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Black Metal
Starship Program
In 2021, I created an incubator between an organization I founded, Afrotectopia, in partnership with MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative and New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Afrotectopia received additional funding from the Ford Foundation. Curating a cohort of boundary-pushing creatives (Jordan Caldwell, Kordae Jatafa Henry, and Jeremy Kamal), we collectively imagined a future of space travel through a cultural and spiritual lens. This incubator culminated into the production of the experimental kitchen table art book, Black Metal.
Black Metal was designed by WeShouldDoItAll (WSDIA) and printed by Small Editions.
In 2024, I publicly launched the book through an international book tour - visiting universities and cultural institutions from the Lower East Side Girls Club in Manhattan, NYC to the Design Academy in The Netherlands. The book was translated into an experimental film, accompanied by a genre-bending film score. And on occasion, the book tour has consisted of particpatory engagement in the form of design hackathons.
Book publishing, book tour production, film editing and scoring, marketing, and web development
by Ari Melenciano