Through to Thriving: Connecting Art and Policy with Mimi Ọnụọha

Summary

The Tech Policy Press Podcast

Episode: Through to Thriving: Connecting Art and Policy with Mimi Ọnụọha
Host: Anika Collier Navaroli (Tech Policy Press Fellow)
Guest: Mimi Ọnụọha (Artist)
Date: November 2, 2025

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Overview

This episode of "Through to Thriving" features Anika Collier Navaroli in conversation with artist Mimi Ọnụọha. Together, they delve into the vital intersections between art and tech policy: how art can help us imagine new futures, the role of artists in bearing witness (especially in turbulent political times), and what policy practitioners can learn from the artistic process. The discussion ranges from personal anecdotes to broader philosophical reflections—exploring exclusion and absence in data, the limitations of policy and technology, and the collaborative potential for shaping a more humane and inclusive future.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Shifting Language of Technology

[03:05–05:43]

• Reflection on terminology change: The term “big data” has faded from popular discourse, replaced by buzzwords like “AI” and “datafication.” Both speakers note the irony that, despite the changing language, data-driven processes are more pervasive than ever.
• Mimi: “That’s the irony, is that we’re still dealing with big data, right? We’re just not talking about it.” [03:43]

2. Defining Artists and Their Role

[06:22–07:28]

• Mimi on art vs. artists: She prefers to define artists rather than art: “Artists bear witness. That’s our job. Our job is to face reality without flinching and to help others see it.” [07:06]
• Cites inspirations from Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Rick Rubin.

3. Art and Authoritarianism: The Function of Witnessing

[07:28–10:04]

• Role of artists in regimes: Art can provide clarity and historical memory during times when reality feels “unmoored and unstable.”
• Mimi: “In these moments of huge change and turmoil, you actually need people who have a way of thinking differently about the world...” [09:08]
• Artists of post-colonial Nigeria cited as examples of artists becoming policymakers.

4. Art vs. Journalism: Parallels and Contrasts

[10:04–12:40]

• Parallels drawn between artists and journalists as “witnesses,” but Mimi distinguishes the slower timescale and subtlety of art versus the immediacy and perceived threat of journalism.
• Mimi: “Art isn’t seen as…threatening. Journalism is very much, this is the moment, this is the now… but often a lot of us [artists], it’s like we’re also…one level down. We have a slower timescale.” [11:18]

5. Art, Technology, and Process

[15:04–17:40]

• Mimi describes how coming of age during the rise of Web 2.0 and attending NYU’s ITP program inspired her to merge technology and art as means for inquiry and sense-making.
• Mimi: “When you’re an artist, if you call yourself an artist, that doesn’t say anything about your tools, what you use. It gives you a lot of latitude, and I wanted that latitude.” [17:22]

6. The Catcalling Project: Agency, Data, and Power

[18:09–23:15]

• Mimi recounts an “intervention” project in which she gave catcallers in Brooklyn a phone number that connected to a server sending automated responses, creating a dynamic but unintentional data set.
• Insight into data as relationship: the true art was in the process and interactions, not the data set’s generation.
• Mimi: “Framing it as just data—just a set of phone numbers—minimized everything else that was so interesting to me about it.” [21:34]

7. Missing Data Sets: Power, Exclusion, and Protection

[24:19–32:49]

• Mimi’s ongoing project, “Library of Missing Data Sets,” catalogs the absences in publicly available data, often revealing deliberate or structural choices about what—and who—gets counted.
• Classic example: lack of a data set of civilians killed by police, and the reasons (power, incentive, protection) behind such omissions.
• Mimi: “There are patterns of absence and there are reasons for why things are not collected…The people who have the ability to collect don’t have the incentive. And the people who have the incentive have a much more reduced ability to be able to collect it.” [25:53]
• Exploration of cases from Black Broadway demographics to unmapped geographic spaces; the limitations of metrification and the caution against universal datafication.

8. The Limits of Datafication and Technological Scope

[32:49–33:14]

• Mimi pushes back against the tech sector's demand to fill all missing data: “The point is that we can’t do that. Data is one way of making sense of the world…It’s not everything.” [32:07]

9. Art as Critique of Technological & Policy Imagination

[33:14–43:25]

• Discussion of LLMs (large language models) and misplaced priorities in AI development.
• Reference to an early installation using Google search data to illustrate communal privacy and data thinness; art’s role in embodying surveillance critique and collective reflection.

10. The Future is Here: Art Revealing the Labor Behind Technology

[37:39–42:11]

• Piece: “The Future is Here” explores the hidden, global human labor (e.g., content moderation, data labeling) behind AI and machine learning.
• Mimi: “It was so great to ground it, to be like this work happens in a place, by people. This isn’t just in the cloud…we’re talking about real people, real labor.” [40:00]
• Art’s power to make visible the invisible infrastructure and humanity of tech.

11. From Revealing the System to Imagining Alternatives

[43:25–46:02]

• Mimi discusses a shift in her practice: from solely revealing technology’s structures (“Look at this house tech has built”) to questioning who “we” are, what alternatives we might desire, and how to go deeper.
• Mimi: “Now I think I’m more interested in…what are the alternatives? Or what is the ground that house is built upon?” [43:25]

12. Hopes for Art, Policy & Collaboration in the Future

[44:55–49:10]

• Emphasis on complementary roles: “I think we need to recognize ourselves as different parts of the same body. The arm does something different than the leg, but you need both. Use both when you walk.” [44:57]
• Critique as an act of love, expanding who is seen as “fully human.”
• Mimi: “Our hopes and our critiques should be intertwined…that critique is coming from a place of love, which I feel like is sorely missing in the US right now.” [45:50]

13. The Relationship Between Artists and Policy Practitioners

[47:43–49:10]

