

Alright, so you’ve been developing and working with the term, “Predecessor Science” which is woven throughout your work. Could you break that term down for us and take us on a journey of how you came to the term Predecessor Science?

[24:48]

JYW: Yeah, absolutely. First, just to say, I think that has emerged as a word in the past year for me that maybe best describes what I seem to be doing these days. So, um, but it’s something that’s very much in evolution. But I think it really started for me with some side projects that I was doing over the years that I didn’t fully understand at the time. And I think, it gets at my best mode of work, is often kind of instinctual and I build theory later and I try to understand things that happened and things that I made. And sometimes like, pretty elaborate things. So this one that I’m thinking of was in 2018, I had been making sort of do it yourself spectrometers, as my work at Public Lab. And they were kind of very pragmatic, like made out of paper and laser cut parts and bolts and you know, stuff like that and…I don’t know why but I got really interested in making a porcelain spectrometer and I don’t know what was guiding me but I just made one and I began to make it in the style of sort of, medieval Korean pottery. Joseon Period pottery, and I started looking at pictures of that. So, I made this porcelain spectrometer that looks like it could have been made 100s of years ago and I didn’t know what it meant and I just sort of put it on a shelf. And I returned to it years later and, yeah, just started trying to unpack why I had done that, and it fit into a lot of the other things I was working on.

And I think, ultimately, the way I understand it now is, it connects to this term, “successor science” which, Sandra Harding writes about. And she wrote in like the late 80s, early 90s, and she proposed in this book The Science Question in Feminism, she proposed these three possible successor sciences. She does a great job at unpacking why science is super toxic. Ha ha. For a million reasons. And she kinda goes through them and she’s focused a lot of it on feminist theory and so she lays out these three successor sciences and you know…one of them is like, very much paraphrasing. One of them is like, science at it’s core is great, but there’s all these bad apples out there doing it wrong and being toxic and if we could just focus on doing science the way – you know, pure science or something like that, which gives you a clue that I don’t agree with this particular one, ha ha, then we would be alright. That, a successor science would just be science done right.

[27:18]

The second was like, there’s actually deep structural problems in science and we really have to look at the foundations of it to reform it. And the third one is – and this is my take, I mean, there’s other ways to understand these three scenarios but this is how I understood it. The third one was sort of like, no, actually we should be doing something else entirely. Ha ha. Um, and I kind of bounced between those three as possibilities, but the porcelain spectrometer took me all the way back and made me start thinking about what could have been science before. Or really what was, or what we might not recognize as science today. The spectrometer that I made looked kinda like an inkpot. You know, and I started to think, whose desk would it be on? Whose story would it have been part of? Or could it have been part of? And I, I know it’s an object that I just made up, but I guess I was inspired because I know that a lot of the knowledge of sciences that might have come before is lost – sometimes intentionally, or erased.

And I guess, for me, what Predecessor Science means now is an exploration of things that are systems for producing knowledge and that aren’t recognized as science or were never recognized as science that predate science. And I kinda start to also pluralize it cause it sort of also gets at like, well there’s many worlds out there. There’s many many beliefs, so there’s many sciences. The one that we think of as science is just one, so, yeah, that’s how I’m approaching it.

[28:46]

AG: So, just for our listeners, especially those who may not be in the lab. Can you break down a spectrometer? Cause, the moment you said that I was like, wow. You out here building a spectrometer, but like, uh…

LS: I know, right.

AG: Ha, but yeah – what is a spectrometer and… and yeah?

[29:06]

JYW: For sure, yeah. It’s basically a tool for splitting light into colors and then measuring how much of each color there is. And it’s used in like, material analysis and I wanna note like – I don’t have a formal science background. So, I’m sort of recounting this in the way that I understand it. But one thing I did at Public Lab was to try to break those things down and like, when you look at the spectrometers we built at Public Lab, they’re just like a box with a piece of a DVD, and you know how it makes kinda rainbows? That splits the light and then you point a camera at it. It’s basically just a dark box – a carefully measured dark box.

