STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

What is this?

“the working time capsule of ismatu gwendolyn” is an online project of private/public archival. A traditional time capsule uses a sealed vessel that participants place keepsakes, mementos, and other items that represent or symbolize aspects of life that are not likely to stay the same in the future.

I (ismatu) created this cyber time capsule to have a “vessel" to keep what is important to me about my life, specific to the process of radicalizing, which cannot be shared via social media or are simply not safe enough to acknowledge in “real-time” public canon, yet remain fundamental parts of my story and character anyhow.

Why is it $200?

Having a space to share these things where I know the barrier for entry is high enough such that only people who care significantly for my safety will participate creates enough privacy to yield authenticity from me. Simultaneously, the presence of an audience also creates the desire within me to perform; if I didn't have people witnessing me as I go about this, a "digital time capsule" would be no different than the journals I keep.

Additionally, the price is designed to burden only those that can afford it with my personal needs for my life. People in the lower working class consistently show up; we feel the $10 or $1.79 transaction fee (or what have you) so much so that someone like me (a digital panhandler) is consistently received abundantly. I want to trigger others who might be in the position of class traitor to participate in my online projects the same way someone with $1500/month might really feel a $10 donation.

A digital archive also allows me to preserve digital media that is (1) untouched by AI and their sourcing machines and (2) updating as I navigate privacy concerns with "high-tech." 

Emphasis on the working:

The presence of the word "working" also indicates that the contents of the time capsule are up for change, updates, deletion and addition. Physical time capsules are ultimate; once they're sealed, they're sealed. They get buried underground, to be forgotten about until someone digs them up. Here, I have the space to have more of a malleable nature in what I choose to share, taking advantage of the non-linear nature of online time and spcae. Things can go in and out of the "capsule" all the time, yet the audience present will remember what was up and what comes down. In this way, participants are also a part of the capsule, as your working memory (and your comments, should you choose to leave them) will help define the cultural memory* attached to the space. Once the time capsule is made public in 2028, the

For more thoughts on the revolutionary importance of working memory, please check the page entitled “The Case for Cultural Memory."

Primary Uses:

To create a sense of fun for the author, ismatu gwendolyn.

Because the Teacher Suit is the only way most of my audience is able to engage with me, I feel a sense of dread when creating, critiquing, and ultimately continuing the @ismatu.gwendolyn character. Students depend on their teachers for far more than learning: the emotions, logistics and planning, affect, and performance of the teacher all dictate a student's ability to learn from them. I, then, become trapped in a performance that requires palatability and routine pretty much all of the time. There is no fun in the internet to be had anymore in that case, only metrics and fundraisers and output. My artistry is subject to the machine of marketing, capital, and numbers, just like the other artists around me. I find that I need a more creative outlet in order to keep going. 

To embrace the fullness of growth

I want to embrace the parts of my learning, growing, and ideating that are unique to my situation and not evergreen bits of knowledge I can impart unto everyone. And I want to have a space to have media that isn't brand safe to the @ismatu.gwendolyn character. I love Bridgerton because I too am subject to the "wealthy African marriage market," there are balls and I do have a mother dead set on marrying off all her kids into love marriages. And much of my audience will boooooo if I talk about my life in this manner; it rubs up against the "every man's revolutionary" cultural myth I am subject to and participate in. As the world becomes more dire, my ability in public to not take myself (or the world around me) so seriously evaporates. Because of my public positioning, it's assumed that I have no thoughts outside of what gets the masses closer to revolution. People think I eat, sleep, and sweat liberation because that's the narrative we want to be true; I’ve seen the same thing happen to cultural and political leaders before me. The box that hyper-visibility creates feels inevitable. I want private spaces to giggle and reminisce about the fleeting nature of Western comforts + dreams from my early twenties, because I am (in addition to being a public and historical figure... just some guy.

Space to share media

I also want space to share film pictures I take of my life; that's likely what I would be posting on instagram if I had an instagram presence that was normative of a twenty-seven year old US-American who can afford to develop film. Word to Richard Wright and Malcolm X, who photographed as a means to narrative shape. I'm doing the same.

Secondary Benefits:

Class Traitor Alliance

In concentrating well-resourced individuals from across the world, we have the opportunity to help one another where we see fit. How helpful we can be depends on the people in their space and their desire to participate in something... but from what I experience from interacting with my online constituents, the desire to do more than passive consumption is definitely there.

As I wrote above, many great revolutionaries (T. Sankara, E. Guevara, A. Cabral, C. Cummings-John for starters) were class traitors, either because they were born into comfort and security or they achieved it over time through the oppressive systems they had at hand. I too qualify as a class traitor: I class-climbed, socially and economically, through higher academia in the United States and through the Beauty market in becoming a sex worker throughout graduate school. Either way, we must contend with who and what we become when we have revolutionary desires and politics that stem from ideology and discomfort from the systems at hand rather than revolutionary desires because the systems at hand are choking us. What do we owe ourselves and each other and how do we concentrate power to assume risk in strategic fashions (rather than throwing money at decentralized gofundme's)?

Mutual Aid is Mutual!

I do still plan to teach where I find it fun and helpful. I am not marketing this as a "mutual aid" network because the paying audience member system is really one to one, and I don't want people to expect more than that. However, as I continue to write out my revolutionary theories about the possibilities to be found in class traitorship, I do hope (and expect) to be useful to a class of people that have $200/month to throw in. When learning about political frameworks that depart from the capitalistic world default online, people can house frustration and anger for people (perceived as) rich, resourced, or better off than people starving. Personally, I think this is mostly because billionaires are not perceptible at all, so then “The Rich" becomes those we can SEE: people that never has to worry about food and housing and can afford a mortgage, rather than the mostly invisible capitalist class, like Blackrock executives who invent new systems of turning land into property with increased speed. If you work for a living, you are working class (period). The vitriol folks tend to have towards people with any disposable income (how ever justifiable) creates hostile learning environments as to where we might be able to concentrate our capital well... as there is no earnings standard for what is "enough" and what is "too much.” In the same way someone with $1500/month to live would really feel a $10 donation, I would argue that most US-Americans don't consider $10 a month to be true 'disposable’ income (as it’s not very much buying power at all), yet it very much is on the worldwide scale. In Sierra Leone, I am automatically in the class traitor position because I earn US Dollar bills. That’s the case for most of the world, as the majority of the world’s populace lives in a country strangled by the chokehold of the original arbiters and distributors of colonization (the British and the American empires).

Also, can I quote you? "If I am a class traitor, then I am happy to be doing something good with it." bars.

I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease. 

ig

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