• Final thoughts emphasize that both policy and art are tools for shaping society—art “makes power felt, not just described” and operates “in the murkiness below the rules.”
• Memorable Quote: “Art can make power felt, not just described. It can get at that layer below the rules and the language and governance. That layer is what is fueling so much of our political movements.” [48:38]
• The conversation ends where it began: on art’s capacity to touch both “spirit and mind,” and on the urgent need for coalitional thinking.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mimi Ọnụọha [07:06]:
  “Artists bear witness. That’s our job. Our job is to face reality without flinching and to help others see it.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [09:08]:
  “In these moments of huge change and turmoil, you actually need people who have a way of thinking differently about the world…those same people come in, and they also have something to say about what it means to run a country or who we are as a people.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [13:50]:
  “The guard is not as high up at all…because they do see art mostly as like, you’re gonna come and paint the mural at the end of the work…you can sometimes leverage that position.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [21:34]:
  “In focusing on those phone numbers in that data set, what it did was it just minimized everything else that was so interesting to me…what I found, so I just could not get. Get over, was that in focusing on those phone numbers in that data set, what it did was it just minimized everything else that was so interesting to me about it.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [25:53]:
  “The people who have the ability to collect don’t have the incentive. And the people who have the incentive have a much more reduced ability to be able to collect it.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [32:07]:
  “The point is that we can’t do that. There are some areas where we can, but there are some areas where we can’t…Data is one way of making sense of the world…It’s not everything.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [40:00]:
  “This work happens in a place, by people. This isn’t just in the cloud…the cloud’s not in the sky.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [44:57]:
  “I think we need to recognize ourselves as different parts of the same body. The arm does something different than the leg, but you need both. Use both when you walk.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [45:50]:
  “Our hopes and our critiques should be intertwined…that critique is coming from a place of love, which I feel like is sorely missing in the US right now.”
• Mimi Ọnụọha [48:38]:
  “Art can make power felt, not just described. It can get at that layer below the rules and the language and governance. That layer is what is fueling so much of our political movements. That’s what good art can tap into.”
• Anika Collier Navaroli [49:10]:
  “I feel you in my spirit.”

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Important Timestamps

• 03:05–05:43 — The evolution of tech language and data’s growing invisibility
• 06:22–07:28 — Defining art and the role of bearing witness
• 07:54–10:04 — Art’s place in authoritarian regimes and moments of societal change
• 11:18 — On art being less threatening (or not)
• 13:50 — Being an artist as a form of “cover” or access
• 18:09–23:15 — The Catcalling Project and art as relational data
• 24:19–32:49 — Missing data sets, power, and intentional absences
• 37:39–42:11 — “The Future is Here” and making human labor in AI visible
• 44:55–49:10 — Imagining futures and the essential collaboration between artists and policy practitioners

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Takeaway

This episode powerfully explores how art and policy are not separate worlds but deeply interconnected methods for making sense of—and reshaping—our rapidly changing social and technological landscape. Mimi Ọnụọha’s work reveals the hidden dynamics behind data, technology, and power, challenging us not just to witness but to imagine, critique, and build together. The conversation is a call for collaborative imagination, honesty, and humanity in shaping the future of technology and democracy.

Transcript

[A]

Your film is now ready to be shown.

[B]

Good morning. I'm Justin Hendricks, editor of Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit media venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy. This year, Tech Policy Press is hosting nine fellows. These individuals, who are located around the world, from India to Spain to Brazil to the US and beyond, bring a variety of experiences and expertise to their work. One of those fellows is Anika Collier Navaroli. Anika is an award winning writer, lawyer and researcher focused on the intersections of technology, media policy, and human rights. She was just named Assistant professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University in its Graduate School of Journalism. For her fellowship, Anika is hosting a series of discussions like the one you'll hear today that are intended to help us imagine possible futures for tech and tech policy, for democracy and for society beyond the moment we are in.

[C]

Hey, y'. All. We are back with another episode of through to Thriving. I am your host, Anika Collier Navaroli, and on this series of podcasts I'm talking with folks in the tech policy world about how we can imagine and create futures beyond our current moment that we are in. And today we are going to be talking about the connection between art and policy and what policy folks can learn from art and artists. And I'm going to be speaking with a person who can help us explore this the absolute best. Mimi, would you please introduce yourself to our audience and our folks who are listening to us?

[A]

Of course. Thanks for having me. Anika, let me know. And I'm here fully because of my deep love and respect for you. Same.

[C]

I'm here for you. This is. I'm so excited to have a conversation with you, truly.

[A]

As am I. As am I. Okay, so I am an artist, as you said. My name is Mindy Anoha. I like to say that I make work about the contradictory logics of tech driven progress. I'm just very interested in how we build systems that make sense of and organize the world and, and how doing that relies on exclusion of different people or places or experiences. And technology is one of those systems that we build, but it's a particularly powerful one. And so my work really looks at the myths that make that kind of selective progress feel really natural or inevitable. But I do that through installations and through films and through very embodied kind of sensorial experiences that are meant to be evocative. They're meant to like, touch your spirit and also your mind.

[C]

Touch your spirit in your mind. Okay. I think that that touch spirit in mind is, I think, a theme that I would love to keep through this, and I hope that this podcast actually brings as we continue to talk. So thank you so much for joining us. Full disclosure, everyone. Mimi and I met, which I don't know if this was about a decade ago. Mimi. Which seems like crazy, right? When we were both working at the Eden Society. Fun fact. I went down to UNC a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking with students, and I asked them if any of them had ever heard the term big data. None of them raised their hands, of course.

[A]

It feels of a moment. It feels so dated, so strange. And it's funny because at that time, it really was what we were all talking about. We were all talking about big data. We. It was like even a few years before we were talking about AI. We were just like, we weren't using.

[C]

The words AI, right? Like, there's like, machine learning, like neural networks. Big data, right?

[A]

Like big data.

[C]

That's where we were. And I think it's crazy, a crazy reminder to think less than 10 years, like, the term has completely gone out of style, but the work is, like, more part of our lives than ever, right?

[A]

That's the irony is that we're still dealing with big data, right? We're just not talking about it, like.

[C]

And it's gotten bigger, right? The big data has gotten bigger. But we're not calling it bigger. Bigger data. Like, we're just doing more data.

[A]

It's bigger, but we don't talk about it.

[C]

Call it chat, GPT now. You know what I mean? Have you call it like an AI agent, right?

[A]

Like, honestly, what.

[C]

What are we doing? But I thought I was like, I got to share this with somebody. And I was like, Mimi might be the only person who might appreciate that. I said big data. And every single one of these students looked me back blank, dead in the face. Never heard of it, right?

[A]

But, you know, that reminds me. I. Sorry, I'm going to take this in another direction.

[C]

I want to see the go, go, go that.

[A]

I remember talking to students about data around that time. I was like, what do we know? Even around the big data era? And I remember at the time that they thought I was talking about their phone data plans, and they. They didn't understand anything outside of that. And what I will say is that now, now I think the students might not know the term big data, but I think that they have a sense of digital data in general data.

[C]

Yes. I think that when I, when I said big data, and I took it along the lines of, like, artificial intelligence, it did not make sense to them.