And you know, I think for me, it felt like a trap. When you say a spectrometer and you start talking about it, there’s always someone who’s gonna be like, no you know, it’s actually like this. No it’s like this. And you just start to feel like you’re just working on the very edge of something and that’s all the space you have. You know. And the spectrometers that I worked on, a lot of them, I only understood later that the way they looked had politics, you know. Not just politics about accessibility, but politics about materials and about identity, you know. Like I would make them out of like natural looking brown paper and maybe that was kinda just an eff you to lab aesthetics, but maybe it was also something else, you know.

AG: I love it.

[30:25]

JYW: They’re like papercraft. Like, why paper? And some of those things I think were instinctual and some of them had to do with how easy they are and cheap they are to make. And some of them were kinda like, yeah, poke in the eye sort of thing. But there was something else there and I guess I started to think like, maybe there is something about identity and narrative that is an important part in these objects. And in the material world around us. And as a designer, that’s my medium. So, you know, I guess that’s what’s really pushed me in the past year to build so many things and to try to see how that material world could look different.

[31:04]

AG: Mm. Wow. There’s so much there I haven’t really ever considered when looking at the instruments in which we conduct experiments and even just the politics there and so, so thank you for that breakdown.

JYW: I also wanted to share, you had asked um, over email about anti-assimilation as a term. And I think one thing that really helped me unlock some ideas and to get into this most recent phase of my work was to be inspired by and also at time, in collaboration with an artist and educator and maker named Sadie Prego. Who also goes by @djespiral on Instagram. And she works a lot on this term, anti-assimilation and building things that explicitly reject the invitation to assimilate into science culture, or white culture, or masculine culture. And so, she brings a lot of identity into her work and she mixes knowledge making or science interested with being a DJ, with her own style, with all kinds of things. And so this really inspiring to me. And she also collaborates on projects, in getting back to this ancestral idea, with her own ancestors in Nicaragua and makes videos which incorporate her own contemporary work. Sometimes through microscopes, with artworks produced hundreds of years ago. And just has a rich body of work that really helped me to find a new space to work in. Really, so I think that’s a word that I am also very inspired by.

[32:28]

LS: Thank you for sharing that. Definitely gonna look them up. There’s two things that I’m latching onto right now. Predecessor Science that’s focusing on the science that was there before, that maybe gets invalidated with the way that Western science delineates what constitutes science. And the other thing that I’m latching onto is you mentioned narrative. And so, I think you mentioned when you made the porcelain spectrometer, there was a certain narrative that was taking place within that. And so I’m just throwing those two things out if you want to latch onto one of them to say more about it. [33:14]

JYW: Sure. Yeah, I mean. There’s this kind of sense of, when we make things, that they should be universalized right. And often that means like, removed from narrative, removed from context. Like, I can make an object but I should embed that object that I made, tool or whatever, into a story. So I should really be writing like a picture book and then there’s an object that’s in the story of the picture book but you also get to use it yourself. Or, like, I’m trying to write theory more. I think I’m primarily a maker but I have a lot of thoughts so I try to spell them out a little more in ways that maybe I had forgotten to or something in past years, to get explicit about what these things mean that I make. But, you know, when you write, it’s often hard to get out of your own head a little bit and so I’ve started trying to write theory in the form of letters to people that I know, so that there’s a very specific person and not a general audience who is hearing what I’m saying.

LS: Oh, I love that.

[34:15]

AG: Mhmm.

JYW: It’s also, much more fun to write that way. Because the person you know, can laugh at you and can prod you and can hold you accountable. And it’s more like a conversation. I mean, it actually will be because I will actually send it, you know.

LS: Oh cool.

JYW: So. I also think just having written for years and year as a part of a nonprofit, I have the generic nonprofit tone in some of my writing and I don’t like that. I like having a little more, I don’t know, like spiciness or something. You know, like, attitude, or humor, and those things um…you know, like, I’ve written a lot of grants right. Those are pretty boring, ha ha.

[34:55]

(Ha ha ha ha)

LS: I love that idea. I hate writing. Like, hate. it. When I have to write formal, what I first – I write in AAVE, or African American Vernacular English, Black English, Ebonics, whatever phrase you use for it, and not like, twitter hashtags that certain phrases get picked up, but like, actually how we speak at home with my community. And then I have to like translate that to standard English and I absolutely hate it. The translating part. Like when I write how I’m writing, it comes out. It’s like getting it from how I speak into like this academic form that is just trash. Um, but I’m gonna try this letter writing technique. I don’t know if I’m gonna send it to anybody but I’m gonna pick a person and be like, I’m writing this to this person. So thank you for that.

