Arts + Tech: Artists Respond ft. Stephanie Dinkins
Arts and Technology for Racial Justice Series
with Stephanie Dinkins
Self portrait by Stephanie Dinkins.
Recorded November 22, 2022
Grantmakers in the Arts continues discussions centered around arts and technology. The unique intersection between arts and technology has proven to be influential for all people (whether patron, funder, artist, or other) as we navigate the quickly evolving mediums for sharing information and shaping culture. Technology is not neutral, so how should funders target their dollars in order to advance the growth of arts and culture towards justice?
We are glad to kick off a series of artist-led conversations around this topic. We asked all of the artists the question, “how can the intersection of arts and technology contribute to a racially just future, and what do funders need to know?” and we are glad to share this series of artist talks.
In our first episode of the series, we are joined by Stephanie Dinkins, artist and educator, who will speak to her perspective.
To listen to the full episode, click here.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Welcome to a podcast by Grant makers in the Arts, a national membership association of public and private arts and culture funders. I'm Sherylynn Sealy GIA's Senior Program Manager. This podcast is part of a series on arts and technology and funding.
So at the 2020 GIA conference Grantmakers in the Arts opened a discussion about arts and technology with Ruha Benjamin, Salome Asega, and Sage Crump. We've been engaging in conversations centered around that topic since then. And today we're really glad to have with us the brilliant Stephanie Dinkins, who's an artist and educator, and so many other things that we'll hear more about in a moment. And she'll be discussing her unique connection to the topic. So thank you for being here with us, Stephanie.
Stephanie Dinkins:
Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be able to talk about this topic and join you on the podcast.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Thank you. So before we dive in to our conversation, can you take a few moments to introduce yourself and let the listeners know who you are?
Stephanie Dinkins:
Sure. Well, that's a big and odd question. My name is Stephanie Dinkins. I'm an artist. I identify mainly as artist, but I'm also an educator. I think I'm also a super curious person, and I'm someone who has founded the future history studio at Stony Brook University, where we're looking at the topics that I as artist kind of have been delving in for the past 10 years or so, which is really around ideas of what the intersection of technology, Race, gender, and aging are, where things meet, where they need to be examined deeply and where the opportunities are.
And for me in particular, I'm super interested in those opportunities and not simply pushing aside the tech, but figuring out, well, how do the communities that I really care for, which I'm saying is how do the black folks around me, how do brown, black communities, gay communities, take this technology and start to mold it to their advantage? Use it where we can, call it out where we need to.
And for me, I think that's also a question of what the partnerships are. Not only partnerships between humans, but as this technology continues to grow and flourish, especially artificial intelligence, machine learning, all these systems that do kind of automated decision making, systems that depend on data. How do we take those and start to, and I want to say fix or push them in a direction that's one of care and support?
Rather than simply being systems of punitive nature of surveillance, of all the things we always hear about that's bias related. We know the technology has those things and has those possibilities, but I also think the technology is this point of opportunity where if we in particular, communities of color get involved, any community really that's on the fringes, gets involved, starts to engage it, whether that means making in that space or simply thinking around that space and making it public, or just talking to your family about what's possible in that space. Like how can we shift it to something that drives us forward or in new ways of being? That's really my jam.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Thank you so much for that. That was awesome. And the perfect segue into our next question. For those who are listening, we are in the presence of brilliance, if you have not realized that already. I'm very excited to dive into this.
So the major question here that I would love to have you respond to is how can the intersection of arts and technology contribute to a racially just future? That's the first part. And the second part is what do funders need to know? And when you just gave your introduction, you talked a lot about partnerships systems, you talked about Race and how that fits in. There are some things that are kind of coming up for me too on the GIA side, just in terms of what we've had discussions about. So I would love to hear you and kind of go back and forth and just see what's coming up for you and what you've been thinking about. So for starters, I'll repeat the question. How can the intersection of arts and technology contribute to a racially just future?
Stephanie Dinkins:
Wow. Okay. So I think that that intersection, art and technology is a great place to start thinking about what a racially just future looks like. If you think about where we are in the world right now, and how technologies are shaping the ways that we live, the ways that we communicate, the ways that we love.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yep, absolutely.
