Multidisciplinary Artist Bayeté Ross Smith on Art, Technology and Restorative Justice

multidisciplinary artist/visual journalist/filmmaker/education worker Bayeté Ross Smith

Show Notes:

2:00 Bayeté Ross Smith’s background, work and collaboration

7:00 relevance of colonialism in transnational issues 

9:50 collective brain trust/collective culture

14:30 employing technology with storytelling

20:30 creatives’ protection of their metadata

24:40 “art” and “data” as information 

27:50 “human authorship” and copyright 

34:25 bias proliferation with AI

39:40 power of art and media to raise awareness 

44:50 “restorative justice” to mitigate and deter harm so individuals can flourish

54:00 current and future projects, including Got the Power Boomboxes: Sugar Cane and Cotton, Hip Hop 50 Boombox, video game project and collaboration with legal community

Please share your comments and/or questions at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com

Music by Toulme.

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Thanks so much for listening!

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© Stephanie Drawdy [2026]

Transcript

Creative Practice Meets Restorative Justice

SPEAKER_01 0:01

In my work, I'm mostly storytelling and I'm creating the sense of certain possibilities. And from that standpoint, then a lot of the actual restorative justice work and just the restorative work in general that can come from my work as potential solutions to some of the stories I'm telling. A lot of that manifests itself in the workshops, educational programs, and the social events that I try to craft around my projects. That's where the conversations and the sharing of ideas takes place based on those creative narratives and stories that I'm exposing people to.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Welcome to Warfare of Art and Law, the podcast that focuses on how justice does or doesn't play when art and law. Hi everyone, it's Stephanie, and that is a multidisciplinary artist, visual journalist, filmmaker, and education worker, Fayette Ross Smith. Fayette was previously on the podcast in 2021, featured as episode 48, sharing about his time as Columbia's Law School's artist in residence. In the following interview, Faete shares how his work has progressed since conversation. Welcome back to Warfare Heart Summit.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Thank you for coming.

Role At Columbia Law And Global Projects

SPEAKER_00 1:48

When we last spoke a few years ago from 2021, you were the artist in residence at Columbia Law. And I wonder if you might just kind of give an overview of what you've been doing since then and introduce yourself to those who may have not heard that prior interview.

Sculptures Of Sugar, Cotton, And History

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Certainly. So I'm a multidisciplinary artist and visual journalist, which means that I make certain projects that are designed for artistic spaces and artistic experiences in both institutions, and I also do a lot of public work in public space. But in addition to that, I have a photojournalism and visual journalism background. So I create long-term, long-form projects for media publishers like The Guardian or The New York Times or for PBS. So a lot of that work focuses on um longer form stories that are multimedia, uh, combining different uh creative mediums together to uh create a work that tells a more journalistic story and connects that journalistic story to various solutions and various elements of culture and cultural empowerment that we may face today. So um partially filmmaking and multimedia, partially installation, partially fine art photography. I also do some things with 3D objects and sculpture. And so it's a variety of different approaches to making and telling stories. And then what I've been doing recently um since Columbia, you know, that residency was, I think, very successful. The challenge is um there wasn't really enough funding put into it to continue that program. And I'd hoped to advise them on the next artist in resident and also, you know, continue to do some programs with them in a more commission or consultancy capacity. Um wasn't really enough money there for that, and then they ran into a lot of recent challenges with the protest and then with the current administration. So, you know, I'm still teaching at NYU as well, and I've done a variety of international projects since then that uh I've been commissioned to do uh in Benin, West Africa, um, in France, and uh I did a project with the Apollo as well in Harlem. And that consists of looking at contemporary and archival music and oral histories, it combined with these sculptures that I'm making out of boom boxes that are cast of sugar, cotton, and tobacco, and combining those materials to make these sculptures that are monuments to the colonial industries and the history of colonialism. But then I have historians telling a more accurate version of history with the sculptures because they play uh audio and video soundtrack that speaks to oral history, music as empowerment and liberation, and then a more correct telling of the history of these colonial industries and how they've impacted regions in West Africa, South America, the Caribbean, North America, and Western Europe. And then I also did a retrospective in the south of France last year and a satellite exhibition built off of that in Paris, in addition to having a sculpture in Paris, a sculpture in Ouida Benin, and a sculpture in um Harlem, New York at the Apollo simultaneously. So I'm continuing to work on site and collaborate with different organizations that are interested in bringing important stories into the public realm. And I always create a series of workshops and, you know, kind of like a curriculum of events and workshops to accompany my work in order to activate the ideas in a way that impacts both professional development as well as the day-to-day citizen. And I've also been doing a good amount of research in Colombia, the country along the Pacific coast where you have a lot of the African descendant community living there, because that's where the sugar plantations were. So a good amount of it boils down to connecting these different communities and these different geographic locations and looking at how the stories and knowledge they have are relevant to the other regions and communities, and how when we share those, we can come up with a more thoughtful approach to resolving some of our most pressing challenges. And then building off of Columbia Law School and the work I did there, how does that then become a very effective professional development tool and professional training tool?

