What You Should Know About This Newsletter
Seeda School is a skill building platform for learning how to worldbuild through a black feminist lens.
Seeda is a non-binary biotechnologist from Cykofa, a parallel universe suspended among past and future — where cornrows are cryptography keys, data farms are data forests, the weaving loom is a computer, a cloth is a document, and chain link fencing from demolished prisons are used as architectural membrane woven with plant life. In Cykofa the trees have learned to speak using the data Cykofians have encoded in the tree’s DNA and tree ring memory. Named after a timeless ancestor Seeda School is a generative site of transdisciplinary possibility and practice inspired by the world of Cykofa.
This newsletter is a research container for the practice of Cykofa Narration as an experimental collective authorship methodology. Remembering that we can store data into the DNA of plants and read information from a tree's rings through dendrochronology, I developed Cykofa Narration as an anti-authorship aesthetic. Cykofa Narration is a storytelling technology/methodology that relies on ecosystems reverence, collective voice, re-appropriation, and computer collaboration. Through foraging seed data related to black feminist ecologies, biotechnology, poetry, abolition, southern self taught art and more—YouTube transcripts, lyrics, stolen academic PDFs, website text, poems, journalism articles, spells, etc.—are blended into a non-linear, choral hymn and Cykofa Narration emerges. I have written a JavaScript program that splits paragraphs at punctuation marks such as periods and randomly recombines the paragraphs using a shuffling algorithm, resulting in Cykofa Narration and a woven world on the page.
This newsletter is also a fundraising experiment for Seeda School’s seed fund. I am most inspired by the projects funded by thousands of people making small contributions instead of a small amount of people making contributions in the thousands. We are experimenting with using Substack and the decades old technologies of writing and email as vehicles for grassroots funding of liberatory pedagogy and praxis. The current goal of the seed fund is to convene 1,000 paid subscribers around the Seeda School vision. By becoming a $5/month paid subscriber you are:
Funding my research and writing practice.
Funding the zine practice of Seeda Press, an independent publishing platform for black feminist technologists.
Resourcing the transformation of a free standing garage on my family’s land in Dawn, VA into the first Seeda Schoolhouse, a laboratory for transdisciplinary world visioning and building.
This newsletter is for folks who believe another world is possible and want to journey there together. This newsletter is not for folks invested in maintaining the status quo of white supremacist ways of learning, working, and being.
The Seeda School Seed Fund powered by paid Substack subscribers establishes a collective investment resourcing the transformation of a free standing garage (pictured above) into the first Seeda Schoolhouse on land that has held four generations of my family in Dawn, VA.
Levels of Subscription
This newsletter is free to read but becoming a paid subscriber contributes to the ease and sustainability of this newsletter, Seeda School, and my writing practice. Below are some considerations to help you navigate choosing a subscription plan.
Consider $5/month
If you can afford to support the writing and research practice of a queer, Black feminist artist.
If you would like to support my journey in finding softness in technology and help financially hold the intimate space of the Soft, Where? podcast with me.
If you're curious about learning code through collective imagination & care and want to resource the first Seeda Schoolhouse.
Consider $100/year
If you are class privileged and can afford to pay a year subscription for my work. Thank you for your commitment and care!
Consider A Free Subscription
If you identify as black and would like to receive my newsletter.
I appreciate your consideration as I navigate ways to share my work, be of service, and stay curious while carefully tending to my material and health needs. If you’re unable to become a paid subscriber at this time, please consider contributing by sharing each newsletter widely. I am so grateful for this playspace to practice my writing, visioning, and worlding. Your witnessing and sharing deepens the love in all directions. Thank you.
About Ayana
Ayana Zaire Cotton (she/they) is a queer, Black feminist, anti-disciplinary artist and cultural worker from Prince George’s County, Maryland. They are currently based in Dawn, Virginia — tucked in between the ancestral lands of the Mattaponi and Youghtanund — answering the call to steward land that has been in their family for four generations. Braiding code, performance, and craft Ayana speculates and worldbuilds alongside science and technology.
Sankofa is a word and symbol of the Akan Twi and Fante languages of Ghana which translates to, "go back and get". Centering a sankofa sensibility, they build databases as vessels holding seed data and experiment with shuffling algorithms to spin non-linear narratives. Ayana calls this methodology “Cykofa Narration”, generating new worlds using the digital and social detritus of our existing world — resulting in a storytelling form that embodies circular time and troubles human authorship. Through engaging with language, technology, and ecology, Ayana is cultivating a practice of remembering and imagining alternative modes of being and interspecies belonging.
Permission to Share
Please feel free to share this newsletter or snippets of my writing on social media, in your group chat, with a friend, or with a river. I only ask that you cite my name and/or newsletter subscription link alongside the share. Sharing helps support the work by expanding the audience of folks who might become collaborators, fellow speculation practitioners, or paid subscribers.
