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Question? Ask us anything!
Samar Younes

EIP: When did you first start using AI for your art and what was your introduction? What was your initial inspiration into the AI art world?
SAMAR: My embrace of AI emerged from a delicious paradox – physical limitations pushing me toward digital liberation. After years of crafting immersive installations with an almost obsessive tactility, health challenges and breast cancer forced a pivot in my artistic practice, teaching me to find beauty in mutation and imperfection as well as seek new digital artistic expression tools. The emergence of universe-building across physical and digital worlds and Web3 furthered my gravitation toward using AI, transforming it from mere computational tool into a digital djinn. This helped manifest visions my body sometimes couldn’t and introduced a digital sensibility that was missing in a space typically inundated with dystopian aesthetics and Western-centric views of the future. In seeking to transcend corporeal constraints, I discovered a medium that deepened my connection to embodied wisdom and ancestral knowledge systems, creating portals for reimagining cultural futures beyond colonial frameworks.
EIP: Did you ever do other forms of artistic expression prior to AI?
SAMAR: My practice dissolves disciplinary boundaries, seeing architecture as wearable art, fashion as inhabitable space, and storytelling as architectural form. From ALBA where I studied architecture, interior and visual communication in Beirut to Central Saint Martins where I studied Scenography and Narrative Environments in London, I developed languages for reimagining reality through environments, art, fashion, design and visual storytelling. For over two decades, I’ve transformed retail environments into cultural provocations - from sustainable sculptural interventions spanning 400+ stores worldwide to pioneering omnichannel narratives. As Global Visual Environments Director at Coach and Artistic Display Director at Anthropologie, I centered material manipulation and modular design, the use of recycled materials with an artisanal rigor that challenged luxury’s colonial gaze a decade before sustainability became fashionable. This trajectory from tactile manipulation to AI’s computational flexibility reflects a consistent ethos: challenging systems while amplifying cultural memory and resilience. Now, as Chief Imagination Officer at SAMARITUAL and mentor at NEW INC, I craft brand universes that honor ancestral intelligence while building post-binary futures. AI amplified rather than replaced this trajectory, becoming another strand in my hybrid practice where I leverage deep ethno-aesthetic acumen and artistic direction savoir-faire to merge artisanal intelligence with quantum craft.

EIP: How do you program or train AI to avoid cultural insensitivity or misinterpretations of Middle Eastern themes?
SAMAR: Rather than viewing AI as a potential threat to cultural authenticity, I see it as a medium for cultural regeneration. Through IMAGINAOLGY, my hybrid future edu lab, I’ve developed methodologies for circumventing AI’s orientalist gaze, deeply dissecting authorship, autonomy, and aesthetic biases. We treat archives not as static repositories but as living media for reimagining futures – where preserving stories becomes as crucial as preserving ecosystems. The goal isn’t to perfect processes but to rewild them, teaching others how to bend these tools away from their embedded biases about the Global South. My methodology creates conditions for cultural innovation rather than imposing limitations, treating computational ethnography as speculative fiction where every generation reinterprets their inheritance without losing its essence.
EIP: How can your art medium be used to preserve and reinterpret Middle Eastern historical and artistic treasures?
SAMAR: Through what I call ‘quantum heritage’ – my Transcultural Future Ancestors exploration uses advanced computation not just to preserve artifacts but to imagine their uncolonized evolution. From crafting immersive retail experiences to developing cultural strategies at SAMARITUAL, I translate culture into future-facing narratives. My work explores how indigenous concepts might have evolved if their progression hadn’t been interrupted by colonial violence, but instead were remixed, rewilded and subverted through artisanal radical imagination and collective intelligence – think Silk Road 2.0, where knowledge systems flow through digital caravanserais. Whether leading workshops at NYU or mentoring at NEW INC, I’m creating a digital archaeology of possible futures where artistic heritage actively shapes contemporary visual culture. It’s time- travel through algorithms, where past and future collapse into a kaleidoscopic now, and every artifact contains multitudes.

