Galactic Alkhemist

I’m in Stockholm this week at the Royal Institute of Art, sharing counter-cartographic methodology with the Reconstructions cohort and I genuinely can’t believe this is my life.

Independent scholarship builds its own doors. Grateful this one opened across the Atlantic.

The keynote, “Maps Are Arguments: Reading Power in the Landscapes We Inherit,” asks what it means to read a map critically — how colonial spatial narratives have shaped what we believe is possible, who belongs where, and what territory we’re allowed to claim. Counter-cartography is the practice of refusing those inherited coordinates and drawing new ones.

The workshop, “Mercury Lines and Sites of Reconstruction,” brings astrocartography into that conversation. Mercury governs communication, language, and how we process information. Its lines on your map reveal where those capacities intensify. And for a cohort built around reimagining spatial practice, mapping where our voices and our thinking land most powerfully felt like exactly the right entry point.

Both sessions are part of Reconstructions II, a year-long post-master’s course at the Royal Institute of Art centered on Black feminist spatial practice.

Being invited into this room means a lot to me.