SPEAKER_00 6:56

What is the relevance and connection that you see between these various geographic areas that you are working in?

Linking Regions Through Colonial Legacies

SPEAKER_01 7:05

So it's my belief, and a lot of people kind of cringe when they hear this, but it's my belief that a lot of our contemporary social issues really go back to colonialism and a lot of the laws, policies, and worldviews that were developed during the colonialism of the Americas, especially, um, and by extension, Africa. Um Asia is relevant in that idea as well. Um, but I'm focusing more on North America, South America, Africa, and Europe because of the manner in which it affected migration patterns and the flow of wealth. And that flow of wealth and the policies that accompanied that flow of wealth, and then the laws and systems that accompany that, I think have a very direct effect on a lot of the social inequity we have these days. But more importantly, and I talk about this a bit in my TED talk, more importantly, it affects our inability to maximize our populations and our citizenship in terms of maximizing the human resource of the collective brain trust that exists in all these regions. And so I want to shed light on this history, how it's affecting us today, and really tie into it a thread of rethinking and reframing how we approach certain things in the world, certain ideas, our way of seeing the world, so that we can maximize the human potential that exists in the countries of North and South America, which have a really diverse um influence in terms of culture from around the world. Um similarly, in parts of Western Europe like France, there's an opportunity to really maximize a human resource there. But one of our challenges is we end up being divided and not working together and essentially fighting with each other instead of seeing each other as fellow citizens, as countrymen and women, and coming together to maximize the potential that each of us can contribute to society.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

How do you see the collective brain trust that you mentioned overlapping or connecting with our collective culture? You referenced culture, and I was just curious how you see the the two.

Culture, Bias, And Collective Potential

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Well, it's it's really on the most simple level, right? It's like, you know, I've been I'm a black American, and my entire life I've always had to keep in mind being aware of and protecting myself from racism. That's not very different from what my Afro descendant friends and colleagues in Colombia and Panama face. It's not very different from what uh the African descendant friends and colleagues I have in France and Spain face. It's not just people of African ancestry in the African diaspora, it relates to other diasporas as well. But I'll use us as one of the most overt and glaring examples on just a basic level. One has to wonder how much more effectively we could contribute to our various societies if we didn't have to spend time being concerned with and protecting ourselves from racism. Um, and there's and that and that's only the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot of other ways in which uh people are arbitrarily marginalized and have to work to protect and defend themselves. And that's taking up their time and attention. We can talk about how women are treated in a variety of societies, and that's like a whole series of podcasts, right? So it's not just one group, but I think when you deal with people of African ancestry, there's a certain visibility that creates almost a an ideal case study in terms of looking at all the time and attention black people have to put towards surviving being black versus how much more could we contribute to our various nations. And this is nation splural, it's not just the United States, right? It's pretty much everywhere where there's black people. How much more could be contributed, how much more could we achieve if we didn't have to do that? Um but it also, like I mentioned, it it translates and trickles down to a variety of other groups as well. Um we often see things through our cultural lens, and that's fine, but it's important to expand that lens so that we can see other possibilities for interpreting information and data that one point of view doesn't always see. And I'm using art and journalism and creative storytelling to bring that idea to the professional realm, particularly law and policy, uh, in order to expand the manner in which we operate with intellectual rigor in these fields.

