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Ishtiaque Zico

Context

About

Self, site, archive.

Self

Ishtiaque Ayub Zico. Born in Dhaka, 1983. Based in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Left-handed. Living with a partner and three cats.[1]

Two decades of work have crossed web development and tech journalism, filmmaking and media pedagogy, cross-disciplinary design practice, strategy, and editorial work. Some formative peers know me through 720 Degrees, the Venice nomination, or Biralpakhi. Some roles were visible. Some labor stayed in the ghost economy behind the name: reports, rewrites, structure, and support. I read that history now as anti-portfolio. Each role left skill, residue, and questions.

I use self as evidence. I study friction between body and bureaucracy, language and legitimacy, memory and machine. I notice when a template, platform, or institution asks people to adjust before it offers care. I follow small details with large consequences: form fields, menu names, footnotes, citation habits, browser defaults, grammar checkers, the pressure to sound professional, and the point where a lived sentence becomes an approved sentence.

Now

Current work sits between independent research, autoethnographic writing, and web-based experiments. Zicolonized is an ongoing manuscript. The unlearning framework is the theoretical scaffolding. This site is the working surface. I make pages, tools, and systems that carry complexity with less cognitive tax.

Contradiction

I write in English shaped by Bangla, media work, internet habits, institutional writing, and compromise. I use English while tracking what it edits out. I use AI while studying dependence on AI. I care about structure while watching how structure becomes performance. I prefer partial honesty over polished authority. The seam stays visible.[2]

Contact

Email suits page responses, research questions, tool issues, and collaborations with a clear frame.

Address: hello [at] ishtiaquezico [dot] com.[3]

Site

This is my digital repository. It began as a personal website. Then a portfolio. Then a lab. Now it keeps nonlinear thought accessible across writing, tools, memory, and return.[4]

Log holds writing. Lab holds tools and experiments. About gathers context, corrections, contradictions, colophon, and terms.

The reader I design for is tired, distracted, slow, low-vision, multilingual, mistranslated, suspicious, or future me. The page should hold thought without punishing the reader. I want to leave behind pages, tools, and sentences that stay useful after the mood, platform, or trend has passed.

Colophon

Semantic HTML, semantic CSS, and minimal JavaScript for Lab tools. Structure comes first. The document remains readable before styling loads. Links remain usable before scripts run. Print remains part of the archive system.

The visual approach stays quiet on purpose: large text, steady rhythm, plain hierarchy, few moving parts, less chrome, more reading.

Terms

Unless a page says otherwise, text on this site is shared under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Human readers may read, share, cite, and pass along with attribution. Commercial reuse and altered redistribution require permission.

Code appears inside pages, tools, or prototypes as study material unless a separate license is stated.

Citation

Zico, Ishtiaque. "About." Ishtiaque Zico, 2026.
https://ishtiaquezico.com/about/

Privacy

This site favors low extraction. Readers deserve access without becoming signals, products, or unpaid metrics. I reserve all rights for machine learning, dataset extraction, model training, corpus ingestion, and automated reuse of my writing, images, code, and metadata.

Human reading, citation, sharing, and study remain welcome under the license terms.

Corrections

Public writing also needs boundaries. I leave out details when disclosure would move cost onto someone else. Drafts on this site may change between visits. The work can be public while parts of life stay private. Errors of fact will be corrected and noted.

Glossary

Unlearning
Loosening inherited patterns that came to feel natural, proper, efficient, or required.
Repository
A place that holds finished work, failed drafts, residue, tools, notes, and return.
Anti-portfolio
A rereading of past work through residue, compromise, and questions.

Archive

Past work. How I have lived in different fields and how each field has left residue in the next.

This archive is not a portfolio. It is a place to reread older roles through skill, compromise, residue, and what remains.

Note

  1. Based in Cox’s Bazar since 2020. The sea is close. My attention still returns to drafts, structure, screens, and the built page. ↩

  2. I borrow thinkers and methods when they help the work. I keep distance from prestige, certainty, and names turned into academic furniture. Zicolonized keeps the tension: my name sits inside the damage, and the word strains toward release. ↩

  3. Response time can vary from days to weeks. Platform sprawl, reply burden, and unnecessary exposure shape how I manage contact. Privacy is part of the method. ↩

  4. I lost a long private archive through digital accident. That loss sharpened the site. What remains matters. What can still be passed matters. ↩