Keep reading:
Global Echoes of Resistance:
Artists Harnessing Art, Culture, and Ancestry
Diana Carla Rowe
Global Echoes of Resistance:
Artists Harnessing Art, Culture, and Ancestry
Sanyu Nicolas
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"title" : "Samar Younes",
"author" : "Samar Younes",
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"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/global-resistance-art-samar-younes",
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"content" : "EIP: When did you first start using AI for your art and what was your introduction? What was your initial inspiration into the AI art world?SAMAR: My embrace of AI emerged from a delicious paradox – physical limitations pushing me toward digital liberation. After years of crafting immersive installations with an almost obsessive tactility, health challenges and breast cancer forced a pivot in my artistic practice, teaching me to find beauty in mutation and imperfection as well as seek new digital artistic expression tools. The emergence of universe-building across physical and digital worlds and Web3 furthered my gravitation toward using AI, transforming it from mere computational tool into a digital djinn. This helped manifest visions my body sometimes couldn’t and introduced a digital sensibility that was missing in a space typically inundated with dystopian aesthetics and Western-centric views of the future. In seeking to transcend corporeal constraints, I discovered a medium that deepened my connection to embodied wisdom and ancestral knowledge systems, creating portals for reimagining cultural futures beyond colonial frameworks.EIP: Did you ever do other forms of artistic expression prior to AI?SAMAR: My practice dissolves disciplinary boundaries, seeing architecture as wearable art, fashion as inhabitable space, and storytelling as architectural form. From ALBA where I studied architecture, interior and visual communication in Beirut to Central Saint Martins where I studied Scenography and Narrative Environments in London, I developed languages for reimagining reality through environments, art, fashion, design and visual storytelling. For over two decades, I’ve transformed retail environments into cultural provocations - from sustainable sculptural interventions spanning 400+ stores worldwide to pioneering omnichannel narratives. As Global Visual Environments Director at Coach and Artistic Display Director at Anthropologie, I centered material manipulation and modular design, the use of recycled materials with an artisanal rigor that challenged luxury’s colonial gaze a decade before sustainability became fashionable. This trajectory from tactile manipulation to AI’s computational flexibility reflects a consistent ethos: challenging systems while amplifying cultural memory and resilience. Now, as Chief Imagination Officer at SAMARITUAL and mentor at NEW INC, I craft brand universes that honor ancestral intelligence while building post-binary futures. AI amplified rather than replaced this trajectory, becoming another strand in my hybrid practice where I leverage deep ethno-aesthetic acumen and artistic direction savoir-faire to merge artisanal intelligence with quantum craft.EIP: How do you program or train AI to avoid cultural insensitivity or misinterpretations of Middle Eastern themes?SAMAR: Rather than viewing AI as a potential threat to cultural authenticity, I see it as a medium for cultural regeneration. Through IMAGINAOLGY, my hybrid future edu lab, I’ve developed methodologies for circumventing AI’s orientalist gaze, deeply dissecting authorship, autonomy, and aesthetic biases. We treat archives not as static repositories but as living media for reimagining futures – where preserving stories becomes as crucial as preserving ecosystems. The goal isn’t to perfect processes but to rewild them, teaching others how to bend these tools away from their embedded biases about the Global South. My methodology creates conditions for cultural innovation rather than imposing limitations, treating computational ethnography as speculative fiction where every generation reinterprets their inheritance without losing its essence.EIP: How can your art medium be used to preserve and reinterpret Middle Eastern historical and artistic treasures?SAMAR: Through what I call ‘quantum heritage’ – my Transcultural Future Ancestors exploration uses advanced computation not just to preserve artifacts but to imagine their uncolonized evolution. From crafting immersive retail experiences to developing cultural strategies at SAMARITUAL, I translate culture into future-facing narratives. My work explores how indigenous concepts might have evolved if their progression hadn’t been interrupted by colonial violence, but instead were remixed, rewilded and subverted through artisanal radical imagination and collective intelligence – think Silk Road 2.0, where knowledge systems flow through digital caravanserais. Whether leading workshops at NYU or mentoring at NEW INC, I’m creating a digital archaeology of possible futures where artistic heritage actively shapes contemporary visual culture. It’s time- travel through algorithms, where past and future collapse into a kaleidoscopic now, and every artifact contains multitudes."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Neptune Frost",
"author" : "Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman",
"category" : "screenings",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/eip-screening-neptune-frost",
"date" : "2025-07-12 16:00:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/netune-frost-movie-poster.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Join us on Saturday, July 12 for a special screening, followed by an exclusive Q&A with the directors of Neptune Frost. Part of our member screening series, tune in live or anytime in the next 24 hours, from anywhere in the world!",
"content" : "Join us on Saturday, July 12 for a special screening, followed by an exclusive Q&A with the directors of Neptune Frost. Part of our member screening series, tune in live or anytime in the next 24 hours, from anywhere in the world!Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends."