Red Summers And Immersive Tech

SPEAKER_00 13:11

One example that really stood out to me uh years ago when we spoke, and I know you've been working internationally on this, is the Red Summers VR project. I was curious how you've been employing emerging technology as it's been advancing since we last spoke. How you've been employing that in your storytelling and this work that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Yes, well, I hope I'm being clear about these other um ideas I'm hoping to convey. Um there's a lot going on these days, so sometimes one wonders how articulate one is being about a given topic. Um, so you know, please tell me to slow down or stop or ask me a follow-up question if I kind of go on a tangent or start talking too academically when I could just talk in layman's terms and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Well, I appreciate that. And honestly, we could stop and have an hour conversation about multiple things you brought up. So it's fascinating. I love your work, and so share as you will.

Building A Brain-Positive Video Game

SPEAKER_01 14:16

But yeah, these days, they have these days. I got so much trouble on my mind, refuse to lose. Um, but as it comes back to technology, you were asking me about how I'm using emerging technology. The idea with Red Summers was to use emerging technology to create a unique experience that didn't exist before. And that experience is basically standing on a site, looking back in time, and then hearing an expert historian narrate uh what happened on these sites, and then see the documentation of that as if you're looking back in time from that site today. And so what I've been doing is looking at what the capabilities are of new technology. I've been doing more and more research about um artificial intelligence and how to responsibly use that as a resource and a tool, as well as what types of new visual literacy and media literacy techniques do we need to have to properly interpret art and media created with AI. So it's been a lot of research, um, as well as me traveling and exhibiting the Red Summers project uh in different forms. Uh I showcased it in France last winter and fall um as part of my retrospective. So we installed it at the Centre de la Photographie Moujon in um the south of France in Cote d'Azur, translated it into French, and then you know, included still images from the pieces. Uh, we printed some of the archival newspaper clippings really, really large. Um, we included other maps of the United States and demographic, uh, I'll say demographic maps that showed, you know, the flow of different people and events. And the idea was to utilize various mediums, some that people are familiar with, some that people are more newly familiar with, to tell that story in an encompassing and immersive way. Not just immersive in terms of the media, but immersive in terms of the overall experience in the gallery space. And so I've been looking at how can other new technology, again, AI as one example, how can they be incorporated into that larger process? And then being thoughtful about when it makes the most sense to use those in physical spaces versus in virtual spaces and how to balance the multi-platform storytelling of it all. Because with my work, I want it to exist successfully on multiple platforms, which includes, you know, physical spaces, public spaces, you know, desktop, mobile, and even you know, other virtual spaces like gaming spaces.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Branching off from the Red Summers, uh, do you have other projects that you already had begun uh or that you have started that are starting to employ different types of tech in a new way?

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Well, I've been working on developing a video game, but I've kind of run into a challenge related to funding support for it. And so I've been trying to figure out the most effective way to approach financially supporting um the creation of this video game. The question is, you know, do I want to go through educational sources? Do I want to go through traditional video game sources and just try to create it and sell it like a commercial game? And that's been something that there's been some uncertainty about. And I've I've continued to reach out to people I know in the gaming space. Um but you know, certain types of communication and meetings have just been, you know, more complicated recently. But uh, you know, in that capacity, I've been working with Unity and Unreal Engine to understand in more detail the capabilities of those technologies.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Are you able to give a hint at the topic of the game?

Ethics, Metadata, And AI Bias

SPEAKER_01 18:32

The video game basically combines basic STEM concepts with hip-hop music and uh the idea of freestyle ciphers and looks at is there a way of replicating some of the things we do in a physical space in a virtual world, but in a way that is productive for you know our neural pathways. Um, a lot of times when technology isn't used well, it kind of dumbs down isn't the right word, but it doesn't force us to activate our neural pathways and our brains in the most productive way that helps them grow and helps them strengthen themselves. And you hear people talking about that a lot in terms of its impact on young people whose brains are still growing. And so I think this could be an interesting way of like developing community and also building some sort of gameplay that really activates people's brains, but not in a kind of a cheesy this is an educational game way, but looking at how you can apply education to the overall idea of education, not like in class education, but the process of bettering one's mind to. Activities that people creatively and organically participate in on a regular basis. It just needs to be focused and implemented in a certain way. It's about wrapping and STEM and fashion and creating avatars and how all those things can be brought together kind of in a productive virtual world that stimulates your intellectual rigor.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Shifting to your thoughts generally about using emerging tech in a responsible and ethical way. I was curious your thoughts on points like metadata provenance. And so would you want to speak a bit on what your research has brought you to as far as any kind of recommendations you might have on the best way for creatives to have protection of their metadata?

