Through to Thriving: Connecting Art and Policy with Mimi Ọnụọha

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

Welcome back to another episode of Through to Thriving, a series of podcasts about how to build futures beyond this moment. For this episode, I spoke with visual artist Mimi Ọnụọha about connecting art with how we think about governing technology.

Ọnụọha describes her work as exploring “how we build systems that make sense of and organize the world and how doing that relies on exclusion of different people or places or experiences.” During the conversation, we talked about the changing trends in nomenclature of data and artificial intelligence, the role of art in bearing witness to authoritarianism, the interventions and projects that she's created about the datafication of society, and how artists and policy practitioners should work more closely together.

Ọnụọha explained the nature and goal of her art:

My work really looks at the myths that make that kind of selective progress feel really natural or inevitable. But I do that through installations and through films and through very embodied sensorial experiences that are meant to be evocative. They're meant to touch your spirit, and also your mind.

She described the work of artists within today’s society:

The work that artists do is we take the world and we filter it through the lens of our own experiences, and some of that is the self-expression part, but I think much deeper than that, artists bear witness. That's our job. Our job is to face reality without flinching and to help others see it. And I think about that really pulling from the ideas of folks, like I said, like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, even Rick Rubin.

She also explained the historical connection between art and policy:

I'm really inspired by ‘50s, ‘60s, post-colonial nations that were creating their own nations, that were figuring out what it meant to be independent after having shaken off the colonial powers that were overseeing them. And what you see in those spaces– I think about Nigeria for instance, because I'm Nigerian– is that a lot of the people who ended up thinking deeply about government and policy were artists. They switched. You know, it's like in these moments of huge change and turmoil, you actually need people who have a way of thinking differently about the world, and you need to shake things up a little bit.

Ọnụọha also shared her thoughts about the large scale datafication of our world:

Right now it feels like we are just awash in data, but actually it's a process. To datafy the world is a process, and it is a collection process, and there are tools. It's an intentional process. And it also is one that doesn't just unfold, easily or rotely. There are complicating factors, and those are interesting. Those are useful for us to know. It is important for us to know that we cannot put everything in the world into the form of data.

She spoke about the current connection between policy practitioners and artists:

I think we need to recognize ourselves as different parts of the same body. You know, the arm does something different than the leg, but you need both. You use both when you walk. And I think that if we know that, maybe it can inform our interaction together so that it isn't reductive or simplistic. Or we can understand that we use different languages. We might be speaking to different audiences, but we are sharing a similar message.

Ọnụọha also explained how the relationship between artists and policy practitioners should work in the future:

I think that our hopes and our critiques should be intertwined. Artwork isn't going to come up with the language for the Section 230 reform debates. I just don't think it's gonna be an artist who's hammering out bans on facial recognition or calls for algorithmic accountability or data transparency, but we do need those things. That's policy work. That is deep and important work. We need people who can articulate that, who can stake that ground and fight that fight.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Hey y'all. We are back with another episode of Through to Thriving. I am your host, Anika Collier Navaroli, and on the series of podcasts, I'm talking with folks in the tech policy world about how we can imagine and create futures beyond our current moment that we are in. And today we are going to be talking about the connection between art and policy and what policy folks can learn from art and artists. And I'm going to be speaking with a person who can help us explore this the absolute best. Mimi, would you please introduce yourself to our audience and our folks who are listening to us?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Of course. Thanks for having me Anika. Let it be known, I'm here fully because of my deep love and respect for you.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Same. I'm here for you. I'm so excited to have a conversation with you, truly.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

As am I, as am I. Okay, so I am an artist, as you said. My name is Mimi Ọnụọha. I like to say that I make work about the contradictory logics of tech-driven progress. I'm just very interested in how we build systems that make sense of and organize the world, and how doing that relies on exclusion of different people or places or experiences. And technology is one of those systems that we build, but it's a particularly powerful one. And so my work really looks at the myths that make that kind of selective progress feel really natural or inevitable. But I do that through installations and through films and through very embodied sensorial experiences that are meant to be evocative. They're meant to touch your spirit and also your mind.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

'Touch your spirit and your mind.' Okay, I think that that 'touch spirit and mind' is I think a theme that I would love to keep through this and I hope that this podcast actually brings as we continue to talk. So thank you so much for joining us. Full disclosure, everyone, Mimi and I met, which I don't know if this was about a decade ago, Mimi, which seems like crazy-

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Oh my goodness.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Right? When we were both working at Data and Society. Fun fact. I went down to UNC a couple of weeks ago and I was talking with students, and I asked them if any of them had ever heard the term big data. None of them raised their hands.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Of course. It feels of a moment. It feels so dated.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

So strange. And it's funny because at that time, it really was what we were all talking about.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

It was it.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

We were all talking data.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

It was like even a few years before we were talking about AI,

Anika Collier Navaroli:

We weren't using the words AI. It was a machine learning, neural network. Big data.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Big data.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

That's where we were. And I think it's crazy, a crazy reminder to think less than 10 years, the term has completely gone out of style, but the work is more part of our lives than ever.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

The irony is that we're still dealing with big data. We're just not talking about it like that.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