Stephanie Dinkins:
That for me, that seems to be this opportunity point. And as an artist, and I think as artists, we are willing to dip our toes into spaces that maybe feel limited access for people at first, to spaces of adventure and research into these things, to kind of start to pull them apart and see how they're functioning, see how they support communities, see how they don't support communities, and then really get our hands dirty and start to play in it. And I think that idea of breaking some of those walls of who's supposed to touch stuff and who isn't is something that artists do really well.
We're also really good at having those conversations between communities. So I can find myself working very locally, on my block almost in Brooklyn, New York with folks, and thinking about the ideas of artificial intelligence and what that means to us as a community here. But also be embedded in a company that's making the systems that kind of undergird the world that we live in. And it's that cross of ideas that I think don't travel so well most of the time.
And artists also do it in language that I think is plain for the most of the time. Our idea is to communicate with people where they're at. I hope, at least that's my idea. And so trying not to make it in a language that communicates to certain communities in certain ways. I'm always interested as an artist in making language that allows us to hear each other, to truly understand our concerns and then share those.
And really, I also think that another thing that artists do well, especially in that art and tech space, is to model possibilities. If I were to tell you how many times people have told me, "Oh, what you want to do is crazy, that is not possible." You would be surprised. Because I'm often told those things. I was talking to someone today simply about a show I did recently, and I called it On Love and Data. And I called it On Love and Data very specifically. A, Because the first few times I said it to someone, especially people who were working in the tech sector, they're like, "Oh no, those two things don't go together." And my response is, "Are you kidding me?" There's no way that the idea of love should not be coupled with this idea of data, that we are building systems on, that we depend on.
And so I've taken it on upon myself, and I think artists kind of do this in different ways to now interject that idea wherever I can to get folks to start thinking about that. And what I've realized is there's usually pushback. So I say, "Oh yeah, we should talk about love." And this is even in academic circles. "We should talk about love." "Oh no, can't do that." That is not the way we approach these ideas. Why not? How can we? I try to be persistent in the things that I approach? And I think artists are very persistent, and we will work in the trenches for years on ideas that people are not necessarily yet interested in.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Right.
Stephanie Dinkins:
Right. But we get there, we stick with it, and we just keep pushing forward. And if we're lucky, people start to hear it.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yep, that's right.
Stephanie Dinkins:
And then when it gets heard, it's like, oh, right, okay, so maybe we can approach love in an academic sphere. This is how we start to shift ideas in little ways. I think artists do that a lot because we're often looking at the things that we see in the world that feel off in some way. Or trying to find, especially artists of color, we're often trying to find space for ourselves to exist in a way that doesn't seem counter to our existences.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah.
Stephanie Dinkins:
And in doing so, I think we make space for many others-
Sherylynn Sealy:
Absolutely.
Stephanie Dinkins:
-to do the game, right?
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yes. It's showing the possibilities so that someone has the inspiration to know that it's possible. When people talk about creating, in this particular context, creating a racially just future, if we don't know what a racially just future looks like, how do we know that we have or can achieve it? We have to have the vision, we have to create it and have an image of what we know it could look like, and that's what we're going for.
And so like you said creating the opportunity, but also being the one of the people who creates a space and shows the possibility so that other people can see, oh wow, this never came to my mind, but now I see it happening in real life. I see someone leading in this way. This actually is possible. I never expanded my mind to this point before.
Stephanie Dinkins:
I agree. Usually for better or worse and because we want to survive in societies, we go along with what is.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Right.
Stephanie Dinkins:
An artist will question that what is. And push against what is. And whether that is some ecological issues or racial justice. We want people to see that there's something else. We see that there's something else.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah, that's right. And yeah, go ahead, please, please.
Stephanie Dinkins:
No, no, no, go ahead.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah, I can really appreciate that even within arts funding specifically and the way that giving works. So many times I've heard come up in conversation, we give in this way, we fund in this way, we follow these particular steps because they're the steps that have been handed down to us from before, because these are the steps that were presented to us.