Deepfakes, Stereotypes, And Harm

SPEAKER_01 20:55

So well, not really. The answer is I don't have like a good conclusion to that. Because sometimes the metadata is very important, just metadata in general. Sometimes metadata is very important in general to help us understand authenticity and to create clues so we can decipher things like deep fakes, right? But then there's also the challenge of artificial intelligence being trained on existing creative work, existing intellectual ideas, to the extent that the artificial intelligence can be trained on these things, but you don't necessarily know if that training is going to be used in an ethical way. And in some cases, it even if it doesn't border on copyright infringement, it is a it is a use of people's data for purposes that they don't agree with and they haven't consented to. And while a lot of people are concerned about AI getting out of control as it becomes more sophisticated, another thing that people are frustrated with are the biases within AI. Um, and that has to do with the information that's trained on. So I'm not sure where we go with that specifically. Um, and it's obviously it's not just artificial intelligence, it relates to other aspects of technology technology. But, you know, we want to be cautious with our data, particularly our metadata, but we have to kind of understand when it's important to utilize it and share it and when it isn't. And I don't really have any solutions for that. I just try to be cautious in general, um, across social media and across platforms that are more public or can be leveraged by tech companies who even at their best, even at their best responsible use of metadata is not one of their top priorities, usually. So even if they don't have nefarious intent, how you know how responsible, you know, are they gonna really be? And that's a balancing act of trying to figure out how to approach it. And it for me, and maybe you know, this does require more research and more rigor on my part. There's so many things to attempt to be knowledgeable these days, but um, for me, it's consisted of tailoring my approach to each platform and each bit of software that I'm using, and every time I publish something to do my best to make sure the data that's out there is out there in a way in which I want it and in a responsible way, in a way that won't be able to be manipulated as much, kind of limit the the ability to have it manipulated.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

You were referencing a minute ago uh data, and rightly so. I was curious your thoughts on this idea of viewing art as data. Many people, especially uh in the creative community, have taken issue with their art being categorized in in a way that they think is I think diminishing to what their art is as just data. Any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Can you elaborate on that? My I have an initial reaction, but you know that could be harsh. It could get me some backlash from my colleagues and peers.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Oh, go ahead.

Art, Subjectivity, And Ways Of Seeing

SPEAKER_01 25:10

You know, I don't know what is data, right? Like I need to look up the definition to be sure, but I think of it as information, essentially. And art and creative storytelling in any of its forms is information, and that's part of why it's so important and significant and powerful, because it's a type of information that exists in a way that transcends the literal information that you get, it helps incite connections to other information very effectively and very efficiently. You know, I think a lot of times artists and also people with academic backgrounds get very caught up in the words we use and the phrasing that we use. And that is important at times. But it's also valid for other people to perceive artwork and what's created, whether it's written, whether it's paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, whatever. It's valid for people to interpret it and categorize it the way that they categorize it when it's put out there to the public. So I understand pushing back against overly simplifying what art is and what type of value it can have. But there's also validity to the perspective of seeing it as information. And I don't know to what extent it's worthwhile to engage in a debate about that. I think it's probably more productive to say, for example, that if we're gonna look at it as data, well, what kind of data is it? What type of unique data is it? And also why are people looking at it as data? And then how is it being used as data and be concerned with that process more than simply um feeling like people are overly simplifying or minimizing its worth and its significance?

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Yeah. Another term that's definitely been in debate lately due to emerging tech is authorship. Human authorship is something that's very much in the U.S. copyright bedrock. I was curious your thoughts about that, if you had any uh perspective on whether or not that human authorship element needed to be preserved, or if you see a broader view in the future, depending on how emerging tech continues to enter the art space.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Well, can you can you elaborate a little bit on that? I mean, because I'm curious, like what I'm not I'm not certain what you're getting at in terms of the significance of human authorship. Are you asking me, do I think human authorship is important in terms of artistic spaces and creations and journalistic spaces and creations? Or are you asking me, you know, to what extent we need to understand what's humanly authored and what is, you know, driven by an algorithm or artificial intelligence? I'm a little I think there's different details and nuances in there.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Um, sure. And and I am leaning towards the latter as far as say, if and when you are using uh an algorithm to assist in your work. If it becomes more than just assistance and you're actually generating work through an algorithm, do you want that work, do you want to be able to have the copyright for that? And I guess that's another topic. Uh you know, what is your position on copywriting your work?