And it's gotten bigger. The big data's gotten bigger, but we're not calling it bigger, bigger data. We're just doing-

Mimi Ọnụọha:

It's more data. It's bigger, but we don't talk about it.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Oh, ChatGPT that. You know what I mean? We call it an 'AI agent.' But I thought, I was like, I got to share this with somebody and I was like, me, me might be the only person who might appear, but I said Big data and every single one of these students looked me back blank, dead in the face. Never heard of it. But

Mimi Ọnụọha:

That reminds me, sorry, I'm going to take us in a different direction.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I want to see the go go.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Then I remember talking to students about data around that time. I was like, what do we know? Even around the big data era? And I remember at the time that they thought I was talking about their phone data plans and they didn't understand anything outside of that. And what I will say now, I think the students might not know the term big data, but I think that they have a sense of digital data in general.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yes. I think that when I said big data and I took it along the lines of artificial intelligence, it did not make sense to them. It was like, oh, of course, y'all are just old, that's what you used to call it. We didn't do it back then. But I do think you're right. Our idea of data and the sort of datification of the world and society makes more sense to everyone now, which is a huge part of your work. Right?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Absolutely.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

And I think we'll get into this and especially thinking about how the world has been data five and who has been excluded or included in what that means and what it doesn't mean in there. But we're going to be talking again. The reason why we're talking is this whole point of this series is to think about imagining new futures. And I wanted to talk to you because I've been saying for a while we've come to this place in tech policy where a lot of people are confused.

We don't know what to do, how to go forward. We don't know, everyone feels stuck. We had this idea of regulation, regulation's definitely not going to move. We have a new administration, we have new regime, we have this thing. And I keep saying, "I think art might be the way through." I think that we might need to start imagining things in a way that we have never done it. So I am really excited to have this conversation with you because you and I have worked in a lot of the same places. You and I have both worked at David & Society. We both worked at the Tao Center, we've worked at these places. We have done tremendously different work. And so I want to start just by asking you, how do you define art?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

What I think is easier and maybe more useful than defining art is defining artists.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Ooh, please.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Because art, art is what artists make. Like Toni Morrison. I reject this idea that art is just about self-expression. I think that is one important part of it because the work that artists do is we take the world and we filter it through the lens of our own experiences. And some of that is the self-expression part, but I think much deeper than that, artists bear witness. That's our job. Our job is to face reality without flinching, and to help others see it. And I think about that really pulling from the ideas of folks, like I said, like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, even like Rick Rubin, who just wrote this whole book about the creative practice, which I was shocked how good it was, but I shouldn't say good. I was shocked by what I was able to get from it. Let me say that, but I do think our job is to be perceptive. It's to be tuned in. And also it's to do this honest work of trying to reveal those things that are difficult to see or to name or to put into a form that you can handle.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Artists bearing witness. I think there are so many folks who can really resonate with that, especially right now, especially in the world and society that we are looking and living through. And one thing I want to ask you too is what is the role then of an authoritarian regime, especially in one that looks and smells and walks and talks and quacks and looks a lot like fascism? Where do we find this place in society of bearing witness in this, especially with artists?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

It's such a good question because there is, I think as an artist, there are two ways that you can fall on this. There are two sides you can fall on. There's one side where it's easy to be like, oh my gosh, should I be sitting here making art? Right. Dangerous in the flames, right?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

You're like, is this what I should be doing? It's the meme with a little dog meme, right? Exactly.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Yeah, yeah. This, it's like you're sitting there doing your little thing. No, no, this is fine. This is fine. And there sense sometimes where you're like, well, maybe shouldn't I be out in the street`s? Shouldn't I be in law school?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

No.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Learning the power language of government. I know. I have to say that to you. I knew you would shoot no artists.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

We need you not in law school.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

But yes, I do think the other side of it is that in a moment like this where there is so much that is shifting right in front of our eyes and where that sense of what reality is feels unmoored and unstable, it is so important to have people whose job is to be like, no, look, this is what's happening. This is where we are. This is what we see. It's not just this is what we see in front of us, but this is what it ties to. This is the historical legacy of what we see. But then I think this word that you've already brought up about imagining part of why I'm really inspired by 50s, 60s, post-colonial nations, their own nations, that were figuring out what it meant to be independent after having shaken off the colonial powers that were overseeing them.

I think about Nigeria for instance, because I'm Nigerian, is that a lot of the people who ended up thinking deeply about government and policy, they were artists, they switched. It's like in these moments of huge change in turmoil, actually, you need people who have a way of thinking differently about the world. And you need actually people, you need to shake things up a little bit. Those same people come in and they also have something to say about what it means to run a country or who we are as a people or what is identity or what, what does it mean to be a collective. But you start to see those connections more and more. I think we're in a moment like that.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yes, and that is why I'm, I'm so happy you're here to talk to us about this and to talk to us about what does it mean when reality is unmoored, as you mentioned, as you state so wisely to say in this moment, what do we see? What do we hear? And it's interesting because I talked to a couple of journalists a few weeks back on the podcast, and it seems so much like the interests of the artists and the journalists are the same in many ways. This sort of bearing witness is telling the truth in an industry that is completely under attack, like journalism one that is, as a journalism professor, I think I can say this falling apart in many ways. It sounds like the role of the fourth estate in many ways is being placed on artists or being shifted in a way. And that to me is fascinating.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Well, I do think that journalists, gosh, you know this better than anyone,

