 Hello and welcome to Discovery, conversations about the power of the arts to connect us to each other and to place. I'm Coven Smith, Senior Director of Arts at the Knight Foundation. For today's conversation, we'll be unpacking the ethics of for-profit technology when used within arts organizations. Joining me today is the legendary Adriel Lewis. Adriel is a community organizer, artist, writer and curator who believes that collective liberation can happen in poetic ways. His life's work is focused on the mutual thriving or artistic integrity and social vigilance. As a self-professed lover of the internet, his work traces a straight line from customizing his AOL profile with Jodesy lyrics all the way through to his appointment as the first digital curator at the Smithsonian. And Adriel is the curator of digital and practice at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, where he advocates for equitable practices in museums and institutions. His ancestors are rooted in Toisan China and migrated through to Hong Kong, Mexico and the United States, and he was born on Ohlone Land. We want you to be active participants in the conversation, so if you have questions, please submit them throughout the show via Twitter using the hashtag Knight Live and in the comments section of the live stream. We will try to get to as many of them as we can throughout the conversation. Adriel, welcome to discovery. Thank you so much for being here. What's up, Kovan? So good to see you. It's so good to see you too. I know, I know. Well, let's just, I think, start with some background and kind of how you got to where to us being here talking right now. So you had already been an active participant in the internet for years before you became a curator at APAC, and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about maybe how your relationship to the internet and with the internet has changed over the years. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thank you, Kovan, for having me and Knight Foundation and hello everybody tuning in from the different channels and platforms. So I'm currently living out here in Sangna, which is Tongva, Gabriellino, Kish, and Chumash land. And out here, so one of the shows that I've been loving during this pandemic is called City of Ghosts, and it goes through different parts of Los Angeles, which is what we call it out here these days, and really talks about the deep history. And there's one that focuses on Tongva history. And one of the things that really spoke to me that I recognized in that, you know, as I've been learning about the history of LA after living here for a little bit over a year is this notion of interconnectedness, this idea that life permeates through everything around us, not just sort of the sentient beings, the plants and the animals, but also the minerals, the waterways, you know, it's really this networked existence. And I think one of the reasons why the internet has always spoken to me has been for those same reasons of feeling like there's life out there, even when I'm alone. And I know that specifically during this pandemic time, that's been something that's been a challenge for a lot of us, but has also been really life giving. You know, I came online back when I was really young. My dad's a computer engineer. And so I grew up in the Bay Area, kind of that Silicon Valley sort of life with a PC in my living room. Ever since I was a kid, back before the internet was all the glory that it is today, I remember checking my email on Juno, where it would like log in, grab your email, and then log you off because, you know, otherwise it's too expensive. You can't, you can't, you know, luxuriate while reading your email while being online, right? And so then when I was able to actually get on AOL and, you know, I think first it was like Prodigy and then AOL and then getting into internet forums like Tripod GeoCities, the blog rings, and then onto social media like Asian Avenue and, you know, Zanga LiveJournal and then Friendster and then eventually The Big Dogs, you know, like what's really strung me along the entire time has been this idea that a community can be built. And I think especially for someone growing up where I didn't quite feel like I fit in exactly in all the right ways in school, the internet was really this alternative platform for me. Well, and that's so interesting. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, you know, do you feel that your sense of interconnectedness has changed as the, you know, the nature of the, you know, the sort of structure of the internet and has come to be dominated by a handful of, you know, major players? Like has that sort of changed your your thinking on it? You know, as I'll stop there. Yeah. I mean, I think I think that the the the sort of reflex is especially for, you know, my personality, you know, the reflex is to be like, oh, now everyone's in the pool, you know, the water was so nice before, you know, like I think one of the reasons why I love the internet was because and is continues to be because of just, you know, the nuance that you can find, you know, like one of my favorite things to do in high school was find underground hip-hop artists, you know, like on websites where they were playing, you know, where you could find music that that they weren't playing on the radio, right? And then and then eventually Napster really sort of brought brought to realization how much I love that. And I think that that today in curating work and finding artists that, you know, people en masse haven't heard of yet and kind of, you know, like sharing that with the world is is really what I've loved. I always viewed it as a hobby. I think that as the internet began to dominate our attention and become the primary way where so many of us find our information, it really made me kind of double down on finding that nuance. And at