Rethinking Justice As Restorative

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Is that because that's really where it what it comes down to for this kind of question, I think, is if you want to copyright at certain jurisdictions, the generative AI elements are not made apparent with emergent technology and very much heightened by the speed of AI's development, is that we need new systems and protocols for approaching copyright ownership and authorship. So, you know, I think we have to figure out some new rules and some new guidelines. The challenge is AI moves so quickly, as just one example. Um, there's other examples of emergent technology too, right? But AI is the hot topic now. Um, and so it's ripe for these examples. AI, for example, moves so quickly that by the time our legislative process can respond to it, it's already advanced beyond a lot of those um legislative um protocols are put into place. But I think it is very important that anyone and everyone's ideas and concepts can't just simply be manipulated and run through, you know, a super powerful um automated process in order to create something that is directly based on that, but then that person is cut out of the loop of authorship and control of how that gets disseminated. I don't have a definitive solution for that, but I think those are the conversations we need to start having. And then I think there just simply needs to be a protocol, and they've started to some of them have started, but there need to be protocols about having to say that something was AI generated to a certain extent, and there have to be pieces of metadata that allow you to trace that. Um because what can be done with deepfakes now is you know, it's extraordinary, but it's obviously potentially very dangerous in terms of misinforming people. And right now, we are in the heart of the information age and information data, right? But information is everything in terms of affecting our sense of reality and how people respond in the both the physical and virtual world. So, you know, if I'm able to make a deep fake of uh a scientist like Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about the earth being flat, even as a joke, how does that then get taken and manipulated? And so I think there has to be monitoring and enforcement, unfortunately. Um, I don't know how else you do that. And so we have to start thinking about what are some organizations and systems to put in place to keep track of all of this stuff, just like we have, you know, arbitrary example, but just like we have the FDA, um, just like we had, you know, the EPA, like we need something to monitor all these different aspects of technology, not just technology overall, but all these different aspects of technology. Um, and then these organizations need to cooperate internationally. So whether it's you know directly through an NGO or it's you know partnerships with the people in France and England and Spain, um, you know, obviously not just Europe, but I'm starting to think of those um countries as countries that have the resources, and also I'm thinking of like major language branches, um, that becomes very important as well. So again, that circles back to these a lot of these arbitrary biases and preconceptions about different populations of people are really counterproductive when we need to get access to the human resources about how to respond to our most pressing issues. If we can't even get along as Americans across ethnic lines and class lines and political lines, how are we going to communicate with China and Brazil about figuring out how to respond to climate change and the proliferation of technology? Um, so we're really at a very critical point of being able to move beyond the old ways of seeing and framing the world and being open to new ways of seeing and framing the world so that we can come together to push the species to evolve to the next level as opposed to crumbling under the weight of not being able to manage what we've created.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

As for bias, which you mentioned, how do you believe the biases that were already existing have possibly been exacerbated by the biases in emerging tech?