Anika Collier Navaroli:

You're a journalist too, so I think-

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Oh no, I write, but I'm no journalist. Y'all hold it down. Y'all do that one more time. I'm around so many of you, I feel very confident saying I'm not a journalist. But I say this as someone who's really very connected to journalism. In fact, I'm literally married to one, shout out to them, shout out. Shout out. But I do, I think that, gosh, the media and journalism have been under attack. So I think that the threat, the power too of journalism is actually more legible in society. And I think that that is part of the reason why It's one of many, many reasons, which we can also tie back to the internet and technological disruption and loss of trust and expertise and all these different things, them better than I do, that journalism is falling apart. I do think that art isn't seen as threatening.

And of course it's also tied a very different market economy as well, a very, very different one. And so art moves on a different time scale. Journalism is very much, this is the moment, this is now we're responding. This is what's happening. Look who's being like, ISIS is abducting these people. ISIS is grabbing these people in the streets. Look, we're here, we're talking to them. We journal artists. Some artists actually are doing work around that or do work that because art can be so wide. Some are doing a lot of this work that feels very pressing and in the moment. But often a lot of us, we also, it's like we're one level down and we have a slower time scale in a way, our work stretches longer. And so I think that scene is less threatening. I don't think that's true. I think they both are extremely important in different ways, but I do think they're seen differently and positioned differently too.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I think that's fascinating because to me, art is so powerful and can be seen as dangerous to so many people. I think you say art is not seen as threatening. And then something else. I've been reading so many things that you've said in order to have this interview with you, one of the things you said is my work is all about the social relationships and power dynamics behind emerging technologies. with power dynamics is threatening, especially exposing them directly to those in power, like those who are creating that emerging technology that is, it's speaking truth to power and having power look in a mirror in way, right?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Oh, absolutely. It is threatening. But I do think my partner told me the story about calling some, we'll be very vague, but calling some office and asking for some data set because of a story that he was working on and they were chatting with him, they're laughing, they're having a conversation, and then they were like, wait a minute, you're not a journalist. They were like, no, you need to go through the press office. Don't talk to us. Now I compare that to my experience I've been doing, working on a project that has had some journalistic elements, but as an artist, if I call it, I say, I'm an artist and I'm just thinking about these things. The guard is not as high up at all. And I think I love that. I love claiming the title of artist because anybody can claim it. It's not like being a doctor. You don't have to go, you didn't school for it. Anybody can say they are. Anybody can be one books.

Some of us did, but we know some folks who did. Yes, but you don't have to. And I think that for me, what I like being in a room and being the artist in the room, because to me it's so expansive and vague and it means I can really leverage that position because I do think people see it as non-threatening unless they know if they're in the know is different. But for many people, because they do see art mostly as you're going to come and paint the mural at the end of the work, which is by the way, a very important and powerful form of art that also can be super threatening and mess around with power dynamics too, don't get me wrong. But because that's mostly the category people understand and position it in, you can sometimes leverage that position.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. Okay. You've talked a little bit about your work, and I want to get into talking a little bit more about some of your work and some of your pieces, some of the ones that I've seen you do over the years and some that really stand out for me. But one question I have for you is how and why did you start incorporating technology into your work as an artist? And what was the first inspiration behind that.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

I grew up during the rise of Web 2.0. I feel like I had a front row seat to watching software just eat up the world.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Thank you for that movie. Bring it to life. I'm always going to hear that sound and hear that when I think about data, big data. I hope you clip it and you play it in the background. Here's a sound, a previous person on this podcast quoted as saying, so I do.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

I felt like I grew up living through seeing how the internet and datafication were reshaping the world as we were living in it. And for me, I really wanted to make sense of that. I wanted to make sense of how tech was accelerating or undermining these long existing structures. At the same time, I think around the moments when I was realizing that I was really interested in that, I happened to be in this program, this graduate program, which is at NYU, it's called ITP. And I went there over 10 years ago, gosh, like 15 years ago or something. And at that time it was an art design and technology program.

And I went there because I thought I had been doing a lot of work in university where I was theorizing technology, but I thought, well, maybe I need to learn how to actually build something. And I kid you not. I typed in Google because what we searched in back then kids, we didn't search in ChatGPT.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Didn't exist.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

They didn't exist. We would just type in Google. So I was like, where can I go? Is there a graduate program where I can learn how to code? And this program came up, so I said, done, let's go. What I didn't realize is that it was at Tisch, which is the art school at NYU.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Wow.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

And so it was at the same time, I was getting to learn about that from this other more functional point of view. I also was learning about art as a space of inquiry and knowledge production. And so in a way, those two things came together for me. It was like at the same time I was like, oh, I want to make sense of this and here are some of the tools to do that. I don't have to just do that in the university. I can do that through these interesting embodied projects. I can do that through a film. I can do that through making an interactive website or an interactive experience that people walked through.

