Àrokò Monthly Roundtable #01

Each month, we gather members of the Àrokò Cooperative for an unfiltered roundtable, giving you a temperature check of our take on design. We move through art, music, politics, technology, and the everyday rituals of taste to ask sharper questions about what’s being made, who it’s for, and what it’s really doing in the world. In this first monthly roundtable conversation we dig into the growing gap between craft and performance. We discuss how shortcuts, platforms, and manufactured credibility are reshaping creativity and what it might take to bring back care, discipline, and cultural stakes without turning them into yet another performed aesthetic.

The Chasm Between Craft and Performance

We kicked things off the way we usually do. Some light chitchat about music eased us into the conversation. Shakeil jumped in first by arguing that it might actually be good for hip-hop that there are no rap songs in the Top 40 right now as the genre is getting watered down by mainstream music. Naturally, that led straight to Drake, half-jokingly blaming him for making hip-hop palatable to the masses. This sparked quick agreement, before we got serious and moved into our “hot take of the month.”

MICHAEL
Make Black culture dangerous again. Like you want a hot take, like why is it so palatable? Why is it so easy to take? I mean, we see what real underground is, we see what real counterculture is. And you know as a Black person involved in the culture it's kind of disappointing that [the counterculture is] not [my culture] right now. We need to step our game up a little bit. There are people who are, and there are Black people who are truly radical right now. Not saying there's not but, Black culture, Capital B, capital C has become very safe. And you can see that by the liberties people take it, with it, and in it.

AZEEZ
I'll add to that. I have another hot take, but I'm gonna add to that because this goes to what Shak and I were talking about over the weekend. I just think that counterculture is not counterculture anymore. All of the vehicles that we've used that we've thought of as counterculture, whether it's graffiti, whether it's hip-hop music, whether it's punk, rock, all of those things have been brought into the mainstream, commercialized commerce, and they're no longer actually rebelling against the main culture.

And we know we don't have those vehicles anymore. You know, as artists, as designers, as creators, it's just like a cultural, like society, like, what is the vehicle that we're using to be able to speak out against the injustices of society that those things were? Whenever they came about, they came about because of that. And you see it so much. We saw it over the weekend, where commerce has taken over those things, sanitized it. And people think that they're being rebellious by engaging into the culture because those aesthetics were what they were historically, as aesthetics for rebellion.

But they no longer are. Everyone's doing it. And there's this misalignment or misunderstanding of contrarianism as intellectualism, you know. Just because you're coming in and saying something different than anyone, everyone else, doesn't mean that you're being intellectual or smart. Just means that you lack critical thinking and don't have your own original thought. You just need to be anti. But that's just me piggybacking.

MICHAEL
I mean, yeah. Anti-imperialism, Communism, whatever you want to call it. The culture is imperialist is neoliberal is fascist at this point. I really don't want to see anybody using Times New Roman Extended right now. Y'all need to let that go until the White House stops fucking making racist ass memes with it, you know. I know I just used fucking “Make [blank blank] Again”, but we shouldn't be doing that, you know. It's hammer and sickle or GTFO, because I know what the people in power are actually scared of. Free Palestine is the counterculture. And if you can't say that, you're really not the counterculture.

AZEEZ
My other actual hot take, and this is kind of tied to it, I really think that we need to bring back some gatekeeping in design. I feel like becoming a designer has been too accessible now, that anyone with access to a computer is now able to put out junk. And when I say gatekeeping, it's like there used to be a time where you actually had to learn the craft to be able to call yourself a designer and put something out of substance and now it's just too much, just slop out there because everyone has access to tools that shortcut the the whole craft and the work that it takes to put into producing something. And I saw so many brands that were just poorly thought out. Even from a copywriting standpoint, like all of it is just like: Did you just think that you can just make some?

Just because you can make something doesn't mean that you should. That's the headline. Bringing back this idea of like, learning the craft, learning a craft. Whether that is typography, whether that is industrial design, and sketching whether that's ceramics or, you know, whatever it is, but the time that it takes, the journey that it takes for you to really understand the nuances, and come up with new, innovative ways of thinking about the world, and producing something that's actually meaningful. I think we need to bring that back. I know this might not be like gatekeeping, but it's like, I'm kind of, like bringing back some elitism in design because it’s too accessible for people right now, and everyone's out here, cosplaying as creatives.