the same time helped me realize that I had, I mean, I don't really like using the word expertise necessarily, but definitely there's like a level of just sort of experience, you know, like in and seeing the growth of the internet, really actually seeing the internet sort of come into its, you know, become an institution. I feel like when I first logged on, you know, like in the late nineties, I don't think any of us would have referred to the internet as an institution, you know, it was just kind of like this weird thing that, you know, the nerd would go on and but but now there is a lot of potential for leadership for those of us who have experienced the internet in really intimate ways and have existed on it, you know, as users, as webmasters, as social media coordinators, you know, these are all different hats that we wear on the same platform that provide the sort of breadth that I think for folks who maybe have always viewed themselves as passive internet users, maybe maybe haven't haven't, you know, really identified with that with that leadership role the way that that I have. And I know that you have as welcome. Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's this interesting moment that we're in where, you know, in a certain sense, these larger platforms have in a strange way, you know, fulfilled this notion of, oh, we can all creators and we can all be participants. And yet there's something about the present moment that even with full realization of that, that still feels strangely passive. And, you know, I know we'll get into this a little bit later and, you know, about sort of the ways in which these platforms sort of, you know, railroad us into certain ethical directions and not in others. But I think it is an interesting moment, especially, you know, for both of us transitioning from it being a hobby to, you know, effectively being our livelihoods for, you know, one way or another. But so to, you know, just to follow on that, I want to talk a little bit about the paper that you presented yesterday. So yesterday you presented at the Collective Liberation Conference, which is an equity coalition convening facilitated by, I'm going to read this because I don't want to miss any of these names, but facilitated by museums and race, mass action, museum workers speak, dust to museums, the inclusive museums are not neutrally empathetic museum and visitors of color and the paper bigger than the internet. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and just sort of what the response was to it yesterday when you presented. Yeah, sure. So, you know, we're turning on June 3rd. So this dropped on June 2nd for those tuning in later on. And bigger than the internet is what do you call it like a like an internet essay? It's a blog post, a research paper, a bunch of personal entries, journal entries. I mean, one of the things I love about the internet is the fact that these genres just sort of melt away. I originally wrote it when I was invited to publish something for the Journal of Museum Education. And as I began writing it, I just I started doing a deep dive into sort of like memory lane of, you know, the internet and my life around it, you know, like I played with Mario teaches typing, which you can still find as like a widget online. And then also was reading a lot of like early internet, like e-journals and things like that. And so that really and then also reading a lot of decolonial texts, like Linda to Hewai Smith and decolonizing methodologies, Lana Lopez's, you know, false divides, these works that really blend personal narrative with research. And so I wanted to write it in that way as an homage to them and also as an homage to my life on the internet. And the reason why those two come together is because this paper is about, you know, really how do we how do we claim agency over our use of the internet and and our ability to use the internet, particularly if we're working with or from cultural institutions. I wanted to go all the way back to the beginning of how and why museums were founded, which, you know, there's no denying the colonial history of museums when they're initially established, especially in parts of the global south and in the non Western world. And then also the beginnings of the internet, which is very much around this idea of collective liberation and free exchange of knowledge. In a lot of ways, you know, the polar opposite of how museums were initially established sort of as these like mouthpieces for empire. And so this paper really sort of meets us where we are today, where the internet and the museum and museums are intertwined so much of how museums reach people even prior to the pandemic was via the internet. But also the internet is such a different place than it was, you know, like in the era that that, you know, we were just talking about COVID. And so, you know, now with museums talking about the colonization about, you know, DEI diversity, equity inclusion, all these kind of like flashy new sort of synonyms of like, diversity, right? Like how do we how do we really own that in a way where we don't just let it get watered down the way that terms like diversity and tolerance and and terms that were very radical when they first came out the gate, you know, like how do we make sure that a term like the colonization, for example, which means something very specific and something very direct doesn't get, you know, coopted, whether that be on purpose or not, you know, through kind of vague interpretations in ways that are still conducive to museums and institutions continuing forward kind of claiming inclusion, but not really changing their ways. And the main the main thing that this paper focuses on is the use of online platforms by way of museums and and just calling attention to what we're doing when we when we are asking people in our community or our visitors to spend