[A]

Right.

[C]

It was like, oh, of course, that's the Olor. Just old. That's what she used to call it. Like we weren't, we didn't do it back then.

[A]

Right.

[C]

But I do think you're right. Our idea of data and the sort of datafication of the world and society makes more sense to everyone now, which.

[A]

Is a huge part of your work.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Absolutely.

[C]

And I think we'll get into this and especially thinking about how the world has been datified and who has been excluded or included and what that means. Right. And what it doesn't mean in there.

[A]

But I.

[C]

We're going to be talking again. Reason why we're talking is this whole point of this series is to think about imagining new futures. And I wanted to talk to you because I've been saying for a while, we've come to this place in tech policy where a lot of people are confused.

[A]

Right.

[C]

We don't know what to do, how to go forward. We don't know. Everyone feels stuck. We had this idea of regulation. Regulation's definitely not going to move. We have a new administration, we have new regime, we have this thing. And I keep saying I think art might be the way through. Right. I think that we might need to start imagining things in a way that we have never done it. And so I am really excited to have this conversation with you because you and I have worked in a lot of the same places, right? Like you and I both worked at Dayton Society, both worked at the Tao Center. We've worked at these places. We have done tremendously different work. And so I want to start just by asking you, how do you define art?

[A]

Right. You know what I think is easier and maybe more useful than defining art is defining artists. Because art, art is what artists make. Like Toni Morrison, I reject this idea that art is just about self expression. I think that is one important part of it. Because the work that artists do is we. We take the world and we filter it through the lens of our own experiences and that's that Some of that is the self expression part. But I think much deeper than that. Artists bear witness. That's. That's our job. Our job is to face reality without flinching and to help others see it. And I think about that really pulling from the ideas of folks like I said, like Toni Morrison, like James Baldwin, even like Rick Rubin who just wrote this whole book about the creative practice, which I was shocked how. How good it was, but I shouldn't say good. I was shocked by what I was able to get from it, let me say that. But I do think our job is to be perceptive. It's to be tuned in, and also it's to do this. This honest work of trying to reveal those things that are difficult to see or to name or to. To. To put into a form that you can handle.

[C]

Artists bearing witness, Right. I think there are so many folks who can really resonate with that, especially right now, especially in the world and society that we are looking and living through. And one thing I want to ask you too is what is the role then of art and an authoritarian regime? Right. Especially in one that looks and smells and walks and talks and quacks and looks a lot like fascism.

[A]

Where.

[C]

Where do we find this place in society of, of bearing witness in this, especially with artists?

[A]

It's such a good question. Because there is. I think as an artist, you can. There are two ways that you can. You can fall on this. There are two sides you can fall on. There's one side where it's easy to be like, oh, my gosh, should I be sitting here making art?

[C]

Right.

[A]

Dangerous in the flames.

[C]

Right, right.

[A]

You're like, is this what I should be doing? But maybe that.

[C]

It's the meme with the little dog meme, Right?

[A]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. This is. It's like you're sitting there, like, doing your little thing. No, no, this is fine. This is fine. And there's that sometimes where you're like, well, maybe shouldn't I be out in the streets? Shouldn't I be in law school? No. Learning about our language? No government. I know, I know. I had to say that to you. I knew you would.

[C]

Shoot, no artists. We need you. Not in law school. Yes.

[A]

I do think the other side of it is that in a moment like this, where there is so much that is shifting right in front of our eyes and where that sense of what reality is feels unmoored and unstable, it is so important to have people whose job is to be like, no, look, this is what's happening. This is where we are. This is what we see. This is. It's not just this is what we see in front of us, but this is what it ties to. This is the historical legacy of what we see. But then I think this, this word that you've already brought up about imagining, part of why I'm really inspired by 50s, 60s, post colonial nations that were creating their own nations that were figuring out what it meant to be independent after having shaken off the colonial powers that were overseeing them. I Think about Nigeria, for instance, because I'm Nigerian, is that a lot of the people who ended up thinking deeply about government and policy, they were artists, they switched. It's like in these moments of huge change and turmoil, you actually need. You need people who have a way of thinking differently about the world, and you need actually people. You need to shake things up a little bit. Those same people come in, and they also have something to say about what it means to run a country or who we are as a people, or what is identity or what is communality. What does it mean to be a collective? But you start to see those connections more and more. I think we're in a moment like that. So.

[C]

Yes. And that is why I'm so. I'm so happy you're here to talk to us about this. Right. And to talk to us about what does it mean when reality is unmoored, as you mentioned, right. As you. As you state so wisely to say, in this moment, what do we see? What do we hear? And it's interesting because I talked to a couple of journalists a few weeks back on the podcast, and it seems so much like the. The interests of the artists and the journalists are the same in many ways, right? This sort of bearing witness is telling the truth in an industry that is completely under attack, like journalism. One that is. As a journalism professor, I think I can say this, like, falling apart in many ways.

[A]

Right?

[C]

It sounds like the role of the fourth estate, in many ways, is being placed on artists.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Or being shifted in a way.

[A]

Right.

[C]

But in that, to me, is fascinating.

[A]

Well, I do think that journalist. Gosh, you. I. You know this.

[C]

And you write. You're a journalist, too.

[A]

So I think, oh, no, I write, but I'm. I'm no journalist. Okay, y' all hold it down.

[C]

Y' all do that one time.

[A]

I'm around so many of you, I feel very confident saying, I'm not a journalist.

[C]

Okay?

[A]

And I'm. So I'm. I say this as someone who's really very connected to journalism. In fact, I'm literally married to one.

[C]

Out to them.

[A]

Shout out and sound out. But I do. I think that, gosh, the media and journalism have been under attack, right? So I think that the threat, like that, the power, too, of journalism is actually more legible in society. And I think that that is part of the reason why. It's one of many, many reasons which we can also tie back to the Internet and technological disruption and, like, loss of trust and expertise and all these different things, you know, them Better than I do that journalism is falling apart. I do think that art isn't seen as. As threatening. And of course, it's also tied to a very different market economy as well. A very, very different one. And so art moves on a different time skill. Journalism is very much, this is the moment, this is the now. We're responding. This is what's happening. Look who's being like, ISIS is abducting these people. ISIS grabbing these people in the streets. Look, we're here, we're talking to them. Whereas journal artists are tend. Some artists actually are like doing work around that or do work that. Because art can be so wide. Some are doing a lot of this work that feels very pressing and in the moment. But often a lot of us, it's like we're also. It's like we're like one level down. We have a slower timescale in a way, our work stretches longer. And so I think that scene is less threatening. I don't think that's true. I think they both are extremely important in different ways, but I do think they're seen differently and positioned differently too.

