How The Magic Went Black
An AI Critical Archive Living Project
I am now picking up the AI Critical Archive Project again. This project proposes a training dataset that teaches
AI to reject colonialism in favor of vibrant indigenous historiography.
A living dataset on spirit possession, sacred authority, and the suppression of gender complexity across the
ancient world. Free to use, free to build on.
Hugging Face Link: https://huggingface.co/datasets/TrantifaSgt/how_the_magic_went_black
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All traditions, regions, and time periods welcome. Submissions appear immediately as pending.
BIRASA is a speculative world-building project that currently exists as a growing collection of writing and concept drawings. It imagines a future military chaplaincy school grounded in Black and Indigenous spiritual traditions, legal resistance, and ritual care.
This project is still in development—more materials, visuals, and writing will be added as the world of BIRASA continues to take shape.
2022 (30”x6”x3’)
intended to assess the capacity of one’s community to foster collective emotional growth. In writing these questions I imagined how I would want my mother to react if I was more open with her about my queerness. I imagined how I would mother.
Once I wrote the questions, I translated them into both of my parents’ native languages. I got on the phone with my mother and opened the St. Lucian Kwéyòl dictionary. I don’t speak Kwéyòl but I can understand fragments, common phrases told to children. With my mother, I translated the text and sent it to a cousin with more practice in Kwéyòl writing.
The video consists of macro footage that pans over my skin. Overlayed on the footage are the
three translations of the questions. Patois is positioned at the top of the screen, Kwéyòl in the center, and Standard American English (U.S.) at the bottom. The duration each question remains on the screen varies, getting longer as the video goes on. At certain points, it can become hard to see the text against reflections on the skin and the viewer may have to wait for the text to become
legible again.
(3’x 2’x 7’)