I am a designer, strategist, writer, and producer working across technology and culture. I develop organizations, projects, and narratives that reprogram outmoded systems. I have co-founded three non-profits, collaborated with and consulted for tech companies, city governments, research groups, and foundations, and produced thousands of large-scale public events and experiences.

I direct MA Narrative Environments, a two-year postgraduate course focused on speculative platform design based in the Spatial Practices Programme at Central Saint Martin’s, University of Arts London. I am the Strategy Director of Antikythera, a philosophy of technology think tank based at the Berggruen Institute. I am also the Production Director of Radio Espacio Estacion, a nomadic, translingual radio station hosting 24-hr marathon broadcasts about mobility & movement while on the move. I regularly collaborate with Autonomy, a London-based think tank on the future of work.

I am working on Auto: Fordian Parables of Platform Automation, a book based on my Phd work at the University of California San Diego. Auto unfolds a speculative history of planetary platform automation, exploring how the legacy of Fordian logics and dynamics shape automation, autonomousness, and automobility today and to come. I hold a PhD in Design from University of California, an MA in Philosophy from Duke University and a BA in Literature from the University of Pennsylvania.

Before my role at Central Saint Martins, I co-led the City Design Studio at the Royal College of Art with Julian Siravo. I authored the winning bid for the 2024 San-Diego-Tijuana World Design Capital in collaboration with Katalina Silva and Michele Morris. From 2014-2020, I worked with The UC San Diego Center for Design and Geopolitics (AI urbanism, platform governance), The UC San Diego Design Lab Automation Team (speculative design for AV futures) and The UC San Diego Design Strategy Team.

In 2003, I co-founded Elsewhere, a living museum set within a three-floor seconds store housing a 58-year collection of surplus in downtown Greensboro NC. I developed and directed Elsewhere for a decade, growing the organization from a small startup to a robust non-profit. Elsewhere played a critical role in the revitalization of downtown Greensboro and continues to host interdisciplinary creators from across the world who live and work in its collaborative world.

From 2011-2013, I co-curated Kulturpark, a series of research interventions into an abandoned Soviet-built amusement park in East Berlin. Kulturpark convened Berlin architects, creators, urbanists, designers and scientists to reimagine the recent ruins as a public architecture. The project laid critical groundwork for the park’s official reclamation from an overlooked no-mans-land to a state-revitalised public park in 2018.

From 2011-2013, I served as Director of Research for Provisions Library, an art and social change agency in Washington DC. At Provisions, I founded a research residency bringing creative social change agents to the capital city to develop social change projects in partnership with national institutions. Thematic residencies included Parks & Passages (repurposing the Dupont streetcar tunnels as an Underground passage), Republic (resetting the conditions of constitutional democracy), Copy Rights (proposing a post-IP future), and The Case for Space (exploring futures for outer space policy). Each residency culminated in an issue of Provisional Research, a journal of Art and Social Change associated with GMU School of Art. While in Washington DC, I also curated Near Futures for the second 5x5 Festival, DC’s public art biennale.

From 2013-2017, with start-up support from the Warhol Foundation, I co-founded and co-directed Common Field, a USA-based network of independent and alternative arts organizations generating shared infrastructures for visibility and viability. Common Field supported 1000+ members through convenings, publications, grants and learning exchanges.

I have collaborated and consulted with The San Diego Department of Regional Transportation, The City of Boston, MIT Media Lab City Science, SOM Architects, SAP Design, Ford Motors / D-Ford, Hyundai, Materials & Applications Los Angeles, and The Rebuild Foundation Chicago. Radioee.net projects have been commissioned as part of the Istanbul Design Biennial, The New Terrains Art Festival Bay Area, the Canadian Arts Council, Miami Art Basel, and the Wiener Festwochen Vienna, amongst others. MA Narrative Environments has developed projects for Nike, Estee Lauder, MANE Fine Fragrance, Firmenich, New Balance, Google Arts & Culture, Somerset House, and others.

My writing has been published in E-Flux Architecture, AI & Society, Cabinet Magazine, Terremoto Magazine, DIS 2020, ACM Design Journal, and Field Journal. My curatorial projects have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, and DesignBoom.