Drugs, Policy, And Repair

Transnational Boombox Project And Partners

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Well, it creates the capability of communicating ideas and biased ideas, and in some cases completely fake ideas, um very efficient and they can proliferate at extreme rates. I think recently, you know, we're this is this is November of 2025. Recently, with the US government shut down and one of the emphasis on SNAP benefits, we've seen a lot of deep fakes of black women talking about how they're frustrated that they don't have their snap benefits to use for things like hair and nails, or to to feed their 10 kids, or to buy things that you're not supposed to buy with snap benefits. And these are completely fake. But people are willing to believe them because they want to believe that narrative of a black welfare queen. Uh, they want to believe that narrative of a black welfare queen, they want to believe the idea that black Americans are lazy and don't want to work and just want to be um bailed out by the government or some other arbitrary um source of money and resources. And so people aren't even investigating the validity of you know these fake videos as just one example. And what that's tied into is the idea that again, black people are lazy and they don't work, um, and they're just a burden to society and they want everything given to them, but that is connected to a larger series of issues that are centuries-long misrepresentations of black Americans, right? Um that they're lazy, that um society is is not oppressing black people, but black people are in the positions that they're in when they're struggling because of some negative attributes that apply to the majority of black American communities. And the idea of the the idea that deep down many people who are not black have that idea that they are smarter, work harder, have more moral character than black people, right? And people are very much willing to buy into that, buy into that to the point of which um in addressing the issue of like what happens when people don't have these SNAP benefits, which are supposed to be for food. Um a lot of the journalistic reporting and and reporting by people who are attempting to address this issue so that people can get what they need are having to keep promoting this idea that most people who receive those benefits are white and having to showcase the the white faces of this issue and of this injustice in order to validate it in the minds of a lot of Americans. And why is that? It's because if something is thought to benefit black people, in a lot of cases it's automatically devalued and seen as less important and seen as a negative burden on society. So you have to give it another face so that people can start to see its relevance and its value. Um, and that goes back hundreds of years. And what's so sad about that is not only do a lot of people not value systems and programs if they think a lot of black people benefit from them, but a lot of people actually deep down would prefer to see black people suffer, or they don't mind suffering when it's black people. And I bring that up as just one example. You could apply this to many other groups in the United States, in different countries in the Americas, in different countries in Western Europe, probably around the world. But I bring that up because it is a counterproductive societal behavior that slows our ability to move forward productively because we're caught up in an arbitrary bias that has been going on for hundreds of years that we have not figured out how to effectively and directly address. So instead of having a real conversation, for example, of the pros and cons of SNAP benefits and why that is important, we're having to get distracted on an identity issue about who the people are.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

What are your thoughts on the power of art to address these kinds of issues?

Shared Resistance, Music, And Hope

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Well, let me just say, you know, some of my work deals with bias. And that's, you know, a concise way of saying it sometimes. But I do want people to be aware that what I'm really talking about is the Subjectivity through which we see and interpret the world. Using a word like bias can get people's attention more. Although now it's become one of those loaded words that you know people have certain people have an aversion to. But while bias is a part of it, it really is about the subjectivity through which we see the world and therefore interpret the world. And even if one is engaging in a scientific process, the questions that you choose to ask often are highly subjective. And those questions are what dictate the outcome in the scientific process with the scientific method. So while the scientific method might not be subjective and might not have biases, the questions you're choosing to ask and the point at which you're starting are going to be drastically affected by who you are in the world and what your starting point is for posing certain questions. So I really think it's important to consider that technology combined with art, media, and journalism have a very powerful role in helping us understand things that fall out of our frame for viewing the world. A lot of times it's as simple as just you haven't had access to the information yet. And that's a plural you. That's you know, anyone in the world. It's outside of the frame for which one has had the opportunity to see, right? No one's told you so that you so no one's told you so you don't know. What art and and media do is they expose you to that in a way that's engaging and compelling and delivers that information in a way that resonates with you, so it becomes quote unquote sticky and it stays with you. And that's the impact of it. I think it's important to also think about when we consider technology that so many things are technology that aren't digital. The printing press was technology, and that drastically changed the Western world because it allowed writing and books to be disseminated in mass. That's technology, it's just much, much older. Um, photography is technology. So technology's role is connected to what it's capable of having us experience that we couldn't experience before. And how do we craft then productive, compelling experiences that help us expand the ways in which we think and the ways in which we see the world? Photography is a very significant example because you can kind of literally see in photography um the way in which we each see the world differently. We have this thing in photography where we'll talk about if you gave 10 people a camera and had them photograph the same subject, they'd all photograph it slightly differently and you'd have different photos. And that goes back to this idea that we all have a different way of seeing, and someone else's way of seeing is still valid, it's just a different way of seeing. And we each prioritize different things when we see. So if you and I were in the same room, we would describe that room differently. That doesn't mean that one of us is lying and one of us isn't, it just means there's certain things that we prioritize looking at. And then just to continue on on that example, if I were to ask most people to describe the room in the room that they're in, if you do if you ask most people to describe the room they're in, most of them are not going to talk about what's under their chair. But that's part of the room. And so this is all information and things that we can see that can be valid and important in the right circumstances. And art and media are the tools that very directly and concisely help us become aware of that.