JYW: Yeah.

LS: I’ll let you know how it goes.

JYW: Well likewise. I haven’t sent one yet, but I’ve been writing them.

LS: Ha ha ha.

JYW: Uh, yeah, just for a few weeks actually. I think I kinda got stuck cause I just wanted to write on so many things but I just, it takes so much time to get into the right space to produce the right tone and I don’t know, it’s a real struggle, so.

LS: Yeah, it’ll be so nice as an adult to get something that’s not a bill or junk mail.

JYW: Ha ha. Yes, that’s true. Yeah, actually I hadn’t thought of printing it out and mailing it. But I should do that, definitely. Just thinking on it, the other thing that it occurred to me. You know, a lot of writers, especially like, in anthropology, will talk about their own positionality and making sure that that’s clear. But if you have a destination like a recipient in mind, then it’s sort of like, they have the positionality too. And what’s really important about that is writing for a general audience which often means writing for a white audience, it often means writing for men – I mean, all of the above, and that identity of the recipient shapes the work. It’s like they’re there in the work and they’re helping to craft it because of what you know about them. Hopefully it’s someone you know well you know. So I think that’s really powerful.

[36:58]

LS & AG: Mhmm.

LS: So, I would like to return to your specific work. And I really want to hear you talk about this. You have a project called Instruments for Multiple Worlds. What is this project and what led you to it?

[37:14]

JYW: You know, I mentioned this porcelain spectrometer project and I also, I’m a little distractable in my workstyle, and I start just like dozens of little projects, but there seem to be a destination for a lot of them. They all seem to fit together into a certain pattern and that pattern increasingly was that they were like tools, kind of. But tools was the wrong word. And they were kind of for science, but science was kinda the wrong word. So I looked around for a word and I thought instruments makes a lot of sense. And they were all exploring, a way of knowing, a way of listening, a way of understanding the world that might be unrecognizable to contemporary like, Eurocentric heteronormative science. And, so I just decided like, ok, even though I can’t finish every one of them or whatever, they’re a body and they are better understood as a collection and that gave me some, you know, grounding to move forward and to begin situating a lot of what I do within this frame. Uh, so they include things like, I’m like fascinated with eggs and especially actually, this century egg, which is a Chinese culinary technique for preserving eggs that makes the interior jet black, and the yolk becomes like grey, dark grey. And it’s a, it like, smells a little um, like different, but they’re really delicious and they’re served in like a congee kind of. So, they have a beautiful pattern of they look like pine needles over the surface that are formed when salts, um, dry on the surface and they’re really just incredible objects. So, I just got obsessed with them and I wanted to do work that was captivating in that way. So I’ve been trying to like, synthesize an egg in some way.

And uh, just kinda wild ideas like, I’m working with an artist, Elisabeth Lorenzi, who makes gelatin solar panels and tried to adapt those techniques to make solar powered eggs. And, gelatin is a traditional Korean culinary practice, so that kind of got at this ancestral knowledge idea. But as you can tell from my meandering description, it just went in all directions, but I had to understand them as part of a body of work that was trying to get back in touch with ancestral ideas and knowledges that I have felt cut off from in my life growing up in a very assimilated environment. A very white adjacent environment. And so, it’s been part of a journey to try to unmake things.

I guess maybe just a couple references or notes, for inspirations. Uh, there’s an artist, Ananda Gabo, who is developing an idea of ancestral science. And uh, you know, who has an incredible practice of research that incorporates culinary techniques and scientific practices, biodesign and things like that and DIY practices that I’ve been very inspired by. Also, Max Liboiron is a researcher who has set a challenge for students to envision and prototype a feminist microscope. So like, I remember hearing that and being like, well what would that look like? How could we unmake things that we take for granted in our environment that shape how we make knowledge? And try to reshape them through an understanding, for me, that gets at ancestral knowledge. So, that’s sort of, where some of those ideas came from.

[40:51]

LS: Ooh, I have like two simultaneous questions.

JYW: Mhmm.

