emergent nonfiction lab

The Emergent Nonfiction Lab explores new and evolving media technologies through critical, theoretical, and practice-based research. From early ethnographic forms of visual extraction to contemporary data surveillance and AI, media technologies used for documentation have long been entangled with colonialism, racial violence, and imperialist capitalism. Today’s regimes of media capture, prediction, and control are deeply rooted in these histories. While many critical frameworks still grapple with questions of truth, realism, and power within these legacies, the ENL seeks to push beyond them—foregrounding emerging modes of theory and practice that challenge and subvert dominant media forms. We approach emergence not as a neutral concept, but as a methodology for reimagining media beyond operational and extractive logics. Through talks, workshops, and seminars, the lab supports explorations of counter-hegemonic, speculative, reparative, and activist media practices that unsettle violent epistemologies and imagine alternative futures. https://emergentnonfictionlab.com