And I hadn't realized that until I got there. And I think it was very, for me, it felt very like capacious was like that was the space I had wanted was to be able to work across a number of different lanes and disciplines. And then I realized when you're an artist, if you call yourself an artist that doesn't say anything about your tools, what you use, it gives you a lot of latitude. And I wanted that latitude.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, I love that you mentioned the tools and the latitude because you are clearly a multi, how would you describe yourself? What are the words here that you use to describe?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

I just say artist. That's it. I say visual artists.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

What? That's, that's it. That's so much easier than to be like a multi-what? A multi-hyphenated with a what and a what?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Diminishing returns on the hyphenates. Once you have too many people are like, oh, so you don't do anything. You don't do anything,

Anika Collier Navaroli:

But you do. You do so much. Right? And I think one of the projects that I first heard about you doing was the cat calling project. Would you talk a little bit about that?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

This is actually one of the projects that got me into thinking about Datafication of the world, or rather the power behind it. I also, I call this an intervention. I don't really call it a project because, okay,

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Tell me more.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Because it stopped early and I'll explain why. So this was years and years ago. It was summer. I was living in Brooklyn. I was getting catcalled all the time, as one does in the summer in Brooklyn, as one does in the summer in Brooklyn. And at the time, me today, I ignore or I just say something, I'm like, no, then you, nope, I shut it down. But I was much younger at this time, which I think was maybe 2013 or something like that, 2014. And I decided that I wanted a way to, what would happen is that after I get catcalled, sometimes I would just feel a little bit like, oh, maybe I shouldn't have worn that. Maybe I just had all these feelings. I didn't know what to do with those.

And so what I decided was that I wanted a way to interact with my catcallers, but I also didn't. And then I thought, okay, well this is where the distancing effects of technology can actually be used to great effect. What I did was whenever somebody catcalled me that summer, I would give them a piece of paper and it had a phone number on it. They thought it was my phone number, but it was not.

I had set up this server, connected the phone number to it and made it so that if you called, of course no one would answer, but if you texted, I had pre-programmed these strings of responses that would get sent. What would happen? Your own little chatbot. Yeah. I had my own little chatbot, but before chatbots chat bot, I'm paving me. And it was great because you can just imagine the situation. It's like someone catcalls me. I walk up to, I'm carrying these little pieces of paper with my name on, I mean with a phone number on it. I don't say anything. I just walk up and hand it to them. You're prepared, which is weird, which is a strange interaction. Should have been first warning sign should have first something's up here.

I try to talk to me. I'm like, I have nothing to say. Here, take this paper with a number, the number, and I scurry away. And then they would text me. I had lots of different dynamics. Some of the texts I sent to people were very overwrought. I said, I wish you knew how this makes me feel. And some people responded and said, wow, I'm sorry. I didn't know. We could talk about it over dinner. Wrong answer. And then some people got really angry and just would curse me out. For me, what was most interesting was that I did feel like I got my agency back, but also I had this strange relationship with these people that I could watch unfolding from a safe distance. I was just seeing these messages go out and come in, and I found it really interesting. But what happened was that by the end of the summer, I realized I had inadvertently created this data set that was all of my cat callers phone numbers, and it was a data set. They had opted into it because they texted me, like the cat callers of Brooklyn.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cat callers of Brooklyn.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

And from there, I remember what happened is that, and this is why I say this is not quite a project, more an intervention. From that point on, if this were a project, that's the interesting point. You do something with that. Wow, what does that mean? This data set actually is the most interesting part of the, and I knew that because whenever I talked to people about it, that was what they were really focused on. They were like, these phone numbers, what are you going to do with them? What are you going to do Now you've got phone numbers. Should we collect all the phone numbers? Maybe we can make a database of all the people, all this thing. But for me, what I found so, I just could not get over was that in focusing on those phone numbers and that data set, what it did was it just minimized everything else that was so interesting to me about it.

It minimized that threat that I felt and risk of walking up to these people and giving them this weird phone number. It minimized the strange relationship and the different responses and how we were all navigating it. It was the most important thing was the data set. And that data set, actually, it held something, but also it was quite flat, but it was powerful. It meant something. So I ended up not doing anything with that data set. Really what I did was my whole practice became devoted to investigating and thinking about data collection as a relationship. So everything happen from there, but that's where it came from.

That was exciting. That was the seed. That was the seed.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

That's fascinating.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

It was all already, it was both realizing this. I was like, oh, I learned something that I wouldn't have known otherwise if I hadn't done this particular little thing. But also I can call this art. Actually it is. You told me minutes ago the name that we're using. Right, exactly It. That's it. And I thought, wow. So that was it. I was like, this is a mode of making sense of the world. This is a mode of sense making. This is fantastic. And then I was like, it's done. I want to do this always, but actually do something with the results. But even this process is super important. It's very, very rich.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Right. Okay. So that then led you into thinking about data sets. And you said at one point, again, something that you were reading that said data is what people care about enough to measure. This was actually in Black Futures, a book that I think is on every Black millennial's coffee table. I brought it upstairs to my coffee table and was like, let me dust this off a little and get in here to what page, what, 136 and find what Mimi said in this book. Right? Because it's something for our generation, which I found. I remember when I first got it and I opened it up and I saw your name in there and I texted you. I was just like, you're in me. This is a part of our generation.