We never thought for a moment maybe we should question this. Maybe we can think of an alternative way. Maybe this isn't the only way that we can do this thing. But because I was told that this was the way, I accepted it and moved forward. And the brilliant work that you're doing, and so many other people that are pushing against that and working outside of that, I think that's so important. And I think also about that idea of visionary fiction or like I mentioned before, having that vision and working towards it.
But I want to touch upon something that you mentioned earlier before I get to my second question. And it's also connected to our 2022 conference. We just had our annual Grantmakers in the Arts conference in October. And one of our keynotes, we had [inaudible 00:13:07] and Kamal Sinclair talking about the 10 things funders need to know about arts and tech.
One of the things that came up, one of those 10 items in that list was that tech is not neutral. And I think that goes back to your point on love and data and also thinking about how we're constantly taking in information, receiving data, having data collected about us, and it's meaningful and impacts the way that things around us are shaped and formed. So can you offer any additional thoughts on the idea of tech being or not being neutral from your perspective and how that can influence a racially just future? Just kind of honing in on that one point.
Stephanie Dinkins:
Yeah. Well, tech is definitely not neutral. One of the reasons I as artist like to play in the material, and when I say play in the material right now, that means for me data is you start to see how not neutral the data is. Or even if you do a little research and start pulling apart what people are using in the data sets that get pulled off of the shelf, often plugged in and then used for many, many, many systems that are around us.
It's frightening because it's historical. So it's pulling forward histories that we don't even agree with in the first place that have pictures of specifically black folks that are not fully round. And the question is, if we're just pulling that forward without trying to counterbalance it or give other information, what are we doing? I have this problem in my projects all the time because I don't want to build a project, specifically a project, not the only one, which is a memoir of my family that is built on data. I didn't want to use any of those off the shelf solutions because I know how dirty they are, how biased they are.
And if I build something about my family on top of that, I'm essentially making building blocks that are insufficient. And so it comes down to this part of, oh, well, I guess I have to make my own data set. Or I could use something like, people will use something like the Cornell data set. And what it is really is this dialogue data set from movies.
And in a way you could say, oh, American movie dataset, that should be kind of innocuous right?
Sherylynn Sealy:
Well?
Stephanie Dinkins:
Exactly. I mean, forget about racially, even if you just think about how heightened that language is and how urgent and specific it has to be, it doesn't fit real world applications. On the very basic level. Now, if you start to dig deeper into what kind of bias ideas it has about folks, that's a whole other story. So the question becomes how do we start to disentangle those deep historical biases from the data that we're using to construct the next 20 or 30, 40 years?
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's right. Of course, the folks who are listening to this podcast will mainly be funders of arts and culture, and funders, of course, stewards of wealth, have a lot of opportunity, have a lot of leverage, and are looked to oftentimes to be the solution to a lot of issues that are going on, because funding, of course has a lot to do with what happens and doesn't happen oftentimes. So the main question being right now, what do funders need to know? You shared a lot, but if you were going to speak directly to funders right now, what would you tell them in terms of supporting arts and technology?
Stephanie Dinkins:
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say A, keep supporting it. I think that's good. And the investigations that people are doing are clearly having some kind of impact on culture. I could never have imagined this, the way in which A, I personally get to speak to a kind of broad audience. And I think lots of folks who are doing this work and who have been doing this work for years have been able to have impact. And how much more we have to do and how it's a long-term ongoing project.
So if I were to speak to funders and it's like, oh, what do you need to know? Do you need to know...? Yeah. These are not three-year cycles that we're talking about. We're talking about futures 10 years out, 20 years out, 30, a hundred years out, which means sticking with the work super long term is important. I think that the idea of metrics, although metrics work to help justify what's going on, but sometimes being held to a kind of, what is the outcome, is a wrong-headed way to get towards something. Because then we're working towards whatever the goal is and whether the goal is stated or not usually people are trying to parse, well, what do we need to do to stay supported?