Calls For Collaboration And Support

SPEAKER_00 44:32

A moment ago, you referenced justice. So I'm going to just pull that out also and ask you, in the context of all of what you've just shared, how has your view of justice evolved over the last few years since we last spoke?

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Yeah. So over the past several years, I've been really interested and invested in the idea of restorative justice. And I don't necessarily think of restorative justice as literally what it often entails these days. It's more the idea of justice needing to be restorative. And the reason I say that is because a lot of people associate restorative justice with alternatives to incarceration. And that's part of it, a small part. And that's valid and fine. But I'm interested in restorative justice, restoring harm, and you know, by restoring, I mean um mitigating and correcting harm that's been caused, and then figuring out future steps so that the harm doesn't reoccur, and future steps so that all the parties involved can flourish, and how future parties can flourish without the risk of harming one another. And I think traditional ideas of justice, so to speak, really kind of border on revenge. And you got to be very careful with revenge. As someone who is who has been very vindictive at different points in his life, um revenge is rarely productive. And while it may be important for individuals or groups to know that if they habitually cross a certain line, there's gonna be some negative repercussions that they'll have to face. That usually doesn't help us as a species in the grand scheme of things. And so in talking with people in the legal community and working with them, talking with more policy people, I've been very curious about how we tell stories about the past and the present and imagine the future so that when we on an individual basis and a group basis mess up and do something that's harmful, how can we create systems and utilize certain narratives to push us to restore the harm that's been caused and set up a circumstances where everyone can move forward as their most productive versions of themselves. And that's much more complicated. It's not an easy fix, but it's the way we need to start thinking in in most cases. But again, I'm not naive enough to sit here and say, well, should there be no prisons? I don't think we need them at nearly the scale that we have them, but at the same time, I wasn't mad that Jeffrey Dahmer was in jail or that Charles Manson was in jail. Like at a certain point, it's possible that certain extremely harsh penalties um can be our best option. But I think that's very, very rare. And we again need to think of the restorative process.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

Are there examples where you would like to see restorative justice done that you would want to share?

SPEAKER_01 48:52

In terms of specific cases? Uh, I can't really think of it in terms of specific cases. I mean, I I think about, you know, I grew up in the in the crack era and during the heart of the war on drugs. And it just became pretty obvious to me that punishing someone with a harsh prison sentence for possessing drugs or selling drugs wasn't really trying to address the issue. And so, restoratively, what can you have that person do with their time that is more productive than counterproductive? And there's a lot of different things you can have a person do with their intellect and their literal human resources that are more productive than having them sit in a prison in a really dehumanizing and often violent and traumatic environment. Um, but I also think about it along policy lines. For years, our society vilified marijuana as a dangerous drug and vilified marijuana quote unquote users. It feels weird to say a user of marijuana, um, but vilified marijuana users and people who would sell it. Um and now we see this proliferation of cannabis all over the country. And what we really needed to do was put the time and energy into thinking about what a productive system could be for managing society's interaction and use and commerce around this particular drug. But, you know, the war on drugs was was good for a for-profit prison system. It was good for targeting certain types of people who were in many cases, you know, going back to the 60s, involved in activism related to racial equity. And um that that idea of the war on drugs, while there's merits to addressing drug use and drugs proliferating, that was there was a a very non-genuine motive behind that, in my opinion. And so that has led us to a lot of other societal problems that we never well, maybe some people could have imagined it, but it led us to a lot of other societal problems that we're still just recovering from. Um, one of my friends from the presidential foundations I worked with um said a really profound thing to me. He was like, you know, the war on drugs, a prime example of how racism is self-defeating. Because if we had taken a more productive approach to managing drugs in our society and the idea of drug use and the idea of selling drugs as a type of commerce, and looked at drug use and drug treatment as a public health issue, if we had done that back in the heart of the crack epidemic, maybe even the heart of the first opioid epidemic, which was actually in the 70s in black and brown communities. But even say if we had done that during the crack epidemic, we would have the systems in place to respond much more effectively to the recent opioid epidemic over the past couple of dozen years. And so we would have the means to have saved a lot of lives, a lot of lives that were primarily um white people's lives, and a lot of lives in more rural areas as well. But when it was affecting black people in cities and in Latino people in cities, we wanted to respond with mass incarceration and just say no and all these actions that didn't make much sense. So we didn't have the systems in place to react and respond as quickly as we could have to the opioid epidemic. And a lot of people died because of that. And so that's where I think shifting our thinking becomes very, very important. And not allowing ourselves to be sucked into a narrow, limited way of thinking and framing the world.

