_memories portal

google my memories is a moving image meditation on technologically-mediated memory, haptic visuality and critical fabulation. The work contextualizes current and future shortcomings of a personal or collective memory of a specific space, landscape, and time that is incoherent without technology. With works and overlaid archival images, the artist acknowledges a fruitful past on Bonny Island, Nigeria. However, there is a dissonance when her memory is not as expansive as a search engine—emphasizing a divide between memory and technology.

Zainab Aliyu ("Zai") is an artist and cultural worker living in Occupied Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, New York, USA). Her work is about the material affect of the "immaterial." She contextualizes the cybernetic and temporal entanglement embedded within societal dynamics to understand how all sociotechnological systems of control are interconnected, and how we are all implicated through time. She often dreams, experiments and inquires through built virtual environments, printed matter, video, archives, writing, installation and community-participatory (un)learning.

InsideOUT is a speculative fiction-based short dance film. It tells the story of a distressed woman finding solace after she encounters her anthropomorphized subconscious. As the dancer, choreographer, director, and editor, I aim to combine live action with visual effects to share a self-portrait in motion - the film reflecting my southern black heritage and my spirituality rooted in ancient Afroasiatic traditions.


Terri Ayanna Wright, is a professional dancer, choreographer, and teacher based in New York City. After graduating from Fordham University with a dual degree in dance and computer science, Ms. Wright traveled internationally as a dancer on tour with Ailey II, through which she was exposed to a wide-range of live production teams, settings, and audiences.  Just before the pandemic, she completed her first season with The Met Opera, as an ensemble dancer in Porgy & Bess. Through this experience, she began exploring the many facets of live production, beyond the performance act itself. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Design & Technology at Parsons, as a means of finding unique ways of bringing dance into virtual space. She continues to expand on her story-telling capabilities as a video editor, through the marriage of dance, film, and visual effects.  She most recently completed a residency sponsored by Eyebeam: using the Volumetric Performance Toolkit to perform in realtime with a 3-dimensional livestream inside of a Mozilla Hubs VR scene. You may catch Terri live every Sunday and Wednesday, as an online Horton teacher for The Ailey Extension. 

Woman beats herself up against a wall inside of her apartment, in turbulent distress. She is home alone. Time period is uncertain. Could be the 70-80s based on lighting choices, style of furniture, and clothing. Room is full of dusty knickknacks and random pieces of furniture. Some pieces are covered by white sheets. Some are not. Room is dimly lit by sunlight coming from a window. The sun's light is also revealing the dust particles in the air. Woman continues to battle with internal demons, when suddenly a beam of light (not from the window) landing on her catches her attention. She tries to go back to her internal battle, but the light keeps pulling her out of it. She is drawn towards the light, moving closer to the source. She realizes it is coming from the life-size spinning doll. There is a sign nearby that instructs to touch the doll's forehead. The woman complies. The doll comes to life. Ancestor doll comes to life slowly, with slow Butoh movements. The woman is curious, as their movements tend to reflect each other. They acknowledge each other's presence. A mutual respect is established. They further explore how similar they are. There is an inquisitive energy in the air. Also somewhat skeptical. What are you? Who are you? Where did you come from? A whimsical curiosity. Woman throws herself/is drawn back into her turbulent distress. She shrinks back into her own depression/self-loathing. Throws herself into a tizzy. The ancestor doll observes her, concerned. Ancestor doll swoops in and stops the woman from continuing into her tizzy. She calms her down, encourages her to breathe. Ancestor doll expresses to the woman a number of things: 1. everything will be ok; 2. you are not alone; 3. you have to lift your head up high, always, for you are the lineage of royalty; 4. your black is beautiful, it is complex, it is powerful in that complexity; 5. any answer you seek is inside of yourself. I live inside of you. They rejoice together in this newfound revelation. They celebrate their connection. And the two become one. Woman comes back to reality, makes sense of where she is in space. She is no longer depressed or distressed. Her inner conflict has been resolved.

An animation made up of found footage of Zenzile Miriam Makeba and found paper material scraps donated by interdisciplinary artist, Yannick Lowery, who is a big collage inspiration for me. As an artist, I am interested in the intersection of self reflections, and how one’s scraps can be in perfect resonance in the hands of a secondary artist and one’s oppressive creation can be subverted to a reclamation and proclamation of liberty.  In my project I am seeking resonance with the medium and a transformation between the medium and I. The synchronicity of the old, the found and leftover materials aligned with my investigation of self, transformation and reflections liberate images of freedom. 


Maliyamungu Gift Muhande is a New York-based Congolese artist and filmmaker, whose work focuses on exploring the global history of the Black diaspora at the crossroads of positive change and passionate creativity. Maliyamungu is a 2021 Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellow. In 2020 Maliyamungu directed a 6-week film program for underrepresented teens in Monticello, NY. From that program came their documentary-in-progress, NEAR BROADWAY – a film created in collaboration with her students about their lives in an economically depressed town. While pursuing her MA in Media Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Documentary Film from The New School, Maliyamungu made a short thesis documentary about the iconic New York City street photographer Louis Mendes. The short film was selected by the National Board of Review and screened at the DOC NYC festival in 2020, and is the basis of this feature film.

Akeema-Zane guides us through her process of 'writing sound' as a daily, embodied experience.

Soundscape rituals, is the result of a workshop series rooted in black healing. black beyond collaborated with Navel LA and experimental sound artist Akeema-Zane.

As a group we explored the history of sound as technology to preserve and transcend the spirit of ancestors and the indigenous. Akeema-Zane led immersive sound experiments such as ‘writing sound’ and wearing blindfolds to initiate sonic journeys.

Following our research, we morphed sounds to create a collective soundscape as an embodied practice in reference to ‘afro – nowism’.  

Workshop series co-organized by JAZSALYN and Jeharrah Pearl. Film, score and performance by Akeema-Zane.

Akeema-Zane is an artist and researcher whose practice centers the literary, music, cinematic, and performance traditions. She has been an artist-in residence, student, fellow, and performer at Groundation Grenada, Cave Canem, The Maysles Documentary Center, Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, and The School of Making Thinking. At The School of Making Thinking, she was a part of the 2018 Immersion 2.0 cohort, where she designed her first Virtual Reality experience which featured herself. She is currently serving on the Board of Directors of The School of Making Thinking. As a native New Yorker, she is proud to have spent many years working at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture where she worked as an archival curriculum researcher for her last post there. Collaboration is a major tenet of the artists’ practice and one of her collaborative works “Sonic Escape Routes: Shall We Fly Or Shall We Resist” was featured in the 59th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Her published writings include: There’s a Monopoly on Change, Interlude, When Money Can’t Buy You Home and Basil Grows from Mother Earth.