LS: Earlier when we were talking about Predecessor Science - so how does Predecessor Science show up in your Instruments for Multiple Worlds project? I think, some of it came through through your explanation, but I’m wondering if you could explicitly um, make that connection for us and for listeners?

[41:06]

JYW: Sure. Yeah, and it was a pretty all over the place attempt to explain that project. Ha ha. So, um. I guess I try to think about, ok, if we start by thinking that, ancestral knowledge is something that we are cut off from, sometimes intentionally, we are prevented from knowing or that has been lost or erased – and also acknowledging that that happens very differently for different people, different, you know, histories – but that in order to get back in touch, I can and I do read what I can about Korean science technology from you know, the year 300 to present. And I’m grateful that there is some documentation in that. I don’t read in Korean. I’m working on it. Maybe I’ll unlock some more knowledge there, but I think at the end of the day we have to use our imagination to get into that space. And, we have to use the tools we have and the skills we have. So like, for me, that’s making things. And so one way that I try to get in touch with ancestral knowledge, or you know, the idea of what Predecessor Sciences could have looked like is to make things that might have been made at that time and to imagine lives and experiences and narratives that could have existed then based on my best understanding.

So like, with the egg, you know, or with a gelatin solar panel that might have been in an ancient Korean technique, you know - I look at well, there are these bodies of expertise and knowledge and skills - like making really awesome gelatins that Korean people have practiced for centuries or millennia. Maybe that’s where this kind of knowledge production would be seeded. They might have actually made solar panels out of gelatin 500 years ago and nobody would have known. I don’t know. Maybe that one is a stretch.

I did find like, some research on early lenses. And it just really drove home to me, you know, if you look up like: where is a microscope from? Like, where was it invented? It’s almost universally declared to have been invented in the Netherlands like in the 1600 or 1700s or something. And it’s very precise knowledge, you know, um, that we have on that. But some of the accounts will say, but you know, in China, they were using water based microscopes in ancient times, but it’s treated as a kind of mythology. It’s you know, like an exotic thing that doesn’t have the same format as the great knowledge of the Netherlands. Lenses were known to exist, they were called, I guess, it translates as ‘fire pearls’ in China and Korea. And there’s descriptions of people finding them in temples, treasured objects, which made images more clear and which could be used with sunlight to produce fire. Which is I guess why they’re called fire pearls. And they were described as having the shape of a go piece – which is a lens shape. So, right, I guess the lens is a go piece shape. So yeah, I just, I think there’s all this interest that I have in uncovering what I can and building what I can’t, you know.

[44:09]

AG: Wow. It’s a different sort of time travel, this journey that has led you to Instruments for Multiple Worlds. Going to the past of the ancestors and also possibly exploring other futures that we’ve yet to experience.

JYW: Mhmm.

AG: So, with that, how can people engage with Instruments for Multiple Worlds?
JYW: I guess, that’s what I mean by like, laying plans. Is like, my hope is that we will all be able to work in closer quarters in the not so distant future. You know, the way I really prefer to work is alongside people, making things together. I have been able to do that a bit, virtually. I just wrapped up a class as AS220, in Providence. But it was virtual, so people joined from all over the country, and it was called, Micro Cosmos. And I made a bunch of like, weird microscopes that would sort of fit into my (?) work prototypes and they all look a little different. And they have like, funny little details like, gold knobs or a lot of them use acupuncture needles as how you move the slide. So there’s sort of these little joysticks and things. All these little details that are important to me, and I sent them to artists and researchers and people who wanted to produce video art with them and we met online several times and developed narratives that build on some of these themes. You know, I’m hoping to make instruments that support this type of work in other creative practices. In other people’s creative practices and to be in dialogue with people through making things that they find useful or making things that they can make. Ha, you know. Uh. And so, that’s my hope. I actually don’t really like working all on my own and uh, so I think a lot of this is sort of storing up stuff that I hope to then do in collaboration and dialogue with people. Uh, when that becomes more possible.

[46:06]

AG: Most definitely. So then, when is the next workshop you’ll be hosting? And where do we sign up? Ha.

JYW: Yeah, this last one was so amazing and different and powerful. I have to process it for a bit. I guess before I wasn’t sure I would keep doing it, but now maybe I really do have to. Based on how amazingly, and how much this last session has changed my thinking. So, I don’t know but probably in the next couple months.