I have lectured and hosted workshops at MIT Media Lab, Strelka Institute Moscow, Neon Foundation Athens, Sandberg Institute Amsterdam, Cambridge University, Bauhaus University Weimar, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Institut Hyperwerk Switzerland, and CCA San Francisco.

I have raised over $2M in organizational and creative projects grants from supporters including The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Facebook/ HSMRC, The National Endowment for the Arts, Art Matters International, and The Open Society Foundation, amongst others.

I was born in New Orleans and call London home.

Texts

The Fordian Slip in E-Flux Architecture: New Silk Roads
Planetary Platform Automation in The Planetary: An Essay Collection, Berggruen Press
The Polyopticon in AI & Society: : Special Issue on Urban AI
The Autocene: Towards a Post-Automotive Future in Strelka Magazine
Adventure Mode: A Speculative Rideshare Design in Frontiers in Computer Science
Why Lenin Was a Fan of Ford, New Normal Compendium, E-Flux & Strelka Press
Humans-in-the-Lacunae: Prospects for an AI Driver’s License, Trucking & Labour Research @ Trust Berlin
We Don’t Yet Fully Know What Platforms Can Do: Ten Points on Public Platformation @ Autonomy.work

Projects

Planetary Sensing, Digital Innovation Season, Central Saint Martins
Zero: Numeracy Narratives for Urban Resilience for COP27, Egypt w/ Radioee.net & Spatialradio.live
The Cairo Charter, Urban AI for Environmental and Social Justice w/ Ain Shams University, Cairo
Flyover: Rural Automation & Post-Pastoral Speculation (conference and Flyover Fiction residencies) @ Story Lab, Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, University of Nebraska w/ Ash Eliza Smith
Pohflepp in Practice w/ HKW Berlin, Eyebeam, Trust, & UCSD @ postrational.foundation
Platform Diagnostics @ Koreo London
Radioee.net: Voices of the City @ Central Saint Martins w/ MA Cities & Theatrum Mundi, London
Radioee.net: Sonic Drop @ Institut HyperWerk Academy, Switzerland
Design Fictions: Future Epidemiologies, Ethical Responses, and Public Health @ UC San Diego Design Lab

Talks

Auto Territories @ TU Delft Transitional Territories, Netherlands
Auto @ Cognitive Infrastructures: Antikythera Summer Studio
Narrative Machines @ Studio Dot Dot Dot Milan
Digital Anthropology & Human-Centred Design (panelist), Holition Studio, London
Pervasive Automation: Narrative Machines & Environment-Based Modeling, NYU Shanghai
Rapid Realities (panelist) with Samir Bantal (AMO) and Shumi Bose (Common Ground) as part of Another World, Christopher Kulendran Thomas @ ICA London
Planetary Perspectives on Digital Technologies (chair) with Reza Negarestani and Dr Betti Marenko, Central Saint Martins Digital Innovation Season 2022  
Speculative Histories of Platform Automation at University of Porto, Science & Technology Studies, Portugal
Infrastructure Governance @ Newspeak House, London
Automated Automobility as Public Service: The Road to a Just Transition with Julian Siravo @ Mobility Metamorphosis, Royal College of Art
Questions of Scale (panel chair) @ The Design Museum, London UK
The Cairo Charter @ The Responsible AI Forum, Munich, Dec
Lunar Denizens: A Welcoming Party (panelist) w/ New School Policy and Design for Outer Space's (NSPDOS), Very Very Far Away, and Santa Fe Institute’s InterPlanetary Project as part of the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale
The Autocene @ The Terraforming, Strelka Institute, Moscow
The Autocene @ City Lab, Paris
The Cairo Charter @ Rise Africa, Innovate4Cities (UN-Habitat), Digital Geographies Conference
Collaborative Tools @ Hackers & Designers, Amsterdam, NL
“Technology and the Future of Care Work” (panelist) w/ Autonomy UK
“Platform Automobility” (panelist) @ Geomedia 2021: Off the Grid, Seigen Germany
guest critic @ U MIchigan Taubman College School of Architecture Studio w/ Cyrus Peñarroyo