11. right of refusal
2019, 1,103 pages in a 4in three-ring binder
Graduate thesis as submitted to the RISD Library
In March of 2019, despite my love of writing and an impending thesis deadline, I gave up on my entire thesis, as it was shaping up to be. I was exhausted. On top of my classes, getting hit by a car on my bike, having ongoing chronic health concerns, dealing with a mouse infestation in my shitty apartment with a shittier landlord, and working two jobs to help pay for rent and groceries, I had spent the last two years at RISD arguing with faculty and staff, sometimes on my own behalf - sometimes on the behalf of undergrads or my fellow grad students who came to me looking for help - about basic accommodations for racial, socioeconomic, and disability differences. This job was thankless, isolating, and exhausting. I was done giving the school labor in a way that felt exploitative and extractive.
Instead, I decided to submit 1,100 pages of unformatted and almost unreadable text in an institutional blue, 4” high, three-ring binder. The contents of the text was every keystroke I had typed on my laptop since the moment I had been accepted into RISD. This keylog had been documented by a hidden hacker software that I had installed on my computer after the 2016 election for a failed project in which I tried to send a live feed of what I was typing onto my computer to two large monitors in a storefront in downtown Seattle.
After the project failed (due to reasonable safety and security concerns), I had forgotten about the software. It was only when I was laying in bed after another long day that I remembered and realized: the text was my labor. Every form I had filled out to enroll in Medicaid in Rhode Island to manage my increasing autoimmune issues. Every email I had sent trying to get open communication from an institution that thrived in secrecy. All the Zelle transactions documenting money I was sending to my family, even while in school. The invisible labor. It was all documented in the keylogger, and its indecipherability made it impossible for RISD to further extract meaning and value from this labor. It was a profound, but institutionally useless, document.
Although all of the technical requirements of the thesis were met (table of contents, abstract, title page, copyright page, dedications, etc), they were all documented through the keylogging software, rendering them nearly illegible - a hope of making my labor immune to exploitation by an institution that deserved none of my labor.
Here is the abstract of my thesis, as recorded and documented by the keylogging software: