While many refer to the 1960 Greensboro Sit In as the one that sparked a nationwide movement, the 1957 Royal Ice Cream sit in Durham, NC, the artist’s hometown, is one that early brought matters of segregation to the upper courts. The Southern Foodways Alliance produced a short documentary about the event.

Gullah Geechee describes the language, culture, and ethnic identity of a group descended from enslaved Africans who did not assimilate into white American society, but instead live within their own enclave. The language is a creole containing loanwords from many African languages and the spiritual traditions mirror those found in West and Central Africa. The artist is not Gullah themself, but looks to this community as a place from which Afro-centric re-imaginings can arise. The Geechee Experience is a platform for Gullah cultural preservation

Hoodoo refers to a religious and spiritual practice distinct to the ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) community. It is a syncretic mix of African Traditional Religion, Christianity, plant medicine, and mysticism that offers a path for retaining Black spiritual, mental, and emotional freedom while existing under white supremacist patriarchal conditions in America. Hoodoo is a closed practice that is often appropriated by those who are not members of the ADOS community, therefore, the artist has chosen not to link to any resources in the context of this application which is being submitted to an institution with foundations in the trade of enslaved African people. Author Zora Neale Hurston has written the most well known book on the subject.

The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was at its time the nation’s most deadly industrial incident, taking 146 lives, mostly young immigrant women and girls. The incident sparked the beginning of a Worker’s Rights movement that would create many of the protections taken for granted toady. The Interference Archive has been an invaluable resource in shaping the artist’s perspective on this issue.

Modern technology has created new and highly invasive levels of interaction between government, corporation, and citizen, the effects of which are only barely being reckoned with. The level of surveillance we live with undermines personal freedom and privacy, yet we are so entangled it is impossible to escape. The Data & Society podcast is one resources that has deeply informed perspectives on this issue and the artist’s work.

The most radical form of equality would be one without hierarchy. Anarchy works to help us reimagine structures without people or institutions placed in oppressive relational subject positions. It is from this perspective that the artist contends with the American government, its colonial history, and the history of oppression everywhere. The Black Rose Federation’s Anarchist Reader has been key in shaping the artist's perspective.

The practice of training oneself to have dreams in which one is aware that they are dreaming and can control the dream construct is referred to as lucid dreaming. Many religious traditions take the practice a step further into what is known as Dream Yoga. In the yogic dream state, one practices not controlling dream content, but relating to it in different ways. Author Andrew Holocek breaks down different components of the practice on his blog.

A postulation that at the intersections of AI, virtual reality, Eastern philosophy, quantum physics and mythology, the simulation hypothesis suggests the statistically very real possibility that we are all living in a simulation. This perspective creates novel possibilities for the way we might approach life. MIT’s Rizwan Virk, who generated the hypothesis explains more about it on his blog.

A school of nondual philosophy that posits the universe as an absolute entity and our experience of daily life as a virtual play in the field of consciousness. This realization alleviates suffering and can be reached through different practices of enquiry. One such form is the ‘Discernment of the Seer and the Seen’ which compels the seeker to question what is the force alivening their minds. Swami Sarvapriyananda explains the concept in further depth in this video.

The Lesbian Masterdoc

Compulsory heterosexuality pervades many facets of life, personal expression, thought, and the mind. The Lesbian Masterdoc is a document which has circulated the internet for years helping non-women unpack the narratives they’ve grown with an examine their sexuality through a new lens.

Gender Diversity

Alok Vaid-Menon is a celebrated gender non conforming artist and writer whose work challenges and reflects the artist’s own understanding of gender, sex and the false binary that has been constructed around those aspects of humanity within Western society. One example is their book report on the construction of biological sex.

Queer Twitter

Nonbinary, lesbian, genderqueer, Black, disabled, neodiverse, activists, artists, and everyday people are some of the most profound contributors to the artist’s growing understanding of queerness, intersectionality, and the constructs that bind. This list is a collection accounts