LORETA (2019, 2026 + ongoing)
Collaboration with Marisa Brandt
Commissioned film and workshop with the MSU Museum and the MSU Museum CoLaB Studio (Oct., 2026)
Collaboration with Marisa Brandt
Commissioned film and workshop with the MSU Museum and the MSU Museum CoLaB Studio (Oct., 2026)
A collaborative speculative fiction about the future of the university, LORETA—which stands for Learning Operational Restructuring in Education Technology Administrator—tells the story of a university department beleaguered by austerity measures, budget cuts, and massive administrative bloat.
The primary vector of dissemination for this fiction is a short film that is what we call a “desktop fiction,” meaning that the entirty of the film takes place in the destkop environments of individuals working in the aforementioned fictional university department.
In the film, the faculty in this department are introduced to a computational system that is ostensibly intended to help them make their course scheduling more efficient, but, instead, the system, couched in the language of the latest “AI”, actually facilitates democratic deliberation and collective decision-making, eventually leading the faculty to understand the power of democratic communal self-determination.
LORETA is inspired by worker occupations of factories and self-managed cooperatives, as well as other strongly democratic social movements like the Zapatistas. It also draws on contemporary research in critical university studies that has demonstrated the parasitic nature of university executive management.
LORETA’s “AI” doesn’t seek to replace faculty or TA positions with slopified facsimiles. Rather, it seeks to help faculty and staff take over the entire university, abolishing administration and allowing those who know the university best to run it. But the film ends before such action takes place—it merely alludes to the possibility that the “AI” is a “trojan horse” of sorts. It requires the viewer to imagine what transpires after the interactions featured in the film.
When we present LORETA to audiences, my collaborator, Marisa Brandt, and I screen a short film about LORETA, a film which takes place entirely in the desktop environments of the faculty in a fictional university department. And after the screening, we run a workshop to help people try to reconsider what they believe the future of higher education is. We try to help them examine why they might be told the future of higher education is one thing, when, in fact, it could be something entirely different, but the antidemoractic nature of university governance paired with the authoritarian nature of technological innovation makes it so difficult to see more just, equitable, and egalitarian alternatives.
The primary vector of dissemination for this fiction is a short film that is what we call a “desktop fiction,” meaning that the entirty of the film takes place in the destkop environments of individuals working in the aforementioned fictional university department.
In the film, the faculty in this department are introduced to a computational system that is ostensibly intended to help them make their course scheduling more efficient, but, instead, the system, couched in the language of the latest “AI”, actually facilitates democratic deliberation and collective decision-making, eventually leading the faculty to understand the power of democratic communal self-determination.
LORETA is inspired by worker occupations of factories and self-managed cooperatives, as well as other strongly democratic social movements like the Zapatistas. It also draws on contemporary research in critical university studies that has demonstrated the parasitic nature of university executive management.
LORETA’s “AI” doesn’t seek to replace faculty or TA positions with slopified facsimiles. Rather, it seeks to help faculty and staff take over the entire university, abolishing administration and allowing those who know the university best to run it. But the film ends before such action takes place—it merely alludes to the possibility that the “AI” is a “trojan horse” of sorts. It requires the viewer to imagine what transpires after the interactions featured in the film.
When we present LORETA to audiences, my collaborator, Marisa Brandt, and I screen a short film about LORETA, a film which takes place entirely in the desktop environments of the faculty in a fictional university department. And after the screening, we run a workshop to help people try to reconsider what they believe the future of higher education is. We try to help them examine why they might be told the future of higher education is one thing, when, in fact, it could be something entirely different, but the antidemoractic nature of university governance paired with the authoritarian nature of technological innovation makes it so difficult to see more just, equitable, and egalitarian alternatives.