And to see you in there and to see that your work, especially on missing data sets is in there for me, was so incredibly powerful and so telling of the art and the work of our time that matters. So would you mind telling our audience a little bit about your work with missing data sets? And you just mentioned how you got into it, but how you continue to and what that has looked like over the years.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

One point about that book, I think Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham really, a lot of people, I can't remember when that book came out, but it was a while ago, and they did understand that also art that was talking about our technological present and futures, they were like, that's important too. That's part of this.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

They saw it.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

They saw it. Not everybody would've. They did. And so I really shout them-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

2020, 2020.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

2020. Shout out to Kimberly and Jenna. And so yeah, the Library of Missing Data Sets. So my work on missing data sets really can be boiled down to a few pieces, which are called the Library of Missing Data Sets. And really what the work is about is that you will have these spaces where lots and lots of data are being collected, and then you'll see that there's something that's curiously blank. There's nothing there. And I started to realize this. I think the first time I noticed this pattern was around data sets about citizens killed or civilians killed by the police. At that time, obviously we were dealing with a lot. There were so many.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

There had been a lot of that. It's not like it wasn't happening.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

It had been happening. But I thought to myself, wow, okay. We know some of these big names. I think it was actually right after Eric Garner maybe. I was like, well, where's the, let me look up the data set on this. Let me look it up. And then I realized there's none. It doesn't exist.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Didn't exist. Exist.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

That's crazy. And what's wild? You look into crime, policing, justice, all those things. So you know this, there's so much data available.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

There's so much data, so much data.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Swimming in it. It's a flood. But then this particular thing, civilians killed by law enforcement agents gone, nothing. Nothing. And then I started thinking, well, that's interesting. Why is that? And this led me down this, this path.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

It's a choice.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

You start to see that actually there are patterns of absence and there are reasons for why things are not collected. And in that case, it was that sometimes the people who have the ability to collect don't have the incentive, and the people who have the incentive have a much more reduced ability to be able to collect it. So for that data set, the police should be able to, they should keep that data. They're the ones who create it. So it would be very easy for them to collect it, right? But they have no incentive to collect that. Why? What does that give them? What on earth does that give them? They don't have an incentive.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Lawsuits.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Lawsuits and trouble. I will say that's no longer a missing data set. That is one that tons of journalists and activists, organizers and various citizens, civilians, people have just come together to collect it. And so it's really exciting to see that, that's not a missing data set. But it was the thing that started me off thinking about this, about all of these different types of, the kinds of data that don't exist, the data that is not being collected, the data that are omitted to be collected, there are reasons for their absence. There are some of the reasons that have to do with protection where maybe the group doesn't want that data out. Sanctuary cities not collecting data on undocumented folks. That's an act of protection. They're like, we are trying-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Inside surveillance.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Exactly. Whereas versus that killed-by-the-police example, that the protection is not for the victims.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Well, let me ask you, what else have you, I'm going to say this in quotes, 'found'? What other data sets have you found that were missing?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Oh my goodness. At this point, I keep a running list. I keep hundreds of them.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Oh my goodness. Tell us some of them.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

So many. Yeah. So let's see. Let me see. I'm trying to think of some good ones-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I remember the Broadway...

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Oh yes, Black Broadway makers. That's another one. I did work with a bunch of performing arts performers, I guess folks in the performing arts. And they were interested in the fact that there are very rigorous statistics collected on audience members and their demographics, all of their demographic data. But there was nothing that was collected on the actual performers on the stage. And it was actually a group of Asian-American actors and actresses who came together who were like, "We want to collect this. We need to know this information." And they had been doing a lot of the work. I just joined them at the very end to help with some of the data analysis and to help them create some graphics around it and also help them think about how to position it. And I wrote some stuff about it as well when I was dabbling in journalism a little more. But they did-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I told you, I told you, you dabbled in journalism.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

So I came at the end. They were the ones who did the data collection originally. They were even on napkins and pieces of paper. And I just came and was like, "Okay, here, let me help you put this together and make this a little more sound so you can move forward." And that is another one of those very neat cases where they were able to collect it. It wasn't a missing data set. It's not anymore. And every year they sit down with different theaters in the industry and they say, "Here's the data. This is what it's looked like. Here are the demographics of our performers on the stage." And it's made a big difference. So it's great to see that, but I think I'm just as interested in the data sets that are a little bit thornier. So yeah, I'm interested. One of the reasons why sometimes things are not collected is that certain information just resists metrofication.

There are some things that you can't put into data. It's very hard to, or it's just challenging. So one example that I talked about years ago, which some of this has been filled, but a lot of it is still open, is I would show these images on maps, and there are some areas that are still not on any digital maps because getting even the equipment there is too difficult. They're too remote, or you can't get the cars or you can't, even the little backpack, Google Maps or collection equipment is difficult to get to those areas. And you can see it, because you'll look at a satellite map and you'll see all this stuff, all this action, but then you'll look at a digital map, a vector map, you won't see anything. These are places that resist that particular way that we are metrifying the world.