LS: You’re doing the second iteration of Micro Cosmos, correct?

JYW: Mhmm, that’s right. Yeah.

LS: Yeah. I’m gonna make it one day. Like, the dates have not lined up but one day they will. Ha.

JYW: Well, one thing we talked about in the most recent session was just that the microscopes themselves, rather than getting sent back to me, I think, um, we kind of talked about how they might be refined or modified or adapted by the people who have them and they might pass them on to someone else.

LS: Oh cool.

AG: Oh wow.

JYW: And we have this sort of traveling life.

LS: Um, Derin, I wanna return to a phrase that you said which was time travel. And I was like, yeah, this is like time travel. But it’s time travel that I can like, fuck wit. Cause usually – people are like, what year in the past do you wanna return to? Uh, not nary a one. Ha ha ha.

AG: Ha ha ha ha.

LS: Thanks but I’m good. Unless it’s like, pre-colonialism. Um, but then, connecting with the past – so like, we’re returning or reconnecting with cultural knowledge, ancestral knowledge, to move us somewhere to the future, and I’m wondering when we get to liberation, does something always have to be for something? Or is that a model of liberation, where we just get to tinker and create and be leisurely about knowledge production? Instead of now I feel like it’s always like, ok, how is this going to get us free? So, just a question out there for the both of you.

[47:56]

AG: Mm. Well, so, in my thinking when I asked the question about how can people engage, was kinda tying it back to the community ties, aspect of it. Just cause I was curious, oh my goodness, you’re working on so many amazing different things. You’re engaging with the science praxis in the ways that you don’t really get to. Definitely within the academy. And so just curious as to what the reception was.

But to your question, Toya, about um, liberation. I think tinkering is a part of liberation. Like just to tinker and explore and not necessarily have an explicit like, oh we’re doing this to meet some sort of end. But as we are doing, things are unfolding before us as we’re tinkering. So, kind of just being present to that.

[48:46]

JYW: Yeah, I hope for like a future where we can tinker on things and so forth. But, I think there’s a future maybe where there are many different respected ways of understanding things that draw on different traditions and that people don’t feel that they have to look like or act like, or be like the conception of a scientist that’s like white and male and from these very specific traditions. And um, so in that sense. But I guess I also feel like a lot of this is in response. You know, like, if you think of the visual material culture, of science. As it it today. It’s not silent. You know, that kind of like, just slightly pebbled texture of stuff that’s in the lab. Like, molded out of plastic and it comes in like beige and like, kinda muted blue. And like, you know like –

LS: The micro pipette boxes.

JYW: Yeah, right. So, that carries a lot in it. It may be a small part. And maybe those examples are not the most powerful way that it carries identity or shapes our world, but in so many ways the objects that we use to do science, to create knowledge, they carry these meanings and so, the tinkering and the prototyping is meant to speak back to that in a lot of ways. And also just not be obsessed with addressing that audience but to just have a nice thing that is not it. That builds in its own space and stands on its own internal consistencies. So, I – that’s one way I understand it. Um. I do, yeah, I did wanna agree. Like, I think that the idea of ancestral knowledges is so different for different people. And that it is very charged and complicated. I do know that like, Asian American men are not excluded from science. Largely. I mean, they probably are in some sense. And so, my identity and my positionality, related to that in ways that I wanna be very aware of. And that’s one of the reasons that I seek to be in dialogue with people and in collaboration and to build on ideas and contribute to them. So, I think that’s certainly a thing to be careful about. But I guess like, I do see a lot of work by Black Speculative Futurists, and Afrofuturists designers and artists who are imagining futures and pasts. The work is amazing. It is really receiving recognition at a level that it hadn’t before. And, you know, that’s certainly something that I am reading a lot of and understanding a lot of as well as I can, as I do this work.

[51:31]

LS: Thank you both for responding. So I’ve been writing down all of the things that you’ve called yourself. So you’ve referred to yourself as a writer, an illustrator, a photographer, a designer, a maker, and maybe I missed a few. And so I just wanna like, uplift that, and how we ask questions, like, oh as a writer, you’re tapping into different parts of who you are. And so, I’m wondering if you can talk about how – this might be a bigger question than I originally started it out to be – um, like, over your journey up to where you are, were these things that you have picked up along the way? And then how do they all converge in the work that you’re doing?