}
,
{
"title" : "Socialist Girl Summer: How Capitalism Spent Billions to Demonize Socialism — And Why That Spell Is Breaking",
"author" : "Céline Semaan",
"category" : "essays",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/socialist-girl-summer-demonize-socialism-why-spell-breaking",
"date" : "2025-07-03 22:00:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_SocialistGirlSummer.jpg",
"excerpt" : "As the founder of Slow Factory, I design everything you see—every typeface, every framework, every campaign. I don’t outsource the vision. I shape it. And I started Slow with one goal in mind: to rebrand socialism, justice, and environmentalism—not as niche causes, but as cultural movements essential to our survival. Design isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about power. And I use design as a tool to imagine, demand, and build better worlds.For nearly a century, the United States has spent billions of dollars, media bandwidth, and educational muscle to ensure one thing: that the word socialism would strike fear in the public imagination. That’s not because socialism failed. It’s because socialism threatens power—especially the kind of power that hoards land, labor, and life for profit.But something is shifting. The re-election of Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in New York—an openly socialist organizer who unapologetically defends tenants, workers, and Palestinians—marks a rupture in that narrative. A new generation no longer flinches at the word. They embrace it. They are building it. They are winning.But before we can move forward, we must understand what we are up against.",
"content" : "As the founder of Slow Factory, I design everything you see—every typeface, every framework, every campaign. I don’t outsource the vision. I shape it. And I started Slow with one goal in mind: to rebrand socialism, justice, and environmentalism—not as niche causes, but as cultural movements essential to our survival. Design isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about power. And I use design as a tool to imagine, demand, and build better worlds.For nearly a century, the United States has spent billions of dollars, media bandwidth, and educational muscle to ensure one thing: that the word socialism would strike fear in the public imagination. That’s not because socialism failed. It’s because socialism threatens power—especially the kind of power that hoards land, labor, and life for profit.But something is shifting. The re-election of Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in New York—an openly socialist organizer who unapologetically defends tenants, workers, and Palestinians—marks a rupture in that narrative. A new generation no longer flinches at the word. They embrace it. They are building it. They are winning.But before we can move forward, we must understand what we are up against.A Propaganda Empire Built on FearFrom Cold War cinema to first-grade civics books, socialism was rendered as the enemy. Not because it endangered democracy, but because it questioned private property, militarism, and capitalism’s sacred cow: unlimited profit.The U.S. government, backed by its capitalist elite, responded with a sweeping cultural war. The Red Scare and McCarthyism turned union leaders, civil rights activists, and artists into traitors. The FBI surveilled and imprisoned people for organizing against poverty and racial capitalism. Hollywood blacklists sanitized storytelling and sold capitalist mythology as aspirational truth. CIA coups, from Chile to Iran to the Congo, dismantled democratically elected socialist governments because they dared to nationalize oil, land, and education. This wasn’t a fear of failure. It was a fear of redistribution.Why the Spell Is BreakingCapitalism made big promises. But it delivered gig work, burnout, debt, climate collapse, and endless war. A growing number of people—especially Gen Z and Millennials—aren’t buying the myth anymore.According to Pew Research (2023), 70% of younger Americans support some form of socialism.Mutual aid groups, public power campaigns, and tenant unions are taking root in cities across the U.S.And politicians like Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Summer Lee, and others are bringing these values to governance—publicly, unapologetically.This isn’t a rebrand. This is a return. A remembering.Designing LiberationDesign has always been political. It’s a tool used by empires—and also a tool of resistance. Every successful propaganda campaign used design to criminalize solidarity and glorify capitalism.Mid-century posters