[C]

I think that's fascinating because to me, art is so powerful and can be seen as dangerous to so many people.

[A]

Right.

[C]

I think you say art is not seen as threatening. And then something else. I've been reading so many things that you've said in order to have this interview with you. One of the things you said is my work is all about the social relationships and power dynamics behind emerging technologies. Fucking with power dynamics is threatening, right? Especially exposing them directly to those in power, like those who are creating that emerging technology. That is, it's speaking truth to power and having power look in a mirror in a way, right?

[A]

Oh, absolutely. It is threatening. But I do think my partner told me the story about calling some. We'll be very vague, but calling some office and asking for some. Some data set because of a story that he was working on and they were chatting with him, they're laughing, they're having a conversation. And then. And then they were like, wait a minute, you're not a journalist, right? They shut up. They were like, no, you need to go through the press office. Don't talk to us. Now, I compare that to my experience I've been doing, working on a project that has had some journalistic elements. But as an artist, if I call it, I say I'm an artist. And I'm just thinking about these things. The guard is not as high up at all.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think. I love that. I love Claiming the title of artist because anybody can claim it. It's not like being a doctor. You don't have to go to. You didn't have to go to school for it. Anybody can say they are and anybody can be one of us did.

[C]

But we, you know, some folks who did.

[A]

Yeah, but you don't have to. And I think that for me, what I like, I like being in a room and being the artist in the room because it's so, to me, it's so expansive and vague and it means I can really leverage that position because I do think people see it as non threatening unless they know if they're in the know is different. But for many people, because they do see art mostly as like, you're gonna come and paint the mural at the end of the work, which is, by the way, a very important and powerful form of art that also can be super threatening and mess around with power dynamics too, don't get me wrong. But because that's mostly the category people understand and position it in, you can sometimes leverage that position.

[C]

Yeah. Okay, you've talked a little bit about your work and I want to get into talking a little bit more about some of your work and some of your pieces, some of the ones that I've seen you do over the years, and some that really stand out for me. But one question I have for you is how and why did you start incorporating technology into your work as an artist? And I was the first sort of inspiration behind that.

[A]

I grew up during the rise of Web 2.0. I feel like I had a front row seat. So watching software just, just eat up the world.

[C]

Thank you for that.

[A]

Maybe bring it to life.

[C]

I'm always going to hear that sound from here that when I think about data, big data, I hope you, I.

[A]

Hope you clip it and you like play it in the background. Here's the sound a previous person on this podcast will quote him as saying. So I do, I do feel like I felt like I grew up living through seeing how the Internet and Datification were reshaping the world as we were living in it.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And for me, I really wanted to make sense of that. I wanted to make sense of how tech was like accelerating or undermining these long existing structures. At the same time, I think at the moment, around the moments when I was realizing that I was really interested in that, I happened to be in this program, this graduate program which is at NYU, it's called ITP. And I went there over 10 years ago, costly, 15 years ago or something. And at that time, it was an art design and technology program. And I went there because I thought I had been doing a lot of work in university where I was theorizing technology, but I thought, well, maybe I need to learn how to actually build something. And I kid you not, I typed in Google because that's what we searched in back then, kids. We didn't search in ChatGPT.

[C]

We just didn't exist.

[A]

They didn't exist. We would just type in Google where I was, I was like, where can I go? Is there a graduate program where I can learn how to code? And this program came up. So I said, done, let's go. What I didn't realize is that it was at Tisch, which is the art school of nyu.

[C]

Wow. Yeah.

[A]

And so it was at the same time I was getting to learn about that from this other, more functional point of view. I also was learning about art as a space of inquiry and knowledge production. And so in a way, those two things came together for me. It was like at the same time, I was like, oh, I want to make sense of this. And here are some of the tools to do that. I don't have to just do that in the university. I can do that through these interesting embodied projects. I can do that through a film. I can do that through making an interactive website or an interactive experience that people walk through. And, and I hadn't realized that until I got there. And I think it was very, for me, it felt very, like, capacious. It was like, I, I, that was the space I had wanted, was to be able to work across a number of different lanes and disciplines. And then I realized when you're an artist, if you call yourself an artist, that doesn't say anything about your tools, what you use. No, it gives you a lot of latitude, and I wanted that latitude.

[C]

Yeah, I love that you mentioned the tools and the latitude because you are clearly a multi. How would you describe yourself? Multimedia multi. What are the words here that you, you use to describe?

[A]

I just say artists. That's it. I say visual artists. You know what? That is it.

[C]

That's it. That's much easier than to be like a multi what? A multi hyphenated with a what and a what and a what.

[A]

And it's diminishing returns on the hyphenate. Once you have too many people are like, oh, so you don't do anything?

[C]

You don't do anything. But you, but you do. You do so much.

[A]

Right?

[C]

And I think one of the projects that I first heard about you doing was the cat calling project. Would you talk to a little bit. A little bit about that?

[A]

This is actually one of the projects that got me into thinking about datification of the world, or rather the power behind it. I also. I call this an intervention. I don't really call it a project because.

[C]

Tell me more.

[A]

There's. Because I didn't. It stopped early. And I'll explain. I'll explain why. So this was years and years ago. Living. It was summer. I was living in Brooklyn. I was getting cat called all the time.

[C]

As one does in the summer.

[A]

As one does. As one does in the summer in Brooklyn. And at the time, you know me today, I just. If I like ignore or I just say something, I'm like, no, then you. You know. Right. Yeah, I shut it down. But I was much younger at this time, which I think was maybe 2013 or something like that, 2014. And I decided that I wanted a way to. What would happen is that after I get cat called, sometimes I would. I would just feel a little bit like, oh, maybe, maybe I shouldn't have worn that. Maybe I just had all these feelings. I didn't know what to do with those. And so what I decided was that I wanted a way to interact with my cat callers, but I also didn't. And then I thought, okay, well, this is where the distancing effects of technology can actually be used to great effect. So what I did was whenever somebody cat called me that summer, I would give them a piece of paper and it had phone number on it. They thought it was my phone number, but it was not.

[C]

I had.