SPEAKER_00 53:41

Well, thank you. This is uh such interesting work that you're doing, and I I just love watching as your work evolves. So thank you for being here and sharing about it. Is there anything I have not asked you that you wanted to share about?

SPEAKER_01 53:55

I don't think there's anything I want to share that you haven't asked me about. You know, I am continuing to work on the Got the Power, Sugar Cane, and Cotton Boombox Sculpture Series. And if you go to hiphop50boombox.com, you can learn more about the project. But this is a transnational project that I'm doing on an ongoing basis in Africa, Europe, North America, and South America, where I'm putting together these sculptural monuments made of sugar and cotton, and then having local communities contribute their oral histories and their favorite liberation songs to this larger narrative mixtape that's both audio and video based that people can experience on site and online to kind of connect these stories from these different regions and not only look at a more accurate telling of history in public spaces, but look at the similarities and differences, and also how those similarities and differences also lead us to different solutions. And so that's an ongoing project that I'm hoping to continue to develop. I've only done a few, I've done a few, I've done quite a few sculptures in this series, uh, but most of them are temporary. And I'm looking for institutional partners and international partners to do more permanent sculptures in different communities that are historically significant, and setting up a system for these communities to continue to add to these stories of these mixtapes that emanate from the sculptures to create ongoing transnational dialogue.

SPEAKER_00 55:42

Which are some of the cities that you're thinking of as historically significant?

SPEAKER_01 55:47

Um, there's New York, um, there's Atlanta, uh, there's Cali, Colombia, there's Panama City, Panama, um, there's Paris, France. Uh, these are places where I have connections and people in these local communities who I've worked with. But I'm very interested in expanding that to you know other parts of West Africa. And um, you know, I did a project with the African Artists Foundation last year in 2024 in Widda Benin. And it would be nice to do a piece in West Africa, particularly French West Africa, French speaking West Africa, in Senegal or Benin or Cote d'Ah, Cote d'Ivoire, um to be part of this series. You know, the idea is really connecting different, these different regions around the shared history and looking at some of the ways that's affected um how culture has evolved up to this point, and then also look at how we can improve how we move forward um at this point.

SPEAKER_00 56:53

Is there anything that's come from these stories uh as these projects have expanded that has surprised or most resonated with you?

SPEAKER_01 57:03

Um nothing surprising. It's just been fascinating to see how there's the same foundation that manifests itself in different ways in all these regions, and you see people of African ancestry and and people of um indigenous ancestry and mixed people resisting colonialism and colonial economics through art and culture and music um in different ways, but with a similar foundation in all these different regions. And what struck me also is that when I look at the Americas, and I look at the the art and music and culture that come out of the Americas, you have some of the most beloved um music and culture in the world coming out of the Americas. And that essentially comes from human beings doing some of the worst things that they've done to each other in recent history. Um but then through resistance to that, we have this beautiful music and culture, whether it's mambo, cumbias, salsa, you know, hip-hop, jazz, RB, rock and roll, what have you. We have all of this that's beloved around the world, and we have this thing of beauty that came from the human spirit. So there's an element of hope that can be extracted from these stories too. Or it's not even extracted, an element of hope that is revealed when we experience the culture that comes out of all these regions. But we have to be smart enough to harness it and look at it as a productive thing and use it as a productive thing. The other thing I'm doing is I'm developing my video game. So I'm looking to find more partners and supporters for that as well. Those two projects, the sugarcane and cotton international boombox sculpture series and the video games, somewhat overlap a little bit. Um, but those are some of my primary things at the moment. And I'm still hoping to do more work with the legal community. Um, law schools and law firms, I'm I'm very interested in working with. So anyone out there who has some ideas for a collaboration um or how to garner the financial support and other resources to do some sort of collaboration to help train legal scholars and future members of the legal community.