that extra five, 10, 30 seconds on Facebook, knowing that it's actively gathering data, actively surveilling people and actively sending it to marketers, governments and shady characters, right? So just just really paying deep attention to the fact that we are doing that, we are implicated in that it's tied to a deep history of colonization. So what do we do moving forward? So do you see that as as a sort of fundamental tension in in the sense that museums being museums, there's a tendency to want to sort of institutionalize processes like decolonization and say sort of, well, we have a department that that handles that. And we are NAG pro compliant and etc, etc, etc. And therefore, you know, oh, and we haven't collected anything. All of our work is 20th century work. And therefore, you know, this is not even a thing that we have to address. But I think what you're talking about that's so fascinating is this idea of decolonization as a practice that really filters down across departments and across, you know, personnel, but then really thinking about how it manifests in other ways that we are are potentially subjecting our visitors to more modern colonial processes. Did you say that's that's fair? Yeah, yeah, I mean, so for example, I quote, the scholar Jolid Seed Pihama, who talks about how decolonization isn't just recognizing that colonization has existed and being like admitting that that was bad, right? It also means unraveling current existing structures, right? And so for example, you know, and another sort of hot term that's kind of come up, shout out to Adrian Marie Brown is emergent strategy. And we're seeing institutions and big machines start adopting terms like that as well. So when we think about emergent strategy, but then it's being represented through these very traditional looking Venn diagrams and charts and people, you know, are talking about, you know, let's, yeah, let's, let's focus on decolonization, but make sure that we still retain the same metrics of success around getting as many hits as possible and scaling up and, you know, like getting visitor eyes or all these things that really are also coming from colonial roots, you know, then, then, you know, we have to stop and ask ourselves, where is the decolonization? Are we just kind of saying that? Well, now we have, you know, more Twitter handles in our chat that represent people of color. So therefore, now we've decolonized, therefore, now we've diversified, or are we really ingesting and processing and recognizing the interconnectedness and really the benefits of diversifying, which is not just seeing, you know, like a different range of faces, but really also hearing the, the different ways of knowing and the different experiences and, and also the different visions and, and frameworks of going about things, different ways of understanding what success is and, and isn't. Well, and actually that's related to a question that came to us from the audience, if you don't mind, I'll ask that, which is, you know, he says, now that museums have shown interest in decolonization, do you think they can stop relying on the internet and instead pursue that avenue in a way that creates fewer ethical dilemmas? That's a, that's a good question. I mean, that, that framing of like relying on the internet, you know, because I mean, like, is that, is that even a possible thing? I guess we rely on the internet no matter what, you know, like, if you want to, you know, even if you want to go cash only, you know, like at some point you've got to pull, pull it at the ATM, you know, I guess, or buy, you know, buy the mattress on Casper.com so that you can hide your cash underneath it. I don't know, like so much of our lives rely on the internet. And so, you know, but I guess like maybe one of the sort of baseline questions and, you know, going back to your question of how this paper was received yesterday, you know, collective liberation is, you know, in a very kind of like, in the fashion of how I love the internet, it's sort of like a collective of different groups of people that aren't even necessarily organizations, you know, some of them are, some of them are nonprofit organizations, but some of them are collectives that are formed through affinity, you know, they're affinity groups, but they came together to basically provide an alternative convening to the American Alliance of Museums Conference, which is sort of the more formal museum gathering that's happening this month. And so when one of the things that we were kind of just thinking through, and one of the things I propose in the paper is not necessarily like take your museum or your institution off of Facebook or Twitter, but at least dare to imagine, you know, what it would be like, like take a staff meeting and think through that, you know, and feel it, you know, like feel how that feels, you know, like it may, you know, and if, and if part of the conversation is like, oh, well, we can't do that, then even that is useful knowledge. It's like, we really can't do that, you know, and so I think I would say that as opposed to thinking in such a broad stroke as like to stop relying on the internet, think about maybe what are, what are the plugs in the internet that you personally or organizationally are involved in that you don't feel all the way great about, right? When I talk to people, for example, about, you know, like, you know, oh, I'm thinking about getting on Facebook, right? And then usually the response is like, well, I can't do that because, you know, I talked to my family through this, or I can't do that because there's this incredible Facebook group where I get a lot of stuff out of it, right? Like, there are these curatorial forums that I was getting a lot out of, but that I decided weren't worth me being on Facebook when I got off of Facebook a couple of years ago. And it wasn't that I felt like, you