KRISTEN
I want us to bring back the artisan class. That's what I want. I don't even know if it's gatekeeping or snobbery, but I just want people to give a shit about what they're making.

AZEEZ
A thousand percent.

ZARIAH
I was gonna add like I definitely feel the space in which we're in like there's so many and I've seen it. I don't know how it is in other parts of the United States, but at least I know, in Atlanta, in North Carolina, this broad term of, oh my gosh, you're creatives. And every single time that I go or see a networking event or some, you know, mixer or whatever they say it's for creatives. Then I go and it's them just giving aesthetically looking outfits. And it's not even that good for one, but also it's either like, Oh I make flyers on Canva or I'm a party promoter that designs flyers. It's just like What creative are you? And when I asked them more in depth it's maybe photography or I'm an influencer. Maybe I'm a model. Who are you signed to? It's frustrating, because then you don't really meet genuine people. It's mainly influenced culture that's coming into play here, and it can be really frustrating. Because when I actually talk about real creative stuff, they're like, Oh, that feels like very Grandma then I'm like, No, that's me actually, like working with my hands and like wanting to create magic. That group is only feeding into capitalism not necessarily creating work that is generative and is actually helping the overall community.

That also just falls into like, you know, again more of that influencer culture and consumerism of either just creating products, or creating these T-shirt brands that literally just have these really jacked up fonts on them or just a little image and they want to sell it for a hundred dollars. So yeah, I definitely agree and I feel like there should be more definitive words for how we're defining creatives, because it just feels very saturated. Everybody wants to be a creative, but nobody actually wants to do the work that falls under that name.

KRISTEN
I had a really interesting conversation on Wednesday at dinner. I met my friend's roommate and he was talking about how he does all these extreme sports like free climbing and caving. He's done white water rafting, and you know, everybody who was talking to him was pretty blown away. But he made this point about how all of us, people in general, really sell themselves short, and don't realize that with, a little bit of concerted effort towards something that they can do, so many incredible things. In a culture where convenience is king, and everything is about having a shortcut, having something becomes easy. People are really afraid to put in a little effort. I mean, I see it.

I have such a range of experiences with students, especially because I like to teach a one-day class for people to do something, maybe for the first time. It's only in this condensed two and a half hour period and they might have all of these expectations about this specific thing that they want to make or what they want the outcome to be. Or some people are really, really afraid and they're nervous and they're like, I can't make anything and that happens when they actually get into making something, people get really discouraged because they're like, well, I was gonna make a planter pot with, you know, 20 rings on it or whatever it is. I didn't think it was gonna be this hard and I do feel like, you know, creativity and design, I do think it should be accessible. But I just think that, yeah, everybody's really lacking gumption and just trying, just try it a few more times, you know, like work, work through the work.

AZEEZ
Yeah, I'll just say that like it's it's lack of discipline, ...

SHAKEIL
Yeah.

AZEEZ
…you know? I think that's an important part to developing craft. As a designer there are consequences to putting out bad work. You'll get killed in the comment section. People will come for you. You could still be fearless. But I also feel like we've kind of entered a world where quality is not as important as quantity. People are putting out volume and not actually learning from what they're putting out to iterate and be better. They're just putting it out, just to put it out because it's like, other people are putting out trash so I can put out trash. It doesn't actually matter, you know, there's no substance behind what I'm putting out. And I think having some discipline, and reasoning, and rational, and effort, and you know, care, matters.

MAHIE
I think the reason people are putting out so much, with quantity versus quality, is because of the pressure of the world that we live in and there's this constant microscope that says if you're not producing or performing in this way then you're not valuable. And so there's this.