They resist it. I think it's really, I like those sites. I'm really interested in those sites because they tell us something about the overall system. I like that. So this, the places that resist this metrification or sometimes we have a lot of accurate weather data up to a point, I mean from the past, but there's a point where we don't, because maybe we weren't collecting it or there are certain areas that are far from weather stations. So you don't have that information. What is important about it is that it reminds us that right now it feels like we are just awash in data, but actually it's a process. To datify the world is a process, and it's a collection process.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

It's an intentional process. Yeah.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

That's it. That's it. And it also is one that doesn't just unfold easily or rotely, there are complicating factors, and those are interesting. Those are useful for us to know. It is important for us to know that we cannot put everything in the world into the form of data.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. I love that. That we cannot put everything in the world in the form of data, no matter how hard we try. And I think right now, especially with the sort of data centers that are being created and the servers that are being run and put all over the world and polluting Black neighborhoods, especially to think about creating some sort of super intelligence. I think that's such a fascinating thing to think about, and that there maybe are just some things that we shouldn't be doing this with. Right?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Yeah. I think that's the whole point of the missing data sets project. What I found, it was very interesting, particularly when I was working quite a lot on it. There were points where some, I had some companies, I'm not going to name names, some companies did come to me and say, "Why don't you standardize this? Let's fill this data. Let's go, keep a list online. Let's do it." And I was like, "No, no, no, there's-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

That's not the point. You're missing the point.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

The point is that we can't do that. There's some areas where we can, but there are some areas where we can't, and we need to understand that data is one way of making sense of the world, and it can be used for certain aims for certain moments. It's the same. I honestly feel the same way about in this AI craze. I feel this way about LLMs. They can be really useful for certain types of work. And then there's some things that they're not useful for. And this problem that we have is a problem of scope. It's the fact that for some reason, so many technological things are expanded so that it's like they can used for everything and anything all the time, 24-7, every single part of us all the time. No, no. They have a purpose. They have a place. It's not everything.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

So many people have made this point, but we have these elements that are like, let's create art for you. I actually want my robots to clean my kitchen for me so that I can do the art. You know what I mean? Something got confused here about where my priorities are and what y'all priorities are that you're building for, because they're very skewed. You know what I mean? We're not building for the same world here. And I think a lot about a conversation I had with Timnit Gebru earlier this year on this podcast series too, about the sort of whose futures and whose mind and imagination are we living in, and what that looks like, especially in the world of technology.

And I think one of the pieces that I want to talk a little bit more about that you worked on that has always stuck out in my mind was an installation that you did around Google searches in the library. I'm sure you remember this, but that, I think I've told so many people about this piece to be like, all right. And so then I saw it and then I was just like, "Holy shit." This is crazy that this thing exists, and that it's, anyways, can you tell our listeners a little bit about this piece that I'm talking about?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Wait, you have to give me-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

You're like, what am I talking about?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Which piece are we talking about?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

It was a typewriter. It was a typewriter. And it had all of the Google searches, the public Google searching.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Oh gosh, I forgot.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I love that you've done so much work that you forgotten about-

Mimi Ọnụọha:

I truly did. I have not thought about that piece. I have not forgotten this piece. I have not forgotten this piece. I'm telling you, I tell so many people about it when it's, oh, you want to hear something about privacy that one of my artist friends taught me, let me tell you. Right?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Oh my gosh, yes.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Wow. That was years-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Years ago. It was like a decade ago.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Yes. It literally was, yeah, where I was going-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I just got you back in the mind.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

I'm nostalgic now. Yes. I remember. I think this was when I was at the Royal College of Art and I went around to every computer I could get my hands on and just was able to scrape all of the search, everything people had been searching for on Google. And that was it. It was like the project was, it was a gigantic, gigantic print, and it was just like what we are searching for is what it was called. It was just everything just in these lists and rows. And part of it was, oh yeah, it was such a moment. There was that really, that is big data art moment, thinking about surveillance and sometimes, actually my critique is that sometimes we were doing it ourselves. We were like to critique the system, we got to do it now. Now we don't need to do that.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Do our own surveillance.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Exactly. When the tools are new, you got to explore them, but that window closes. But it was really great. Part of what was so good about it is that it was, I did that piece. It was a closed community. It was like all of us at this space, all of us who were the ones who were searching and I'm presenting this piece to all of us. And so I think that was part of what I liked about it was that it felt very circular. It wasn't really like a surveillance. It was like, look, this is us. Who are we seen in this way? And it was great because some of the things people are searching for, you don't get, what I was doing there was really leveraging the thinness of the data because there's no context, right? There was no context, just the Google search, just the search. With the typos and everything.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

With the typos.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Also, what you could see was this lovely trail of how people searched. So you have one word misspelled, and then they'd be like, let me try again.

