Artist and researcher Jazsalyn discussed Ancestral Intelligence as an integral part of her practice. Recurring themes such as iteration, memory loss, and data restoration inform Natal Dimension, an ongoing series she has developed. The series travels through different eras in African history and cosmology to recover traces of the original AI, Ancestral Intelligence. These dimensions are channeled through artifacts, sound, and supernatural phenomena within a cinematic spatial environment.

Following the discussion, we invited attendees to lounge in the space and participate in a dream soundscape exercise to log their dreams on the Cosmologyscape website, created by Alisha B Wormsley and Kite. Food, drinks, pillows, blankets, and more will be provided to create a relaxing environment.

Jazsalyn is an artist and technologist working at the intersection of fiction and reality. Through alternative and computer-based media, she explores the practice of re-indigenization and ritual to recover traces of Ancestral Intelligence and memory.

Jazsalyn has designed experiences and presented work at the New Museum, Creative Time, The Kitchen, OXN Studio of the Onassis Foundation, and more. She is the artistic director of the experimental curatorial project Black Beyond and teaches at The New School, where she has developed studio coursework on African and Diaspora rituals as speculative technology. Her work has been featured in publications such as Cultured Magazine, It’s Nice That, Vogue, and The New Yorker.

About Cosmologyscape

This program is part of Creative Time’s public art commission Cosmologyscape by artists Alisha B Wormsley and Kite. The multimedia and participatory public art project, presented by Creative Time, is an invitation to the public to dream. Cosmologyscape seeks to harness the duality of dreams—as both individual tools of self-awareness and collective acts of imagination and world-building—and encourages the exploration of dreaming practices through an artist designed interface. How does it work? Take a nap, zone out, find your dream state. After that, visit www.cosmologyscape.com to submit your dream, and if you need help dreaming, follow a Dream Path on the website designed by a group of interdisciplinary artists. The dreams shared with Cosmologyscape will then be translated algorithmically into a pattern derived from Lakota visual language and Black quilting references, represented first in a growing digital tapestry of our collective dreams, and ultimately, into a series of sculptures unveiled in the fall, designed for further rest and dreaming.