The Founders Pillars
The Founders Pillars@Simon Wood | Credits: Simon Wood
The Founders Pillars@Simon Wood | Credits: Simon Wood
The Founders Pillars@Simon Wood | Credits: Simon Wood
The Founders Pillars@Simon Wood | Credits: Simon Wood
The Founders Pillars@Simon Wood | Credits: Simon Wood
The Founders Pillars@Meghna Singh | Credits: Meghna Singh
The Founders Pillars@Meghna Singh | Credits: Meghna Singh
The Founders Pillars@Meghna Singh | Credits: Meghna Singh
The Founders Pillars_Loom@Simon Wood | Credits: Simon Wood
The Founders Pillars_Loom@Simon Wood | Credits: Simon Wood
The Founders Pillars_Loom@Simon Wood | Credits: Simon Wood
The Founder's Pillars is a site responsive Augmented Reality (AR) memorial and multimedia installation that transforms the neoclassical pillars of the New York Stock Exchange and MIT’s Rogers Building into dynamic monuments honoring the African diaspora. It weaves decolonial practices of freedom-making by fusing colonial architecture with African futurist storytelling rooted in textile traditions.
A continuing and travelling project, its current iterations digitally wrap the columns of both buildings in six animated textiles, each representing a region of the African continent. At MIT, these smart fabrics augment the columns that uphold the name of its founder William Barton Rogers, who once enslaved six individuals. At the New York Stock Exchange, a symbol of capitalism built on the commodification of human lives, the same fabrics activate its columns, transforming these pillars of institutional power into dynamic sites of remembrance and resistance. An accompanying installation at Water Street Projects features a power loom that digitally weaves African fabrics, revealing the ancestral knowledge embedded in their designs.
Developed by South Africa-based artists through the MIT Open Documentary Lab, The Founder's Pillars draws from six regions of the African continent, each represented by a distinct textile, an associated myth or story, bought to life by AI-generated films and AR. As a travelling memorial, the project uses sound, animation, and smart textile visualization to embed ancestral memory and cosmology into digital cloth, activating public space. The experience not only reveals suppressed histories but celebrates African interconnectedness. As a communal audio-visual technological experience, it transforms pillars of colonial power into spaces of decolonial expression.
simonwoodfilm.com/the-founders-pillars
vimeo.com/1063231160/ef0f96dd60
Co-Creators:
Dr Meghna Singh, MIT Open Documentary Lab & School of Communications and Culture, Aarhus University Denmark;
Simon Wood, MIT Open Documentary Lab;
Lesiba Mabitsela, AFRI Africa Fashion Research Institute
Editor and After Effects: Michael Carter
Augmented Reality: Nicolas Robbe @ Hoverlay
Incubated at the MIT Open Documentary Lab
Meghna Singh (IN) is a visual artist and researcher with a PhD in visual anthropology. Working across video, XR, and public installations, she explores themes of migration, digital decoloniality, and immersive storytelling.
Lesiba Mabitsela (ZA) is a Johannesburg-based fashion practitioner and co-founder of the Africa Fashion Research Institute. Lesiba is a former recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation scholarship and was named one of Vogue Business’ Top 100 Next-Gen Entrepreneurs and Agitators for 2023.
Simon Wood (IE) is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker based in Cape Town. His work explores capitalism and historical memory, and has screened at notable international festivals including Venice, Tribeca, and IDFA.
All three are based in South Africa.
The Founder's Pillars by Meghna Singh, Simon Wood, and Lesiba Mabitsela is a powerful and poetic augmented reality installation that reimagines collective memory through site-specific digital storytelling. By weaving the personal histories of six enslaved individuals once owned by the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, William Barton Rogers, the work transforms the architectural columns of the university’s façade into living monuments of resistance and resilience. Through artificial intelligence-generated imagery, African textile traditions, and evocative soundscapes, it opens portals into fantastical visual worlds that honor lost lives and untold histories. Technically refined yet easily accessible via smartphone or tablet, the project challenges viewers to confront how institutions of prestige and innovation are rooted in the histories of enslavement. A collaboration between artists from South Africa, India, and Ireland, The Founder's Pillars connects continents, memories, and myths. It stands as a courageous example of how immersive technologies can foster remembrance, cultural healing, and a reimagining of institutional legacies.