[A]

It was not. I had set up this server, connected the phone number to it, and made it so that if you called, of course no one would answer. But if you texted, I had pre programmed these strings of responses that would get sent. So what would happen? Yeah, I had my own little chatbot. But pre, like before chatbots.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And it was great because I could. You can just imagine the situation. It's like someone cat calls me. I walk up to. I'm carrying these little pieces of paper with my name on. I mean, with my. With a phone number on it. I don't say anything. I just walk up and hand it.

[C]

You're prepared.

[A]

Yeah, Right. Which is weird. Which is a strange interaction.

[C]

First warning sign.

[A]

Something's truly try to talk to me. I'm like, I have nothing to say.

[C]

Here, take this paper with a number.

[A]

The number, and I scurry away. And then they would text me. I had lots of different Dynamics. Like I. Some of the texts I sent to people were very overwrought. I said, I wish you knew how this makes me feel. And some people responded and said, wow, I'm sorry, I didn't know. Well, we could talk about it over dinner.

[C]

Wrong answer.

[A]

And then some people got really angry and just would curse me out. It was. For me, what was most interesting was that I did feel like I get. I got my agency back, but also I got to. I like, had this strange relationship with these people that I could watch unfolding from a safe distance. I was just seeing these messages go out and come in. And I found it really interesting. But what happened was that by the end of the summer, I realized I had inadvertently created this data set that was all of my cat callers. Phone numbers.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it was a data set. They had, they had opted into it because they texted me.

[C]

Like the cat callers of Brooklyn.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[C]

Calls of Brooklyn.

[A]

And from there I remember what happened is that. And this is why I say this is not quite a project, more an intervention. From that point on, if this were a project, that's the interesting point. You do something with that. Wow. What does that mean? This, this, this data set actually is the most interesting part of the. And I knew that because whenever I talked to people about it, that was what they were really focused on. They were like these phone numbers. What are you going to do with them? What are you going to do now you've got phone numbers. Should we, should we collect all the phone numbers? Maybe we can, we can make a database of all the people. Boom. All this thing. But for me, what I found, so I just could not get. Get over, was that in focusing on those phone numbers in that data set, what it did was it just minimized everything else that was so interesting to me about it. It minimized that threat that I felt and like, risk of walking up to these people and giving them this weird phone number. It minimized the strange, like, relationship and the different responses and how we were all navigating it. It was like the most important thing was the data set. And that data set, actually, it. It held something, but also it was quite flat, but it was powerful, it meant something. So I ended up not doing anything with that data set. Really what I did was my whole practice was. Became devoted to investigating and thinking about data collection as a relationship. So everything could happen from there, but.

[C]

That'S where it came from. That was insane.

[A]

That was the seed that was. And it was like fascinating. It was all of it it was like both realizing this. I was like, oh, I learned something that I wouldn't have known otherwise if I hadn't done this particular little thing. But also, I can call this art. Actually, it is.

[C]

You told me that's what the name. That's the name that we're using, right? That's the.

[A]

Exactly. It is art.

[C]

That's it.

[A]

And I thought, wow, this is. So that was it. I was like, this is a mode of making sense of the world. This is a mode of sense making. This is fantastic. And then I was like, it's done. I want to do this always, but actually do something with the results. But, like, even this process is super important. Is very, very rich.

[C]

Right? Okay. So that then led you into thinking about data sets. And you said at one point, again, I. Something that you were reading that said data. Data is what people care about enough to measure. This was actually in Black Futures, a book that I think is, like, on every black millennial's, like, coffee table book. That's like a. I am too. I brought it upstairs my coffee table and was like, let me dust this off a little and get in here to what page? What, 1:36. And find what Mimi said in this book. Right? Because it is. It's. It is something for our generation, which I found. I remember when I first got it and I opened it up and I saw your name in there and I texted you. I was just like, you're interviewing me, right? Like, this. This is a part of our generation. Right? And to see you in there and to see that your work, especially on missing data sets, is in there for me, was so incredibly powerful and so telling of the art and the work of our time that matters. So would you mind telling our audience a little bit about your work with missing data sets and how you mentioned how you got into it, but, you know, how you continued in it and what that has looked like over the years.

[A]

One point about that book, I think Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, really, a lot of people, they made. I can't remember when that book came out, but it was a while ago. And they did understand that. Also art that was talking about our technological present and futures, they were like, that's. That's important, too. That's right. That's part of this. They saw. They saw it. Not everybody would have. They did. And so I really shot them. 2020, 20, 20, 2020.

[C]

Shout out to Kimberly and J. Yeah.

[A]

And so, yeah, the library of missing data sets. So my work on missing data sets really can be boiled down to a few pieces which are called the library of missing data sets. And really what the work is about is that you will have these spaces where lots and lots of data are being collected. And then you'll see that there's something that's curiously blank. There's nothing there. And I started to realize this. I think the first time I noticed this pattern was around data sets about citizens killed or civilians killed by the police.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

At that time, obviously, we were. We were dealing with a lot. There were so many.

[C]

There had been a lot of thefts. It's not like it wasn't happening.

[A]

It had been. Been happening, right? But I thought to myself, wow, okay, like, we know. We know some of these big names, okay? I think it was actually right after Eric Garner maybe, that I was like, well, well, where's the date? Let me look up the data set on this.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Let me look it up. And then I realized there's none.

[C]

It doesn't exist.

[A]

That's crazy. And what's wild, you look into crime, policing, justice, all those things, there's so. So you know this. There's so much data available.

[C]

There's so much data.

[A]

So swimming in it, it's a flood. But then this particular thing, civilians killed by law enforcement agents gone. Nothing. Nothing. And then I started thinking, well, that's interesting. Why is that? And this led me down. That's a choice path. You start to see that actually there are patterns of absence and there are reasons for why things are not collected. And in that case, it was that sometimes the people who have the ability to collect don't have the incentive. And the people who have the incentive have a much more reduced ability to be able to collect it. So for that data set, the police should be able to. They should keep that data. They're the ones who create it. So it would be very easy for them to collect this. Right? But they have no incentive to collect that. Why? What does that give them? What on earth does that give them? They don't have an incentive. Lawsuit, lawsuits and trouble. I will say that's no longer a missing data set. That is one that tons of journalists and activists, organizers and various, like, citizens, civilians, people have just come together to collect it. And so it's really exciting to see that that's not a missing data set. But it was the thing that started me off thinking about this, about all of these different types of. Of the kinds of data that don't exist, the data that is not being collected, the data that are omitted to be collected. They are. There Are reasons for their absence. There are some of the reasons that have to do with protection where maybe the group doesn't want that data out. Sanctuary cities not collecting data on undocumented folks, that's an act of protection. They're like, we are inside surveillance. Yeah, exactly. Whereas versus that killed by the police example. That's the protection is not for the. For the victims.

