Frances Lee

Frances Lee is an interdisciplinary UX/UI designer and masters student in Cultural Studies at UW Bothell. They create digital media on QTPOC safety and trans futurity in the Poetic Operations Collaborative. Frances has worked in the Austin/Seattle corporate tech industry and occasionally gives talks on diversity/inclusion from a trans non-binary and post capitalist lens. They are leading the design and development of the 2017 King County Trans Resource Guide, which provides a safety net for trans people and their loved ones in the Seattle area.

Presenting with Jen Kagan and Ron Morrison

Decolonial Design, Black Geographies, and Critical Packet Sniffing

Detroit-based organizer and archivist Paige Watkins has described their work as "laying a conduit across which stories can travel."

We’re thinking about networks in this metaphorical way, as the web of stories and frameworks that shape our understanding of what is possible and desirable. Made material through research practices, we turn to examples from The Negro Motorist Green Book and the U.S. postal service, and open wi-fi networks and packet sniffing tools. By centering these examples, we problematize understandings of networks as neutral and instead stretch our own assumptions making visible their cracks and fissures; uncovering old stories no longer remembered in the hopes of substantiating a future not yet conceived that allows us to survive and upend capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy; relentlessly striving for new ways forward. We hope to use the panel to have a public conversation about our experiences doing this work in different corners of decolonial design, black geographies, and critical technology worlds.