know, those forums weren't good enough. It was just that, you know, at a certain point, I also recognize that like, the longer I'm on these platforms and the more content that I'm sort of like helping regurgitate through Facebook, I might end up being that one person or one of the part of that handful of people that someone else stays on Facebook for, you know, like, I would, at this point, I don't want to be the person, you know, where someone's like, well, I would get off of Facebook, but I just love Adriel's posts. So I'm just going to stay on this platform and let them keep on guiding my information. I'd feel terrible about that, right? And so same thing with your organization and your institution, you know, like as a collective, all of us together are staying on these platforms. And then so there are people out there who'd be like, well, I just I just love the Smithsonian's content. So I'm going to stay on this platform, right? And and that's that's great if we're all about that platform. But if we're not, you know, let's have a conversation about it. And if we don't know, because we haven't talked about it, because it might be considered political, then let's think about the fact that we've now considered addressing privacy issues on Facebook as a quote political issue that is now in the same realm as like talking about, you know, presidential campaigns and things that that that I know a lot of us nonprofits actually can't take a position on, you know, like this this question of neutrality that, you know, Latanya Autry and Mike Morosky talks about, you know, and institutions that claim to be neutral, oftentimes we get this this word politics confused, right? I do think that for an institution like the Smithsonian, which is connected with the government, it's important for us to not sort of prescribe opinions about certain politics, right? But when it comes to us, you know, the internet, which is described as a town square, and, and Facebook and Google, which are described as public resources, if they aren't serving our public, or if they're harming our public, then as as institutions of knowledge and understanding of how we go about the world and the universe, I think it's critically important for us to have direct and candid conversations about them, as opposed to just kind of like, going along for the ride, and you know, like, Oh, Cambridge Analytica happened, but you know, it's a National Cheese Day, so we'll just like post about that instead, you know. Well, so I mean, to that point, I think, you know, and your paper gets into this a little bit, but I wonder if some of the issue here, and especially in terms of museums trying to negotiate what their relationships with these platforms might look like, or arts organizations in general, is that, you know, that negotiation has largely taken place on the level of kind of functionality, which is, you know, like, does this platform do what I need it to do? Does it format image captions the way I like? And therefore, I'm going to turn a blind eye. I'm not, I'm just going to sort of not even think about what other things that platform may do that I don't want to know about. And in your paper, you talked about sort of negotiating that relationship more on an ethical level, which is, you know, I feel like, is an important stepping stone for a lot of institutions that really still, you know, are often coming to these platforms more from a place of, you know, quite frankly, guilt than anything else. Well, everybody else is on this platform, you know, all these, the Smithsonian is on Facebook, so probably we should be too, right, you know, and as opposed to sort of negotiating that at a more, at a deeper level. Yeah, I mean, you know, the Smithsonian and so many institutions, not just museums either, you know, like any, you know, and now it can get even more confusing because like, you know, even brands, you know, like are sort of taking on the mantle of being like, well, we're also about, you know, you know, we're also public servants, you know, like Nabisco is a public servant and stands for diversity, right. And so it's like, okay, you know, if you don't claim that, then, you know, in some ways, you're a bit off the hook, you know, but but so many institutions, so many corporations have now claimed to be for community. So as someone who came up in community, and whose life work is about community, my question would be, well, show me your receipts, right, is the same thing as like if I started claiming to be in environmental justice advocate, you know, because I started recycling, right, then there's, you know, rightfully, there's going to be people who have been doing the work for a long time who are asking, well, what are your qualifications, you know, and so I think that when it comes to these institutions, we have to recognize that, you know, the public who does take seriously the fact that we are for community isn't just looking at us based on what we're saying, but how we're seeing it, not just what we're doing, but how we're doing it. And when it comes to a museum, for example, it's not just what we're putting up in our exhibitions, but how do these exhibitions come about, you know, and I think that that's something that, you know, people are asking more and more these days, especially because institutions are claiming to be for community. And so it's like, well, you know, if we have these things in our display cases, let's also have an understanding of how these came about. And then same thing, you know, like in the future, when we look back and look at all this content that we've posted on these platforms, you know, part of it will be the provenance, you know, how did these eyes land on this post, you know, who was harmed, what was taken, what was the cost, right? In my paper, I talk about the Wilkes expedition in the mid 1800s, which is the expedition where the