About
The name Cosmologyscape weaves together cosmos, the interconnectedness of all things, and landscape, the terrain we inhabit and observe. Through this worldview that is both spiritual and grounded, artists Alisha B Wormsley and Kite have co-created the cosmologyscape methodology to offer space for communal dreaming and the development of tools that move across time, worlds, and possibilities.
Emerging from gatherings organized by the artists in 2020 with Black and Indigenous communities to dream and heal collectively, the participatory process includes retreats and workshops for dreamers to reflect on the structure and development of individual and communal dream practices and ancestral traditions; the Cosmologyscape website which invites contributions of individual dreams to be translated into digital quilt squares using symbolic systems informed by Lakȟóta philosophy, Afrofuturism, and Black quilting traditions; and multidisciplinary artworks, including mosaics, textiles, digital animation, furniture and sound, that build upon these symbolic systems and utilize computational methods to design spaces of rest and collective imagination.
Cosmologyscape is grounded in ethical technological protocols that seek to preserve good relationships to communities, land, water, air, and future generations. Free, prior, and informed consent is foundational to the artists’ data governance plan. Utilizing dreamers’ data with intention, the artists gather, clean, manage, and destroys their information, working against data harvesting that can potentially harm communities through surveillance and environmental impact. Dreamers receive in return restorative offerings in the form of an herbal and tea recipes that address their dreams and dreaming practice. Cosmologyscape continues to evolve across digital and physical realms to explore the power of dream work, acknowledging that the right to rest, dream, and share knowledge is unevenly shaped and conditioned by race, class, place, and circumstance.