You'd be like, yeah, and you can see that. But you didn't know who was typing anything in. You could see were students searching for themselves or were they searching for their classmates? All of that. It was really lovely because it was about that community, and again, it was really presented to that community. I remember people spent a lot of time looking at it and talking about it. There was a lot that is stripped away because of the thinness of it, but it was also the group that held the thickness at the same time. And so it worked really, really well was that was a very fun piece.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Again, that is a piece that I have not stopped talking about all of these years because it was something that just blew my mind of, oh my God, this is data that is publicly available that we can literally look at. And the way that you presented it again is something that has completely stuck with me. I want to talk a little bit about the future here, and we're going to do that by transitioning through another piece of yours. The Future is Here, which I love so much specifically because it talks about, as someone who has worked in content moderation, talks about the work and the labor conditions for the societies that we are having to live in and that are being created. Will you tell us a little bit about that piece?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

That piece is from 2019, which is important because it is talking about AI and machine learning and big data sets and all of this.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Exactly. But it's so relevant to right this moment. Yes.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Exactly. Exactly. What I was thinking a lot about, there were all these companies and now they've all been folded into the same company, basically.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Consolidation.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Consolidation, baby. But what they all did was companies needed these gigantic data sets, right? They need them so that they could plug them into different models and be able to make sense of them in some kind of way, do whatever kind of data-driven calculation. But, to use these, so they're running, they want to use them for AI, they're going to use it for machine learning,

And especially for supervised. I'm not going to get into this, don't worry. They're going to use it for machine learning. But the thing is to get your data doesn't, like I said, data collection, this is a whole process. Your data's not automatically in the right form. You to tag it. You have to annotate it. If you want to teach some system to recognize the difference between your water bottles and your competitor's water bottles, you have to train that system on tons of photos that it sees and tons of images that show it, that are tagged, that say, this is what our bottles look like and this is what their bottles look like. And somebody has to go in and do that tagging and do that train. Somebody has to do that classifying.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

A human being, a human being.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

An actual human being. And so what I became really interested in was who are the people who are doing this? And rather where are they? Where are they working? And I went on these same sites. I signed up to both do that work. And also I was on the other side of the people who hire, but instead of hiring, I just said, "Hey, would you send me a photo of the place where you work?" And I received these really lovely images from folks from all over the world, especially in Venezuela. It was at that time, it was where a lot of these folks who were doing this large data set classification and annotation work is where a lot of them were based, but they were almost all in the majority world because of labor arbitrage and because that is what makes sense for the small amounts that they were being paid to do this politics. Extremely tedious work, by the way. Extremely tedious.

I know. Because I did it. And what we got to see was the places where they were working, it just became this little visual window into, first off, this was pre-pandemic. So this idea of even remote work.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Remote work.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

As this is how we're going to keep this global economy moving. There was that piece of it. But also you could see people were working in their shops, they're working in children's bedrooms, they're working in their living rooms. It was just so great. It was so great to ground it, to be like, this work happens in a place by people. This isn't just in the cloud. The clouds aren't in the sky. No, this isn't to get, people are doing a kind of labor to get to this point. And so in that piece, it ended up being this video work where you could see those sites and then it would flip into this different mode, which was almost like a graphic novel or cartoony. And I would have these little statements that felt, it was like the piece is called The Future is Here, and there's an exclamation point at the end of that.

And there would be these statements like, the world needs saving. And it was like just positioning these people as more the heroes of the story. And with that line, the Future is Here, of course, it's a play on words. There's this idea of the future, this strange, frictionless, automated future is with us now, but also that future, it begins from here, from these places with these people right here. And I think that in a lot of these pieces we're talking about some of this early work. I was really interested in trying to reveal to folks. There's a statement, there's this quote I always bring up from Ursula Franklin, the physicist theorist, where she talks about how more and more of our lives have been pushed into this house that technology has built.

And I feel like at that stage in my practice, I really was like, "Look, everyone, look at this house. Look, here is what it's made up of." Look, you see that wall right there. And it felt like we couldn't see it at the time. And so that was the sort of revealing work I wanted to do. I was like, look, there it is. See, look, people actually make this. They say machine learning, it comes from these people. There's labor attached to this, or you think the world can just be turned into data, but that's a process. And look what's missing or look, these things that you're searching for, you think you're just typing it, but actually look, it's here. It's safe. We can all access. This said something about all of us. What does it say? All of that. I felt very much like I was trying to make that clear. And I would say, now is a different moment.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Oh, I was just about to go there. So tell me about now. What are you saying now? What are you working on now?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

What I like about working, being an artist and also working in the space is that the ground is always shifting. So it's like you have to shift too because the ground is making you move. And at that point, I think I felt like at that time, I remember being part of an educational organization I run, we had to tell people what AI was. We had to explain to them, this is where it is. This is what this looks like. And now, after the pandemic where so many people were forced to work remotely and forced to engage with technology in a way that in fact, many didn't want to after that, after the buzzyness of AI, after all of the trends, remember the Metaverse, remember? After all of that.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

How can I get the metaverse with no pants and no legs? How are we ever going to forget the metaverse?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

All of it. All of the huge overinflated valuations of tech companies, now all these billionaires are from tech. Now, people know. People feel the house.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

