Donate to the Brian Shinewald Memorial Fellowship

In memory of our beloved friend, comrade, and fellow visionary Brian Shinewald (1984-2025), we have created a Fellowship to enable one "art nerd" to attend and participate within "The Ansible Institute" with a fully-funded 2 week artist residency-- for artists and cultural workers working in fantasy and sci fi -- in the Moroccan Sahara in March 2026. This year, due to increased demand for this expedition, we will be offering 2 two-week expeditions (March 9-23 and March 27- April 10, 2026) and therefore we hope to offer this fellowship to one participant per trip, enabling those who may not otherwise be able to join us in our worldbuilding project.

Brian Shinewald was an exceptional being -- kind, compassionate, wise, deep, and a visionary through and through. He was also my first and oldest friend in the World. To quote the eulogy penned by our old friend Morgan Fiks, Brian was "a beautiful artist trapped in the body of a dirty electrician." He was a hardcore fantasy/sci-fi nerd who would have felt at home in the community we foster for artists and other cultural workers interested in using the speculative imagination to produce templates for alternate futures. He also shared a dissatisfaction with the cruelty of the world and an interest in fixing it (Tikkun b'olam.) We shared this perspective, and this project comes from a similar place of wanting to use our imaginations to re-imagine the world.

Many people expressed interest in donating to this project in Brian's memory, and we humbly ask you to be generous today to help create opportunities for other visionaries (with nerdy dispositions) who may not otherwise have the chance to join us in our collective dreaming.

THE ANSIBLE INSTITUTE is a nomadic research laboratory created by artists [M] Dudeck and Martina Raponi, that looks to speculative fiction to produce templates for alternate realities. We believe that nerds obsessed with invented worlds -- past, present and future -- are not "escaping" reality, but game-testing tools and strategies to heal the future. We have thus far undergone two expeditions to the Moroccan Sahara, and are planning our third expedition in March 2026. We are also planning to create an expeditionary "artist residency canoe trip" in Lake of the Woods Ontario starting in Summer of 2027.

Ansible Institute Expedition I (2022) Left to Right: Javi Acevedo (Germany), Leomar Imperator (Curacao/ Netherlands), Marcin Gawin (Poland/UK), Marie Pellegrin (Canada/Austria) Cordula Daus (Germany), Martina Raponi (Italy/Holland), Alexander Cromer (US/Holland) + [M] Dudeck (Canada/Italy.)

Ansible Institute Expedition II (2024) Left to Right: Niki Sperou (Australia), Stanislaw Welbel (Poland/Austria), Ralo Mayer (Austria), [M] Dudeck (Canada/Italy), Martina Raponi (Italy/Holland), Yusuf (Tissardmine), Antoinette Dyksman (Canada/Germany), Brandon Gibson DeGroote (Canada), Marie Pellegrin (Canada/Austria.)