My Great Grandmother, Betty
Hi, I’m Branden. Today is
I spent a little over ten years leading a kind of personal & collective creative network called The Young Never Sleep.
The studio and the people I’ve been able to connect with and create through it have shaped so much of who I am becoming.
Just like you, I’m continuously evolving. Let this be a testament to the beauty of life, which we should all cherish with a deep gratitude for the Earth
The only home we’ve ever known.
Thanks to every single person who has made this world so wonderful for me.
Most of all, this is for you.
After spending two years in the Bay area (both SF and Oakland) working freelance gigs for Dolby, Facebook, Medium, Impossible Foods, Larissa Hadjio and more, I moved to LA for a new lead creative role at Snap. Inc. I worked at Snap for 4 years in their R&D department, Snap Lab, supporting the engineers, developers, and researchers with creative across all touchpoints of the business. It gave me a great deal of insight into the trending direction of the Tech sector and a deeper understanding of the infrastructure needed to build and successfuly launch a tech product. The experienced opened a whole new dimension (quite literally) of creative possibility. Introducing ME to augmented reality? lol. Anyway, it lead me to think more critically about how ubiquitious technology is in our lives and also the power($) that tech companies wield because of this. So naturally, I wanted to dig deeper. And I did! Now I’m continuing all of this work, bit by bit. It’s important to me to deliver as much of this information, to share knowledge for the benefit of people who need it most. All of these new endeavors exist on much longer timescales and require much more investment to be realized. So I’m using time as my primary resource. I’m exploring as much of the action space of this work as possible, developing many different paths all at once.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I don’t have quite the sharpest memory. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to do too many things at once, or because I have too many passwords to keep up with, but it’s probably something simple like not getting enough sleep lol. Some of the memories that do stay with me though, are thsoe that come from my childhood. Specifically, those first few questions I asked, that seemed to stick with me through my adolescence on into adulthood. Why was the sky blue? How did we get here? What’s in space? Why weren’t there any dinosaurs in the Bible? It’s this deep rooted, inherent curiousity, instilled and nurtured in me through my childhood, by my mother, my teachers, relatives and peers alike, that has been the underlying theme of this practice since it’s inception in 2010. It’s also that childlike curiousty, the simple questions that lead to more tantilizing questions with every deeply nourishing answer, the fractal nature of why, from which the studio owes it’s namesake. The more I asked and explored colletively through the studio practice, the more I became enchanted by the ingenuity of humanity, and even more humbled and overwhelmed by the creativity of nature. In spite of legacies of oppression, disenfranchisement, systems of violence that through generations sought to encage me and those like me, it’s my love for understanding through science, art and nature that kept me grounded to my core self. Through natures reflections, and the peoople I have been so fortunate to create with, I saw an open window to infinite possibility, a vision of another world.
Indian author and political activist Arundhati Roy
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio on April 2nd, 1986 at I think about 4am?
Delivered by c-section at University Hospital
The roots of my fascination with other worlds began in childhood. Not only the worlds I imagined while alone in my room or with friends in backyards, game screens and playgrounds but the worlds that emerged within the inner dimensions of Black life. This foundation, set into motion eons ago through countless human and non-human ancestors, brought into being by my mother and father and nurtured through the years by countless family members, friends, peers, mentors and colleagues.
The phrase “Another World is Possible” is one I began using as an underlying philosophy of my creative practice, The Young Never Sleep.
Books
- Another World is Possible by Natasha Hakimi ZapataA collection of real-world solutions to social problems in the United States
- Another World is Possible by David McNallyConsiders contemporary social activists and the political and economic orders they resist
- Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to GlobalizationIncludes ideas on how to produce wealth, manage economies, and achieve social justice
- Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-CapitalismTraces the progress of the anti-corporate globalization movement
Other works
- Another World is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Examines how people have used religion and spirituality to forge identity
- "Another World is Possible" is also the name of a sermon for Yom Kippur
The idea of "another world" is a common theme in many religions, which assert that a better world is possible.
*This is all incidentally subjective, please see legal terms & conditions.