[C]

Well, let me ask you, what else have you. I'm going to say this in like, quotes. Found, right. What other data sets have you found that were missing?

[A]

Oh, my goodness. At this point, I keep a running list. I keep hundreds of them.

[C]

Oh, my goodness. Some of them.

[A]

So many. Yeah. So let's see. Let me see. I'm trying to think of some. Some good.

[C]

I remember the Broadway.

[A]

Oh, yes, Black Broadway. That's another one. I did work with a bunch of performing arts performers, I guess, folks in the performing arts, and they were interested in the fact that there are very rigorous statistics collected on audience members and their demographics, all of their demographic data, but there was nothing that was collected on the actual performers on the stage. And it was actually a group of Asian American actors and actresses who came together who were like, we, we want to collect this, we need to know this information. And they have been doing a lot of the work. I just joined them at the very end to help with some of the data, like analysis and to help them create some graphics around it and also help them think about how to position it. And I wrote some stuff about it as well when I was dabbling in journalism a little more. But they did.

[C]

I told you, I told you, you dabbled in journalism.

[A]

So I, I came at the end. They were the ones who did the data collection originally. They were even on napkins and pieces of paper. And I just came in, was like, okay, here, let me help you put this together and make this a little more sound so you can move forward. And it was. That is another one of those very neat cases where they were able to. They were able to collect it. They were able. It was a missing data set. It's not anymore. And every year this. They sit down with different theaters in the industry and they say, here, here's the data. This is what it's looked like. Here are the demographics of our performers on the stage, and it's made a big difference. So it's great to see that. But I think I'm just as interested in the data sets that are a little bit thornier. So, yeah, I'm interested. One of the reasons why sometimes things are not collected is that certain information just resists metrification. There are some things that you can't put into data. It's very hard to. Or it's just challenging. So one example that I talked about years ago, which some of this has been filled but a lot of it is still open, is I would show these images on maps and there are some areas that are still not on any digital maps because getting even the equipment there is too difficult. They're too remote or you can't get the cars or you can't even the little backpack. Google Maps or collection equipment is difficult to get to those areas. And you can see it because you'll look at a satellite map and you'll see all this stuff, all this action, but then you'll look at a digital map and you won't like a vector map. You won't see anything. And it's these, these are places that resist that particular way that we are metrifying the world. They resist it. And I think it's really. I, I like those sites. I'm really interested in those sites because they tell us something about the overall system. I like that. So this, the places that resist this metrification or sometimes it's. We have a lot of accurate weather data up to a point, but I mean from the past, but there's a point where we don't because maybe we weren't collecting it or there are certain areas that are far from weather stations. So you don't have that information. What is important about it is that it reminds us that right now it feels like we are just like awash in data. But actually it's a process to, to turn the world into, to day defy the world is a process and it is a, it's a collection process and there are. Process. Yeah, that's it. That's it. And it also is one that doesn't just unfold like easily or rotely like it just. There are, there are complicating factors and those are interesting. Those are useful for us to know. It is important for us to know that we cannot put everything in the world into the form of data.

[C]

Yeah, I love that. That we cannot put everything in the world in the form of data, no matter how hard we try. And I think right now, especially with the sort of data centers that are being created and the servers that are being run and put out all over the world and polluting black neighborhoods, especially to think about creating some sort of super intelligence. Right. I think that's such a fascinating thing to think about. And that there maybe are just some things that we shouldn't be doing this with. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think that's the whole point of the Missing Data Prod. Missing Data Sets project. What I found, it was very interesting, particularly when I was working quite a lot on it. There were points where some. I had some companies. I'm not going to name names. Some companies did come to me and say, like, why don't you standardize this? Let's fill this data, let's go keep a list online, let's do it. And I was like, no, no, no, there's, there's, that's not the point. You're a point out.

[C]

You're missing the point.

[A]

The point is that we can't do that. There are some areas where we can, but there are some areas where we can't. And we need to understand that that data is one way of making sense of the world. And it can be used for certain aims, for certain moments. It's the same. I honestly feel the same way about. In this AI craze. I feel this way about LLMs. They can be really useful for certain types of work. And then there's some things that they are not useful for. And this problem that we have is a problem of scope. It's the fact that for some reason so many technological things are expanded so that it's like they can be used for everything and anything all the time, 24 7. Every single part of us, all the time. No, no, they have, they have a purpose, they have a place. It's not everything.

[C]

So many people have made this point, but it's. We have these, these LLMs that are like, let's create art for you. Right? And it's. I actually want my robots to clean my kitchen for me so that I can do the art. You know what I mean? Like, let, let's. Yes, Something, something got confused here about like where my priorities are and like what y' all priorities are that you're building for, because they're very skewed. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

We're not building for the same world here. And I think a lot about a conversation I had with Tim, Nick Gebrew earlier this year on this podcast series too, about the sort of whose futures and whose like mind and imagination are we living in? Right. And like what that looks like, especially in the world of technology. And I think one of the pieces that I want to talk a little bit more about that you worked on, that has always stuck out in my mind was an installation that you did Around Google searches in the library. Do you. I'm sure you remember this, but that. I think I've told so many people about this piece to be like, all right. And so then I saw it and then I was just like, holy shit, this is crazy. That, like, this thing exists and that it's. Anyways, can you tell our listeners a little bit about this piece that I'm talking about?

[A]

Wait, you have to give me. I, I.

[C]

You're like, what? You're like, what am I talking about?

[A]

It was a type.

[C]

It was a typewriter. It was a typewriter, right? And it had all of the. The Google, like the Google searches, the public Google searching.

[A]

Gosh, I forgot Newfoundland.

[C]

I love. I love that you've done so much work that you've forgotten about.

[A]

I definitely did. I have not thought about that piece.

[C]

I have not forgotten this piece. I have not forgotten this piece. I am telling you, I tell so many people about it when it's. Oh, you want to hear something about. Something about privacy that one of my artist friends taught me. Let me tell you.

[A]

Right. Oh, my gosh.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Wow. That was years, years ago.

[C]

It was.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It was like a decade ago.

[A]

Yes, it literally was. Yeah. Where I was going.

[C]

And it's got you back in. Back in the mind.

[A]

I'm nostalgic now. Yes. I remember I was. I think this was when I was at the Royal College of Art and I went around to every computer I could get my hands on and just was able to scrape all of the search, everything people had been searching for on Google. And that was it. It was like the project was.