You have to really dial in to yourself and say, My worth is not defined by how much I produce, but rather by the measure of what my qualities are, what my standard is and redefine that for yourself. Going back to what Kristen was saying about the artists in class, one thing that's always been so frustrating to me is like artisans have never been respected historically, they've always been disenfranchised, they've been disrespected, they've been seen as a lesser than. My research showed even Ethiopia a lot of [artisans] we're seeing [are being pushed to the margins or stigmatized]. And it was like Are you scared of the magic? Are you scared of their incredible talents?

I don't understand it. Like the things that they are making are your day-to-day necessities and they're absolutely incredible, and fantastic, and beautiful. So it just makes me think, you know, how do we get back to knowing that there is beauty in the slowness and valuing the little pieces and the process of it as you go.

MICHAEL
Mahie I think you're dead on to bring material conditions into this, right? And I'm obviously always gonna put on my Marxist hat and do that. I do think that not all cultures disdain artisans, right? There are certainly some, for whom they are held in high esteem. I can think of Paris where we just were, the Japanese, or places like Mexico and so on and so forth. But it really does come to sort of a cultural and material head, right? Places that have and continue to have artisanal cultures are ones where that is culturally valuable and is made possible by the culture and the state as an extension thereof.

And in fits and starts, you do see that in places, not in Seattle perhaps—unfortunately in thrall to Daddy Bezos—but you know New York maintains a large part of its global cultural capital and identity through its artisanal work; “Made in New York” continues to carry a certain cachet, “Made in Los Angeles” continues to carry a certain cache, and those are things that those places and and the cultures of those places have made an effort to do. I think the thing that behooves all of us, no matter how we identify ourselves, is to go about proposing that, and trying to live into it, as opposed to simply, pointing out how distasteful the present moment is, which of course.

MAHIE
I agree Michael. There are many places that definitely respect and put value to the name of like handmade and where it's made. I think, for me, I've noticed that in some spaces it's because how much money is it going to make the country or the space. Like there's this idea that progress is seen as a way of automation or how does it fit into the West in whenever I've been like back home. And so that's where I felt that disconnect, but a lot of different designers and artists obviously have been reading, finding that, and saying, no, we value our handcrafted artisans, and work, and everything. So yeah, but that's where my context had come in.

AZEEZ
I think that the goal has shifted from an artisan going through the process to learn and discover to going through a process to just produce value, or the idea of extracting value from what gets created. And so, then, you try to shortcut that whole process to get to the value. As opposed to really understanding that the process really is the valued value to the individual and also the value to society, because you start to generate new ways of manifesting imagination that can be shared amongst multiple people in terms of just innate understanding and value. And I think that's where we've continued to develop tools that shortcut the process, but more so shortcuts cutting how we think about process. Because even as new tools get developed, it doesn't necessarily mean that we make it easier for us to maybe do certain things. But the process of really manifesting our imagination into tangible outputs hasn't always kind of been the same you know, in terms of the work and the discipline that's put in, but you kind of see it now where you know what AI is doing. It's a lot of AI slop.

You know, this might be another slight hot take. Everyone is saying that AI is supposed to reduce the amount of work that's on your plate. But what I found is that it's increasing the amount of work on my plate, because now, I have to sift through all of this bullshit that's AI junk to identify the actual real thing that I need to be doing or be focused on. I get a bunch of AI slopped produced stuff and it goes back to the quantity things, like so much quantity of crap that's been so easy to produce. And to actually find the thing that's actually valuable or useful has become immensely more challenging and difficult as a human being.

AISHATU
Hearing you talk about AI makes me think about my hot take, which is actually about this AI Minister Diella. The first AI Minister of Albania, since September 2025. The initial goal was for this AI to oversee public procurement and supposedly fight corruption. And what really fascinates me here is not really the technology but the design of the idea itself, you know, the way the persona was constructed. We have this female avatar wearing a traditional Albanian dress. Recently has been described by the Prime Minister as being pregnant with 83 children. But what he actually meant to say was that they generated 83 smaller AI assistants for the members of parliament. But on the surface, you know, I think it's an incredibly interesting design experiment in governance.

