CREATIVE DIRECTOR IN RESIDENCE
[volunteer | activism]
team building, strategy, branding, 360 media production and creative direction, experiential
The Summer of 2020 was an inflammation…
Those of us who were around to live through and witness it will never forget. National politics were a shit show, COVID-19 was rearing it’s head and then there were a rash of harsh, brutal killings of unarmed Black people by police (RIP Breonna Taylor, RIP George Floyd) and nervous white supremacists with guns (RIP Ahmad Aubery).
In the heat of that inflammation, I made the decision to recommit to the activism I had begun with Digital Action Committee in 2016. Back in those days, I met a man by the name of Hamid Khan who broke down the science of abolitionism and surveillance to me. He kindly mentored me, and showed me the work that LACAN and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition had done. Now I wanted to lend my myriad and formidable gifts as a creative leader to their causes and momentum.
As of this writing, my residency has been a year strong. In that time, I developed three campaigns to help support the Coalition and their fights. These digital and data visualization campaigns were designed to help mainstream some of the Coalition’s more dense, but vital work. I pulled together and lead a scrappy and diverse team of creatives that included art directors, designers, web developers, animators and more to create a family of media that the Coalition could use to tell the story of harm and surveillance that law enforcement perpetuates. I encapsulated the themes in ideologies of biomimicry, emergent strategy, and organic organizing. Then we brought them to life visually, and infused the abolitionist spirit with wilderness, nature and storytelling.
This story now lives here:
TheStalkerState.org
I am helping the Coalition with a number of other projects as well, from film production to web design. I recently assisted in the creative production of the Coalition’s work at an art exhibit in Athens, Greece in collaboration with Bill Balaskas and the Onassis Foundation.
This engagement is ongoing.