[C]

That's all it was.

[A]

Right. It was like I made. It was like a gigantic, gigantic print. And it was just like, what we are searching for is what it was called.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it was just everything, just like in these lists and rows and. And part of it was. Oh, yeah, it was such a moment. There was a. That really. That is like big data art moment. Thinking about surveillance. And sometimes. Actually, my critique is that sometimes we were doing it ourselves. We were like, to critique the system. We gotta do it now. Now we don't need to do that.

[C]

Do our own surveillance critique. Exactly.

[A]

That was a. When the tools are new, you gotta explore them. But that window. But it was really. It was really great. Part of what was so good about it is that it was. I did that piece. It was a closed community. It was like all of us at this space, all of us who were the ones who were searching, and I'm presenting this piece to all of us. And so I think that was part of what I liked about it, was that it felt very circular. It wasn't. It wasn't really like a surveillance. It was like, look, this is us. Who are we seen in this way? And it was great because some of the things people are searching for, you don't. You don't get. What I was doing there was really leveraging the thinness of the data because there's no context, right?

[C]

There was no context whatsoever. Just the Google search. Like in just search with the typos and everything with the type of.

[A]

Also, what you could see was this lovely trail of how people searched. So you have one word misspelled, and then they'd be like, let me try again. Be like, yeah. And you can see that. But you didn't. You didn't know who was typing anything in. You could see were students searching for themselves or were they searching for their classes?

[C]

Right.

[A]

All of that. It was really lovely because it. Because it was about that community. And again, it was really presented to that community. I remember people spent a lot of time looking at it and talking about it. There was a lot that is stripped away because of the thinness of it, but it was also the group that held the thickness at the same time. And so it worked really, really well. It was a. That was a very fun piece.

[C]

Yeah. Again, that. That is a piece that I have not stopped talking about all of these years, because it was something that just blew my mind of, oh, my God. This is data that is publicly available that we can literally look at. And the way that you presented it, again, is something that has completely stuck with me. I want to talk a little bit about the future here, and we're going to do that by transitioning through another piece of yours. The Future is Here, which I love so much, specifically because it talks about, as someone who has worked in content moderation, talks about the work and the labor conditions for the societies that we are having to live in and that are being created. Will you tell us a little bit about that piece?

[A]

That piece is from 2019, which is important because it is talking about AI and machine learning and big data sets and all of this.

[C]

Right, exactly. But it's.

[A]

So.

[C]

It's so relevant to write this moment. Yes, exactly.

[A]

Exactly what I was thinking a lot about. There were all these companies, and now they've all been, like, folded into the.

[C]

Same company, basically, but consolidation.

[A]

Consolidation, baby.

[C]

Right.

[A]

But what they all did was companies needed these gigantic data sets, right? They need them so that they could plug them into different models and be able to make sense of them in some kind of way, do whatever kind of data driven calculation. But to use these. So they're running like they want to use them for AI, they use it for machine learning and especially for supervisor. I'm not going to get into this, don't worry, they're going to use it for machine learning. But the thing is to get your data doesn't, it's like I said, data collection. This is a whole process. Your data is not automatically in the right form. You have to tag it, you have to annotate it. If you want to teach some system to recognize the difference between your water bottles and your competitors water bottles, you have to train that system on tons of photos that it has seen, tons of images that show it that are tagged, that say this is what our bottles look like and this is what their bottles look like. And somebody has to go in and do that tagging and do that training. Somebody has to do that.

[C]

A human being.

[A]

A human being, an actual human being. And so what I became really interested in was who are the people who are doing this and, or rather where are they? Where are they working? And I went on these same sites, I signed up to both do that work. And also I was on the other side of the people who hire. But instead of hiring I just said, hey, would you send me a photo of the place where you work? And I received these really lovely images from folks from all over the world, especially in Venezuela at that time was where a lot of these folks who were doing this large data set classification annotation work is where a lot of them were, were based. But they were almost all in the majority world because of labor arbitrage and because that is what makes sense for the small amounts that they were being paid to do this Politics. Truly extremely tedious work, by the way. Extremely tedious. I know because I did it. And what we got to see was the places where they were working. It just became this little visual window into first off, this was pre pandemic. So this like idea of like even remote work.

[C]

Remote work, yeah.

[A]

As this, like this is how, this is like the how we're going to keep this global economy moving. There was that piece of it. But also you could see people were working in their shops, they're working in children's bedrooms, they're working in their living rooms. It was just so great, it was so great to ground it to be like this work happens in a place by people. This isn't just in the Cloud. The cloud's not in the sky. No, this is to get there. People are doing a kind of labor to get to this point. And so in that piece, it ended up being this video work where you could see those sites. And then it would flip into this different mode which was almost like graphic novel or cartoony. And I would have these. These little statements that felt. It was. It was like, the piece is called the Future is Here. And there's an exclamation point at the end of that. And there would be these statements like, the world needs saving. And it was like just positioning these people as more the heroes of the story. And with that line, the future is here. There's. Of course, it's. It's a play on words. There's this idea of the future, that this strange, frictionless, automated future is with us now. But also that future is. It begins from here, from these places with these people right here. And I think that in a lot of those. These pieces, we're talking about some of this early work I was really interested in trying to reveal to folks. There's a statement I. There's this quote I always bring up from Ursula Franklin, the physicist theorist, where she talks about how more and more of our lives have been pushed into this house that technology has built. And I feel like at that stage in my practice, I really was like, look, everyone, look. Look at this house. Look, here's what it's made up of. Look, there's a. Do you see that wall right there? And it was like. I felt like we couldn't see it at the time. And so that was the sort of revealing work I wanted to do. I was like, look, there it is. See, look. People actually make this. They say machine learning, but it comes from these people. There's labor attached to this. Or like, you think the world can just be turned into data, but that's a process. And look what's missing. Or look, these, like. These things that you're searching for. You think you're just typing it, but actually, look, it's here. It's safe. We can all access this. It says something about all of us. What does it say? Who. All of that. I felt very much like I was. I was trying to. Trying to make that clear. And I would say now is a different moment.

[C]

Oh, that's. I was just about to go there. So tell me about now. What are you saying now? What are you working on now?