We've seen it, people have seen it, and people are like, but you helped show it to us. You helped show it to us.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

I did. I did. But now I think I'm more interested in maybe a less explanatory positioning and maybe much more thinking, well, what are the alternatives or what is the ground that house is built upon? Maybe Ursula Franklin, as part of her quote she says, "That house is still being contested. It's still being built, it's still being deconstructed. It's being torn down and built at once." And I think now I'm more like, okay, well here we saw that it's here, but what do we want? Who is that we? And then yes, what is this built on in the first place? What's the ground? Can we go deeper? And I would say that's how my practice has shifted now, is I have a different positionality and focus. And I think the work as a result has a different level of stakes in engagement too.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I think so much the things that you're saying are, again, so much in line with what we're trying to do with this podcast, which is why I'm so glad you're here talking to us on this sort of what are the alternatives? What are we trying to build? Who is the we that we're even saying in this sentence? And so I really appreciate you sharing that with us, and as we get to a close here, but I would love to ask you a little bit about this moment. You talked a little bit about the work that you love to study about the 50s and the 60s and the post-colonial area and how artists often become the folks who are thinking about policy, who are thinking about the alternatives. What would you say or hope for in this moment for the future of tech policy people and artists for the next generation?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

What a big question.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I know.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Goodness, and I think there's so much. I think we need to recognize ourselves as different parts of the same body. The arm does something different than the leg, but you need both. Use both when you walk.

And if we know that maybe it can inform our interaction together so that it isn't reductive or simplistic or we can understand that we use different languages. We might be speaking to different audiences, but we are sharing a similar message. To me, that message, when you say, "What do we hope for the future?" Our hopes and our critiques should be intertwined. It's like the thing we're critiquing is exactly because we want it to be better. I think, again, to bring up Baldwin, that critique is coming from a place of love, which I feel like is sorely missing in the US right now. I want more honesty, more accountability. I want more confrontation, more grace with difficulty. But really so much of this work, it's about this question of who is the we? It's who gets to be seen as fully human in this world. Our job is to expand that and to push and make that as wide as it can possibly be.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Who gets to be seen as fully human in this world? I think is the question that, I mean, as a policy person, that was my work, was going around and recognizing and saying, if we have these rules and we have these guidelines for what people can and cannot say and who's protected and who's not protected, and who's free expression gets to be allowed and whose safety we're not really thinking about. That is the essence of folks' humanity and being able to see there are folks who are being neglected in this as you have, right? There are folks who are missing from these data sets that we're collecting. There are folks who are missing from these pieces that should be included, maybe shouldn't be included. Right? I love the way that you have sat and talked with us about so much of this. I'm going to ask you one last question and I'll let you go. What do you think the relationship should be between policy practitioners and artists as again, we move forward into this new world of trying to figure out how do we get beyond this current moment?

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Well, in a way, I'm like, oh my goodness, I feel like I've already answered it-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

You have. You have, you have. I'm also like, let's do it one more time.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Let's do it.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

We're nailing this home down for our folks that are listening. I think, I really do. I think as someone who has worked with you and has been like, okay, our policy, what is the sort of connection? How should we be working together? And we have worked together and it has been an amazing inability to be able to see and think about things and recognize, as you just said, we are sharing a similar message. We are working in the same sort of field, we're working in the same sort of things. We have the same sort of goals. So how do we recognize that and hammer that home for all of us? Because I don't think we get out of this moment without each other.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

You're right. I think these are both tools for shaping how we live together. And we're doing it on different registers. Artwork isn't going to come up with the language for the Section 230 reform debates, someone pretty please paint us through it. I just don't think it's going to be an artist who's hammering out bands on facial recognition or calls algorithmic accountability or data transparency. But we do need those things. That's policy work, that is deep and important work. We need people who can articulate that, who can stake that ground and fight that fight.

And I think that art is dealing in the murky waters of below that. Dugald Hine talks about art and science. He's a climate reporter, but he says that the questions that art answers are actually upstream of the questions that science does. And I think that we could say there's something like this with policy too. I think art is dealing in the murkiness. It's about art can make power felt, not just described. It can get at that layer below the rules and the language and governance and that layer what is fueling so much of our political movements. That's what good art can tap into. So we need both. We need that. The imagination, it's translated into both of those. We are the same. We are the same. We are different. You can't translate things perfectly between languages. There's so much that you're missing, but there is a core. Sometimes you don't even need the language to understand somebody.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Exactly. You get the gist, right? I feel you in my spirit. And I think we were talking-

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Exactly.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I believe we started here talking about yes, yes, yes, yes. Touching spirit and touching minds. That was something that you said at the very beginning of this conversation. And so I want to go back to that and this being of one spirit in this recognition that those of us in this work are in this work together. And I appreciate you so much for joining us here today, Mimi, to tell us a little bit about the work that you have been doing throughout the years, the work that you are doing now, and how we can learn from you, how we can learn with you, how we can work with you and grow with you in this space. And hopefully create something that is better than what we have because those who come next deserve that.

Mimi Ọnụọha:

Exactly. Thank you so much for having me.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I really appreciate you Mimi. Thank you.