But beneath it, I think it's an example of how governments and brands use aesthetics to create trust, to make something feel more real, or more moral, or more transparent. And I think that ties in really well to what we talked about earlier, the line between craft and performance, authenticity and surface. And I'm really skeptical also about the gendered storytelling here. Like why does trust still need to be coded as feminine? And why is the AI Minister imagined as a mother figure rather than say a system of accountability. Why do we need to use the metaphor of pregnancy? And this metaphor really reveals how creation is still gendered, and how it's anthropocentric, and how when we talk of AI offspring, we talk about reproduction as the only metaphor we have for, or seem to have for, creating a new generation.

So really I’m very skeptical about this whole thing. Of course Albania is trying to get into the EU officially and you know, they're trying to stand out and there they are because there are so many blog posts, news articles recently about this, these 83 children, because it's very sensational, right? The storytelling that they use is very effective. But Albania being known as such a corrupt nation, a lot of critics are also saying what about the AI? Will it also get corrupted at some point? So, I've been very interested in this design idea and how it's been executed. In the gendered dimension of AI, that we can definitely see here in this example.

SHAKEIL
I just want to highlight your summary of a lot of our conversation, of that line between craft and performance. And this is such a great example of the craft of a nation, a nation building, has all these components in it, in terms of how you put together a functional life for its inhabitants, how it conducts itself, and the performance of nation-making in this is such a great example of like, no, we're innovative, like we focus on innovation here. Look at our AI minister. I just thought that was a really nice way to sum that up, that that line between craft and maybe line isn't the right word. Maybe it's the gulf. The chasm between craft and performance is what we're all honing in on today. So I just thought that was well said.

MICHAEL
I mean, 140 members of Parliament is absolutely the performance of a functioning state because why are you the size of Houston? And have 140 elected representatives. My nigga, what the fuck are we talking about?

AZEEZ
What I find interesting about the story, and it's alarming, is the narcissism and this idea of just trying to recreate things in our image. Why does AI actually need to do that? And I feel like this idea of craft versus performance it's like how far along are we getting to losing our humanity that we're not trying to perform humanity? You know, as humans, we're trying, we're now needing to perform humanity. It's dystopian to think that at some point in time people will be asking AI how to be human by feeding AI and this way. I never really understood the reason why we want to replicate ourselves specifically because there's so many different applications to understand things that would be beneficial to us in terms of our weaknesses as human beings. And things that can be, that can help us and aid us. But we're trying to recreate our flaws in a system that doesn't need to be a mirror of our own incompetence.

Kellyn
I swear it relates, and it really actually kind of comes full circle, because I think we're talking a lot about wanting to reinstate like the artist, the artisan class, and like, craft and shit. And you know what I mean? I think my hot take is and it's kind of like a microcosm of this is that like when you go to, if you're invited to, a costume party or a themed event, and you're not going to dress to the theme of that event or you're not gonna put effort into a costume then don't fucking show up. That's my hot take.

And it comes back to this because we're talking about putting effort into a thing. So, like you're not wanting to be a part of a community of people where the host has set forth this standard, it is hustle, and it is relevant for Halloween too. But generally, you know what I mean? Like, I'm tired of like, oh, it's a theme party. Okay, I'm gonna go hard and then you get to the function and no one's dressed up. Why am I dressed the hardest out of everybody at this function? Like, It's because I have, like, I want to, you know? We have lost our commitment to craft.

As a society, no one wants to put effort into a costume anymore. No one wants to try, you know what I mean? Like, bring it back. It starts at home, like you have construction paper. You have scissors. Put something together, watch a show. Like, get inspiration, I'm tired. And I know, you know, it's like you look so good at the party. I don't give a fuck. Why don't you look good at the party? Anyways, that's my hot take.

MICHAEL
And for real, life is a party and, like, why don't you look good at the party?

AZEEZ
Because AI gave you the wrong instructions. And yeah, I mean, I like that kind of tying it together, because back to like what Aishatu was saying and Shak, the governance like the performing trust, right? And again we're talking about craft and performance, you like performing, humanity performing, trust performing, creativity performing design. Everything is a performance. It probably is about influencer culture because people are just trying to influence you into believing something that's not true about themselves, their lives or society and it makes you wonder: What are they distracting us from?