[A]

What I like about working, being an artist, also working in the space, is that the ground is always shifting. So it's like you have to shift too, because the ground is making you move.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And at that point, I think I felt like at that time when we would, I remember being part of educational organization, I work, I run, we would. We had to tell people what AI was. We had to explain to them this is where it is, this is what this looks like. And now after the pandemic where so many people were first forced to work remotely and forced to engage with technology in a way that in fact, many didn't want to, after that, after this, the buzziness of AI, after all of the trends, Remember the metaverse?

[C]

Remember, how can the metaverse with no ants and no legs, how are we ever going to forget the metaverse?

[A]

All of it, all of the, like, the, the evalu, the, the huge over inflated valuations of tech companies now, like all these billionaires are from tech. Like, now people know, people know, people feel the house. We've seen it, people have seen it and people are like, but you helped.

[C]

Show it to us. You helped show it to us.

[A]

I did, I did. But now I think I'm more interested in maybe a less explanatory positioning and maybe much more thinking, well, what, what are the alternatives? Or what is the ground that house is built upon? Maybe Arsala Franklin, as part of her quote, she says that house is still being contested, it's still being built, it's still being deconstructed, it's being torn down and built at once. And I think now I'm more like, okay, well here we saw that it's here, but what do we want? Who is that we? And then, yes, what is this built on in the first place? What's the ground? Can we go deeper? And I would say that's how my practice has shifted now, is I have a different positionality and focus. And I think the work as a result has a different level of stakes and engagement too.

[C]

I think so much the things that you're saying are again, so much in line with what we're trying to do with this podcast, which is why I'm so glad you're here talking to us on this sort of, what are the alternatives?

[A]

Right?

[C]

What are we trying to build? Who is, who is the we that we're even saying in this sentence? And so I really appreciate you sharing that with us and as we get to a close here, but I would love to ask you a little bit about this moment. You talked a little bit about the work that you love to study about the 50s and the 60s in the post Colonial area and how artists often become the folks who are thinking about policy, who are thinking about the alternatives. Right. What would you say or hope for in this moment, for the future of tech policy, people and artists for the next generation?

[A]

What a big question.

[C]

I know.

[A]

Goodness. And I think there's so much. I think. I think we need to recognize ourselves as different parts of the same body. The arm does something different than the leg, but you need both. Use both when you walk. And if we know that, maybe it can inform our interaction together so that it isn't reductive or simplistic or like, we can understand that. We use different languages, we might be speaking to different audiences, but we are sharing a similar message. To me, that message. When you say, what do we hope for the future? Our hopes and our critiques should be intertwined. You know, it's like the thing we're critiquing is exactly because we want it to be better. I think, again, to bring up Baldwin, that critique is coming from a place of love, which I feel like is sorely missing in the US Right now. I want more honesty, more accountability. I want more confrontation, more grace or difficulty. But really, so much of this work, it's about, you know, this question of who. Who is the we? It's who gets to be seen as fully human in this world? Our job is to expand that and to push and make that as wide as it can possibly be.

[C]

Who gets to be seen as fully human in this world, I think is the question that. I mean, as a policy person, that was my work, right? Was going around and recognizing and saying, if we have these rules and we have these guidelines for what people can and cannot say and who's protected and who's not protected and whose free expression gets to be allowed and whose safety we're not really thinking about that is the essence of folks, Humanity. Right. And being able to see like there are folks who are being neglected in this, as Iggy's. You have. Right. There are folks who are missing from these. These data sets that we're collecting. There are folks who are missing from these pieces that should be included, maybe shouldn't be included. Right. I. I love the way that you have sat and talked with us about so much of this. I'm going to ask you one last question, and I'll let you go. What do you think the relationship should be between policy practitioners and artists as, again, we move forward into this. This new world of trying to figure out, how do we get beyond this current moment?

[A]

Well, in a way, I'M like, oh, my goodness. I feel like I've already answered it with all.

[C]

You have. You have, and you have. And I'm also like, let's. Let's do it one more time. Because we're trying to do it. We're nailing this home for folks that are listening. I think. I really do. I think as someone who has worked with you and has been like, okay, our policy, like, how, you know, what is the sort of connection? Like, what. How should we be working together? And we have worked together. Right. And it has been like an amazing ability to be able to see and think about things and recognize, as you just said, we are sharing a similar message. Right. Like, we are. We are working in the same sort of field. We're working in the same sort of things. We have the same sort of goals. So how do we recognize that in Hammer that home for all of us? Because I don't think we get out of this moment without each other.

[A]

You're right. I think these are both tools for shaping how we live together.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And we're doing it on different registers. Artwork isn't going to come up with the language for the Section 230 reform debates.

[C]

Pretty, pretty. Someone, pretty please paint. Paint us through it.

[A]

Like, I just don't think it's going to be an artist who's hammering out bans on facial recognition or calls, algorithmic accountability or data transparency. But we do need those things. That's policy work. That is. That is deep and important work. We need people who can articulate that, who can stake that ground and fight that fight. And I think that art is dealing in the murky waters of below that. Dougalhein talks about art and science. He's a climate reporter, but he says that the questions that art answers are actually upstream of the questions that science does. And I think that we could say there's something like this policy, too. I think art is dealing in the murkiness it's about. Art can make power felt, not just described.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

It can get at that layer below the rules and the language and governance. And that layer is what is fueling so much of our political movements. That's what good art can tap into. So we need both. We need that. The imagination, like, it's translated into both of those. It is. We are the same. We are the same. We are different. We. You can't translate things perfectly between languages because it's like there's so much that you're missing, but there's. There is a core that is. That can feel like Sometimes you don't even need the language to understand somebody.

[C]

Exactly. You get the gist. Right. It's okay. Like, I feel you in my spirit.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And I think we were talking.

[A]

Exactly.

[C]

We start, I believe we started here talking about.

[A]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[C]

I'm like touching spirit and touching minds. That was something that you said at the very beginning of this conversation. And so I want to go back to that and this being a one spirit. Right. In this recognition. Recognition that those of us in this work are in this work together. And I appreciate you so much for joining us here today, Mimi, to tell us a little bit about the work that you have been doing throughout the years, the work that you are doing now, and how we can learn from you, how we can learn with you, how we can work with you and grow with you in this space and hopefully create something that is better than what we have. Because those who come next deserve that.

[A]

Exactly. Thank you so much for having me.

[C]

I really appreciate you, Mimi. Thank you.

[B]

That's it for this episode. I hope you'll send your feedback. Can write to me at JustInEchPolicy Press. Thanks to Anika and her guests. Thanks to my co founder Brian Jones and thank you for listening.

[A]

Tech Policy Press.