[52:12]

JYW: That’s a tough question. Um, I think a lot of those things. Like, you know, doing photography or like, editing video, or things like that – a lot of those I feel like are in service of the sort of core things that I wanna be doing like, making stuff. And so I wanna document it well. I wanna share it. I wanna be an educator and a collaborator that can be in dialogue in many forms or media. Um, so there’s that. I think, there’s a way that it’s wrapped up in privilege to be a little bit of a jack of all trades, or chameleon, or something like that. And I’m wary about that. But I do think it is important to follow what brings you joy in work, in order to do really good work. And I think that comes out of spending like, many years kindof thinking that I ought to be doing things a certain way, not recognizing how important it was to be doing something that was not just like, theoretically compelling but literally brought some kind of joy in the act of doing. I really enjoyed making the boxes for these microscopes out of pine. Like, I really like woodworking. Why shouldn’t that be something I take seriously as a part of my practice? I really used to separate out into siloes, these different things that I did. And you know, for me, the whole time I was at Public Lab, I was in my own time cooking for people, working to build comfortable spaces in my home. I did things that, I didn’t understand them at all as being related to my core practice of being at Public Lab and doing that as my career you know.

LS: Mhmm.

[53:48]

JYW: But now, somehow, I am better at understanding how all those different things can fit in the same practice. Or, try to, you know. And so, like making traditional recipes and cooking in the kitchen. That should be part of practice and that should be taken seriously as something that fits in. So maybe, that’s my answer, that I think a lot of these different things that make up a life of different things that we do, you know. That we don’t necessarily fit in, we think of as hobbies, maybe they do have a place. You know. So, you know, I don’t know. That’s my best guess.

[54:25]

LS: Jeffrey, thank you! If you could share any upcoming projects you have going on, contact information so if folks wanna get in contact with you, and how can listeners perhaps support any of the work that you’ve mentioned?

[54:40]

JYW: Yeah, for contact. To be honest, like, in this isolated world we’re in, Instagram is like the main channel of dialogue I have with people. I like to be in communication visually with people and so, that’s something that’s hard remotely but you can find a lot of my work and a lot of my day to day practice of just, half-made things that I post wildly onto my Instagram. As well as things I’m reading. So that’s a really good place to have conversations for me. And you can message me there, so. It’s @unterbahn.

AG: Ok, ha.

JYW: And –

LS: That was like, in German. Ha ha.

JYW: I think it’s like fake German, like Haagen Daaz or something. Um.

AG & LS: Ahh. Ha ha.

JYW: It’s like one of those things that just came out of when you’re younger and make up things. Ha ha. Ha.

LS: Oh, yeah and then the other questions were, if you had any upcoming projects?

JYW: Yeah, I’m hoping to continue to adding to this body of um, Instruments for Multiple World. Um, I’m always interested in trying to open collaborations with different people. And, have dialogue through crafted things. So I’m interested in that sort of thing. Um, I hope that the gelatin solar egg project will happen very soon and I’ll post that. But yeah, it’ll mostly come out on Instagram, as well as my website, unterbahn.com . And in terms of being involved, I will be teaching more online courses. I have to figure out a little bit about how to make a career out of that, in this weird time. And eventually, I hope I will be able to have a physical space. Or be in a physical space. And then, I guess finally because I’m trying to commit to doing more writing and posting the writing on my website and on twitter and Instagram. My twitter is @jywarren. I’d love it if I were in dialogue with people too. So I’m reading things and I’m writing back and that’s I think a good way to be involved in dialogue.

[56:40]

LS: Thank you!

AG: Yes, thank you.

JYW: Yeah, thank you.

[56:43]

[ ♫ Music fade in.]

Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru – “Ballard Of The Spirits” Playing.

[ ♫ Music fade out.]

[57:12]

AG: So you were just listening to “Ballard Of The Spirits” by Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru. Yeah, how’s that hitting, Toya. How’s that hittin you?

