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SCHOOL OF
/ CRACKS \

The School of Cracks is co-stewarded by Báyò Akómolafé’s Dancing With Mountains and Laura Peña Zanatta’s MetaMorf. It is their most comprehensive organizational articulation of a posthumanist, decolonial philosophy. The “School” is defined fundamentally by what it refuses and the fugitive cosmopoetics it seeks to cultivate in the face of civilizational impasse. It is not an institution in the conventional, pedagogical sense, offering no degrees, no certification, and no curriculum designed to produce competency. Instead, it is conceptualized as a para-institutional architecture, a ceremonial field, an evolving ritual, and a sanctuary.

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Bayo Akomolafe

Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia).

In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, the Inaugural Scholar in Residence for the Aspen Institute, the inaugural Special Fellow for the Council of an Uncertain Human Future, as well as Visiting Scholar to Clark University, Massachusetts, USA (2024). He has been Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023).

He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and has been Commencement Speaker in two universities convocation events. He is also the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. In a ceremony in July 2023, the City of Portland (Maine, USA) awarded Dr. Akomolafe with the symbolic ‘Key to the City’ in recognition of his planet-wide work and achievements.

Dr. Akomolafe is a Member of the Club of Rome, a Fellow for the Royal Society of Arts in the UK, and an Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. To learn more about Dr. Akomolafe’s work, please visit www.bayoakomolafe.net and www.emergencenetwork.org.

Laura Peña Zanatta is an organizational consultant, facilitator, experience designer, artist, and theorist-enthusiast exploring the conceptualization of rituals and their significance in contemporary times.

She has worked extensively as a consultant, helping companies gain awareness of their organizational culture, uncover underlying structures, and foster transformation from within. Some of her clients include Google, Nubank, KPMG, and Embraer.

The metacrisis was a major catalyst for her expanding her work to investigate how rituals can serve as bridges between systemic crises and regenerative futures.

She sees ritual, art, and performance as powerful mediums for constructing new affective landscapes and expanding relational possibilities. Her work is also deeply informed by her background in dance — over ten years of experience — and her studies in performance art with La Fura dels Baus in 2023.

Currently, she is an innovation professor at Fundação Dom Cabral. Alongside her corporate consultancy projects, she is also working with the J Randle Museum in Nigeria, a project dedicated to co-creating contemporary breathing spaces and pathways inspired by the richness and vitality of Yoruba culture. For more about Laura’s work, please visit metamorf.me.