showed socialism as monstrous: Stalin as an octopus devouring the planet. Red flags engulfing American homes in flames. Inspectors peering through windows. These visuals weren’t neutral. They were weapons.But today, we’re flipping the frame.As a designer, I use visual culture to demystify and disrupt these fear-based narratives. We design not just what we see—but how we see. And when we shift that perspective, we make new futures possible.My work at Slow Factory has always been about this: telling stories rooted in care, equity, and ecological justice. Whether through open education, cultural programming, or climate justice campaigns, I’m reprogramming what power looks like—and who it belongs to.Zohran Mamdani and the Future of StorytellingMamdani’s victory isn’t just electoral. It’s cultural. He won while calling for an end to genocide in Gaza, organizing with workers instead of corporations, and speaking openly about the harms of capitalism and imperialism.He won while the establishment poured millions into defeating him.His win is proof: the old script is wearing thin.Reclaiming the Word, Reclaiming the WorldSocialism has always been about care—public housing, free healthcare, universal education, the right to rest and exist without fear. These are not fringe demands. These are the bare minimum for a livable planet.The villain was never socialism. The villain was the empire that told us we didn’t deserve care unless we could afford it.We are entering the Possible Futures era. And it’s being led by people who no longer fear justice—but are terrified of its absence.Designing that future means unlearning propaganda and replacing it with stories of survival, resistance, and imagination. We must reclaim the visual language of dignity—transforming symbols of domination into frameworks for liberation.We don’t just need to rebrand socialism.We need to remember it.And redesign everything."
}
,
{
"title" : "Who’s Profiting from Genocide? What Francesca Albanese’s Report Reveals—and Why It Matters for the Climate",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/profiting-from-genocide-what-francesca-albanese-report",
"date" : "2025-07-02 18:33:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Francesca_Report.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Let’s be clear: genocide is never just a military operation. It’s an economy.",
"content" : "Let’s be clear: genocide is never just a military operation. It’s an economy.This week, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese released a groundbreaking report—“From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide” naming dozens of global corporations complicit in and benefitting from Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The report makes what many of us have long known impossible to ignore: multinational corporations are not just “doing business” with Israel—they are profiting from displacement, resource theft, and mass death.And it’s not just harming people. It’s killing the planet.Albanese’s report lays out how corporations across defense, tech, finance, construction, and agriculture are directly enabling Israel’s assault on Gaza. This is not indirect. This is not abstract. These companies are not passive observers—they are profiteers. Weapon Manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, Boeing, BAE Systems, and General Dynamics are supplying the bombs raining down on hospitals and refugee camps. Tech Giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Palantir provide the cloud computing, AI surveillance, and targeting software that power Israel’s military intelligence. Construction Firms like Caterpillar, HD Hyundai, and Volvo provide bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes—often paid for with public funds or foreign aid. Hospitality Platforms like Booking.com and Airbnb list vacation rentals on stolen Palestinian land, laundering settler colonialism into leisure. Financial Institutions including BlackRock, Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Deutsche Bank fund Israeli military bonds and invest in all the above sectors. This is what an economy of genocide looks like: global, profitable, and deeply entrenched in the status quo.Genocide and Ecocide Are Two Sides of the Same CoinThe same companies enabling genocide are actively destroying ecosystems. This isn’t a coincidence—it’s a pattern.Caterpillar, already infamous for displacing Palestinian families, is a major contributor to fossil fuel extraction and mining projects that poison Indigenous lands in the Global South.Palantir, which boasts about using AI to “optimize” military surveillance, is also deployed by ICE in the United States to track, detain, and deport climate refugees and migrants.Netafim, an Israeli irrigation company profiting off stolen Palestinian water, is celebrated as “sustainable innovation” in the ag-tech world—masking eco-apartheid as green tech.In short: genocide and ecocide share a supply chain. And we need to cut the cord.Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer, supplies drones and surveillance tech to police at the U.S.-Mexico border—and to ICE.HP and Google provide AI and cloud infrastructure for the Israeli military while also marketing themselves as “green tech” leaders.Chevron and ExxonMobil continue to fund and extract from the Eastern Mediterranean, leveraging Israel’s military occupation to secure infrastructure.This is greenwashing meets genocide—a deadly symbiosis between environmental harm and militarized violence.What This Means for UsThis moment calls for more than statements. It calls for a total redefinition of what sustainability means—because there is nothing sustainable about silence in the face of genocide.If you are a brand, an artist, a designer, a policymaker, a curator, or a student: you are being called in. Your work, your budget, your institution may be entangled—knowingly or not—with the companies Albanese has exposed. Now is the time to do the work.What We Must Do—Now1. Follow the MoneyStudy the companies listed in Albanese’s report. If you work with—or fund—any of them, ask questions. Divest. Cut ties.2. Demand Institutional AccountabilityMuseums, universities, nonprofits, and sustainability conferences are often quietly sponsored by companies profiting from Israeli apartheid. Push for transparency. Refuse complicity. Call it what it is.3. Connect the StrugglesThe fight for Palestinian liberation is not separate from climate justice. This is all one system: extraction, occupation, militarization, profit. As we say often: everything is political—because everything is connected.4. Build and Invest in AlternativesMutual aid, abolitionist design, food sovereignty, fossil-free infrastructure, and Indigenous stewardship—these are not just buzzwords. They are the way forward. Center Global South leadership. Fund frontline communities.5. Say PalestineRefuse the pressure to sanitize. Refuse the pressure to stay neutral. In the face of genocide, neutrality is complicity. If your liberation practice does not include Palestine, it is incomplete.A Propaganda Crisis, TooThese companies aren’t just selling tools of war—they’re shaping narratives. They sponsor art exhibitions, climate conferences, design summits. They greenwash occupation and brand apartheid as “security innovation.”The most dangerous lie today is that “sustainability” can coexist with genocide. It can’t.No climate justice without Palestinian liberation. No sustainable future while apartheid is profitable.So What Can We Do?DivestCampaign for your workplace, university, or city to divest from the companies named in the report. Check your retirement funds. Audit your donors. Pull the receipts.ExposeIf your favorite brand or cultural institution is collaborating with Amazon, Palantir, or Caterpillar—say something. Publicly. Email them. Call it what it is: complicity.Cut the Narrative LoopRefuse to use language that normalizes occupation: “conflict,” “both sides,” “retaliation.” This is genocide.Build AlternativesSupport community-owned energy, Palestinian agricultural cooperatives, and local solidarity economies. Join land back and degrowth movements—they are connected.Organize for PolicyPush for legislation that bans military trade with apartheid regimes and prohibits companies from profiting off human rights abuses.Tell the Truth, ConsistentlyUse your platform to amplify the names, the facts, the systems. Share this report. Write your own version. Make the invisible visible.The Link Between Genocide and Climate HarmWe can’t talk about genocide without talking about resource theft, land colonization, and environmental destruction. The same weapons being used to bomb hospitals and schools in Gaza are being manufactured by companies who also profit from climate collapse—polluting ecosystems, propping up fossil fuel economies, and creating the conditions for displacement that militarized borders are then built to contain.We must hold the line. Genocide is not inevitable—it is designed. And anything that is designed can be dismantled. If we want to build a just, livable future, we must start by divesting from the machinery of death—and investing in life.Let this be the beginning."
}
]
}