Versus what do we need to do to create a truly more just, racially just, equitable world? And we know that it's taken us a long time to get here. So there's no way three years, five years, 10 years is going to do the job. So I think that ongoing funding, deep engagement is really important. And I also think that keeping one's eyes out to broaden circles becomes important as well. I often feel that I'm now a solution to a shorthand sometimes. It's like, whose list am I on of people who you might talk to about racially just technology and who else is out there talking about it, and how do we get more perspectives in a room? I can't tell you how often I am in the room with the same 30 people and being in the room with the same 30 people is okay, sometimes.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Sometimes.
Stephanie Dinkins:
But it's self perpetuating, right?
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah. I was going to say.
Stephanie Dinkins:
So it's the cycle that builds, and I'm always trying to figure out, well, if this is the cycle, how do I use that cycle? Or how can we better use that cycle so that it spins out and supports more folks so that they too can do the work probably in ways that I would never.
So I think that's important as well. And I really do think that folks are trying to do this, or orgs are trying to do this, trying to figure out ways of working together towards these bigger goals. These goals are so much larger than any one org, any 10 artists. So that it feels that this idea of speaking to one another, informing one another, understanding where funding is going and why, and trying to make a plan for it that's long term and not forgetting, okay, so we're talking about art and tech, but really what I think we're talking about is some of the original "sins" of America.
We're really talking about the legacy of the slave trade and how that continues, right? And goes into what prison industrial complex. Goes into not educating people fully.
So how do we not only address these present moment things, but try to get back to the root causes of how we got here? Because actually in art and tech, it becomes inevitable that when I'm talking to folks these days, whether I'm talking about AI, whether I'm talking about Blockchain, that's like, well, we can talk ourselves into the blue about all the possibilities of these things and what people are going to do, but we're also talking about systems that support the same sorts of folks to run these systems. And so until we're willing to really break that down and think about what's at the bottom of that, and then how we start to address not only, okay, Blockchain is going to give us all these opportunities to do these things, but this is how we're going to renegotiate the basic contract, then we're just kind of throwing money at the same problem in different guises.
And so for me, it's like, well, yes, funding art and tech is great. I think it's good. And I think we're thinking about it, and the technology is definitely forming the world. So then how do we start to dig deep into the legacies of those technologies and what they stand upon both socially, not only economically at this moment, but those deeper economic issues, education issues, the ways that we see each other issues so that we can actually do something.
I always feel like we're in this, there's an episode of Star Trek where they're stuck in a loop, and they keep trying to leave themselves little tips about what to do next time. And it's like, well, how do we get back to, we need to spin it back, back, back, back, back to the super long ago tip and act on it. Because nothing, none of the thinking about it works without acting on it.
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's right.
Stephanie Dinkins:
And act on it. And the other thing I think about is slow work.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Okay. Yeah. For sure.
Stephanie Dinkins:
So instead of going, oh, this is the thing, and we have to get here now, which often gets us into the place where we're putting fingers in dykes. And we've got 50 people standing with their fingers in the dyke, but everything still is crumbling around them. And at least this oscillation between fast work and slower work, where it's a longer term, longer considered way of approaching a problem. Which is again, okay funders, if you're funding, how do you support someone so that they can actually do long work?
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's right.
Stephanie Dinkins:
That becomes a really interesting question to me as well.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Well, I would love to hold that question for our listeners to think about today, and I appreciate all of the thoughts that you shared and the way that you really kind of unpacked what is happening broadly in the world within systems. And then specifically the really strong impact that arts and technology has on the world and not in one particular way, in so many different ways that funders can get involved with. So thank you so much, Stephanie, for that.
Stephanie Dinkins:
You're welcome, Sherylynn. This has been fun.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Oh, I'm so glad. So for our listeners, if you have any questions about this podcast or any of our upcoming podcasts as part of this series or any other programming, you can feel free to reach out to me at sherylynn@giarts.org or visit our website, giarts.org. Be sure to follow Grantmakers in the Arts on Twitter and Facebook at GI Arts, as well as Instagram at Grantmakers in the Arts for exciting new updates. And thank you so much for listening.