LS: Uh, it’s hitting me quite nicely. I found that – you stay laughing at me. I found it very soothing, so I did get a little worked up there in the beginning. And I found it very soothing. Listeners know I love music, but how to describe the musical things, I don’t do so well. Um, like, when the piano keys were teeter tottering and then the background was sort of like a lower key, it was like don, I like the combination of those two things together. So yeah, how are you sitting with it?

[57:57]

AG: Yeah, I feel. It feels like a soothing balm, you know. Rubbed up on my chest and it’s just, I’m feeling the vapors and it just feels nice. I could get lulled into a nice sleep right now. I feel relaxed and I feel just peace.

LS: Yeah. Music is so healing. Music is so healing and I love it. And I think, whew. Cause 2020 as you said earlier, was a rollercoaster.

AG: Yup.

LS: And it was like, you know, you get in the rollercoaster and it’s like, oh no, is this seat belt restraint thing actually working? It’s a little loose, it’s a little wobbly.

AG: Ha ha ha.

LS: That’s how 2020 is. So shoutout to all the folks who created music that I listened to that soothed and healed me, including this one now.

AG: Yes. Y’all doing the work and thank you. Thank you.

LS: Yeah, so get into Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru if you get a chance. She’s an Ethiopian composer pianist nun. She sang for the Emperor Haile Selassie, so.

AG: Yeah, she out here. She, she um, since the release of her first record, she set up a foundation for children across the continent as well as in DC to study music. So, she out here. And she composed over 152 or 153 – is it compositions, or just music.

LS: Mhmm.

AG: And so yeah, she yeah.

LS: Wow wow wow. I’m looking at this photo of her when she’s 23. She was um, she was fly, ok. She speaks seven languages, ok get it. Ok yeah, get into her music.

AG: Yes. You won’t be disappointed.

[59:44]

AG: So coming out of this soothing piece, right, um, I’m thinking back to this conversation with Jeffrey and just feeling inspired and also curious as to what it would look like to have the framework of Instruments from Multiple Worlds be brought into hospitals. Into the ER room, right. What would those – how would those tools change, right. And how would maybe, those tools and practices now who bring about healing rather than further harm, really. Yeah.

LS: Yeah.

AG: Thank you for staying with us.

LS: Yeah, thank you. Ha ha. I also hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you really enjoyed it, um, you can uh – we set up a Patreon. So you could – ha ha.

AG: Heyy.

LS: Ha ha, go head on over to our Patreon and help sustain Abolition Science. We are trying to make it sustainable so that we can keep doing this project. How can you get to the Patreon? At the current moment, the link in the bio on Instagram and Twitter – that’s how you can get there. It is not even yet up on our website. We will get there. It will get there eventually. So yeah, we sincerely appreciate any support that y’all can give.

AG: Nothing is too small, y’all.

LS: Oh yeah, we should tell them the tiers – so, $1, $3, $5. Is $5? Ok, I think it’s 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, maybe 20. Ok, maybe it’s 1, 3, 5, 10, 20? I was looking at some Patreons and their lowest price was like $25. I was like, oh goodness, you got a fancy audience. Ha ha ha.

[1:01:31]

AG: Ok, alright. Well please, donate.

LS: And we will see you next time.

[ ♫ Music fade in.]

AG: Ok, alright. Well please, donate.

LS: And we will see you next time.

AG: Peace y’all.

LS: Check out our website, AbolitionScience.org, where you can find transcripts of each episode and links to many of the resources that we mentioned.

AG: You can also follow us on Twitter, @abolition_sci and on Instagram @AbolitionScience.

[Music Stops♫]

[1:01:59]

Mentions & Resources:

Vaccine and Medical Industry Conversation-Specific Mentions & Resources

People Mentioned by LaToya Strong:

Kemi Doll, MD, MCSR. – Twitter: @kemidoll ; UW Faculty Page: https://obgyn.uw.edu/faculty/kemi-m-doll-md-mscr

Books Mentioned by LaToya Strong:

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington, 2006: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/185986/medical-apartheid-by-harriet-a-washington/
Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840 by Rana Hogarth, 2017: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469632872/medicalizing-blackness/
Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care by Dayna Bowen Matthew, 2015

Overall Episode Mentions & Resources:

Songs Mentioned by LaToya Strong: