Hey, Do You Want to Make a Robot?

In this workshop we will make toothbrush robots, a key activity in our strategy of “showing up.” For nearly two years, we have
been showing up weekly in Leimert Park, a historically Black neighborhood in Los Angeles. Collaborating with Ben Caldwell,
who has run Kaos Network there for 38 years, our focus is on presence, building trust, and responding to possibilities as they
present themselves. Recognizing that technology is too often used to surveil and incarcerate Black and Brown people, this
work aims to invest instead in technologies of Black abundance. When we call out “Hey, do you want to make a robot?” Our
invitation is for passers-by and community members to explore their own ability to meaningfully craft technology that
supports their own flourishing in the face of gentrification, the carceral state, and white supremacy.
Our approach to “showing up” draws from and is responsible to Black and Indigenous method and theory, radical Black
feminism, Afrofuturism. Showing up, for us, is a strategy of community involvement that is sustained, long-term, and nonextractive,
and deeply relational. It makes no promises of problem solving or making change. Proceeding slowly, taking our
cues from those who choose to sit with us, and from Ben,we have built bridges to the Los Angeles Public Library Octavia Lab;
installed interactive afrofuturist spaces in conjunction with the Pan African Film Festival; joined in community organizing and
performance events.