beginning of the Smithsonian collection, you know, what was procured, right? All throughout the Pacific, you know, some through very peaceful ways and some through very not, you know, there's a point where I talk about how Wilkes was going through collecting seabirds, which are still in the anthropological archives or I'm sorry, in the birds archives. And he just went around smacking them in the head and, you know, and then just taking the bodies back, right? And so, you know, it sounds like, well, yeah, we would never approve of that now. But, you know, that sort of extractive method, you know, at the time, he was just like, you know, I'm out to get information. This is how I get it, right? And so I think now, you know, it's the same thing when we're looking at Facebook, Twitter, you know, these other platforms where it's like, our job is to get the message out to the public. And here's the tools. So here's how we're going to do it, right? And if we don't actually ask about the cost, right? It's quite similar to sort of that method of phishing, where you're just kind of like, you just take some claws and a net, and you just scrape the ocean floor, and then you pluck out all the things that you want from it, and then you don't care about the rest of it, right? Like, there's so many similarities between that sort of method of data and information extraction and what's happening on the internet. Well, Adriel, as usual, I would love to keep talking for about four more hours. And we have about two minutes left, and many questions from the audience. Can's the worms. So questions from the audience, we'll try and get through as many of these as we can. But do you think the internet's nature of moving through trends quickly is contributing to the watering down of these important issues? Or do you think this was a problem before the internet came around? No, that's a good question. No, I think that internet has sort of coaxed institutions to think rapidly for better or worse. There's a lot of good, for example, the Smithsonian has begun making statements in direct response to things happening in society. For example, I worked with my team at the Asian Pacific American Center on a response to the Atlanta shootings. There is a response to police violence against Black folks in the US. I think it's important for institutions to be able to respond quickly as opposed to be like, well, I'll just wait this through for seven years and then sort of post a retrospective exhibition on it. But at the same time, I think that it's important to recognize what institutions are here for. Institutions are here to respond mindfully. And that doesn't always mean that it has to happen slowly, but it does mean that it has to happen mindfully and thoughtfully. And so if the goal is to respond quickly but also thoughtfully, then I think that that's a practice, it's a skill that requires honing. And those of us who have been publishing on the internet, whether it's been blogs or tweets or whatever, a lot of us have practiced that. We've all tweeted something way too fast and then recognized that maybe that wasn't the best thing. And I think one of the ways that institutions can take a step towards recognizing that is by treating the people who run their social media accounts with the stakes that they deserve. If you treat social media as an entry level position, then you're not necessarily getting the expertise of somebody who has been through the trial and error, has felt the pain and the triumph of tweeting the right or wrong thing. I think that those are all important things for institutions to be able to process. At the end of the day, what makes institutions different from startup companies is that we're supposed to last. The Long Now Foundation, they describe institutions, the value of institutions as these entities that have a longer lifespan than the average human being. There's a level of wisdom that we have access to as the Smithsonian, for example, being around for 175 years. No one's lived that long but there's a memory that exists in this institution that doesn't exist with Google, it doesn't exist with Facebook. And so as opposed to trying to feel like we've got to jump into the same hot tub as all these startups because they're the ones who are getting all the followers on their own platforms, we can also recognize the long view that we have and really wield that. I think right now, one of the best things we can do for the public is one of the things that's really missing in a lot of the dialogues that we're having. Well, Adriel, sadly, we're going to have to end there, but that seems like a wonderful place to end. I strongly encourage those who are tuning in to read Adriel's paper. It's posted in the show notes. It's called Bigger Than the Internet. It's maybe one of the best things I've read about museums in many years. It's wonderful, it's a great read. You'll love it. That means a lot. It's at night. And so now I'll post a parental advisory version. So Adriel, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you coming down and talking to us and everyone here. And special thanks here to the production crew. And just as we're wrapping up here, I'll say, by Adriel, and then I'll do my wrap up here. But the beats at the top of our show were curated by a former night colleague, Chris Barr, and the music that will play us out is composed and performed by the amazing Akron Jazz pianist Theron Brown. Tune in next week on Night Live for a conversation between Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at the Pew Research Center and John Sands, director for Learning and Impact at the Knight Foundation for a Conversation on Public Opinion and Media Research in the Digital Age on the Future of Democracy, the Knight Foundation show about trends, ideas, and disruptions changing the face of our democracy. Thanks everyone. See you next time.