The Founder, Curator & Archivist

About

Angelica-Lorraine Calado Lee-Wagenknecht (A-L.C.L. Wagenknecht) is a physicist, writer, filmmaker, systems architect, and cultural founder whose work operates at the intersection of science, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, and correspondence.

Born in the Philippines in 1992 with ancestral roots tracing through China, Spain, and beyond, she was shaped by German monastic academic traditions and an early immersion in classical philosophy, music, classical ballet, theatre, discipline, and physical restraint. She performed as a child actress through school theatre and completed a summer of professional theatrical training. In 2026, she returned to the screen from the other side of the camera, producing a five-minute short film that was submitted for consideration to the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Her interest in internal discipline and systemic tension is informed, in part, by a family history shaped by the high-stakes grey zones of wartime intelligence, and by a childhood home surrounded by antique maps, grandfather clocks, maritime imagery, and historical navigation.

Though raised alongside an established family import enterprise, she declined the expected commercial path in favor of scientific, literary, cinematic, and independent institutional work. After immigrating to the United States at eighteen, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics with a concentration in Astronomy from San José State University. Her early technical and public service path included United States Department of Defense projects in lightning-strike prediction modeling for NASA Kennedy Space Center through the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, service as a Civil Air Patrol officer within the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary, crisis advocacy for neurodivergent individuals alongside law enforcement, and a federal American civil rights case.

Fueling a long-standing fascination with human consciousness and the mechanics of the brain, she participated as a research subject in fMRI studies at the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, logging up to 1.5 hours at a time inside the scanner. In a stark pivot to the lighter side of empirical science, she also appeared as an extra on the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters.

Rather than confining her work to a single field, she has built independent institutions and ventures dedicated to human complexity, historical precision, and interdisciplinary culture:

• Wagenknecht Press, a publishing imprint.

• Signal & Post, a recording artist and the gift-shop line of The Major André Collection™.

• Meridianhafen Recordings, established when an unexpected body of poetry dropped into her head and transformed into music.

• Ange Lorraine Fine Jewelry, founded after a jeweler, entrusted with the care of a rare benitoite stone mined by her fiancé for her engagement and wedding ring, disappeared.

• Galerie Angelique, a gallery for overlooked Filipino artists, built with settlement funds from her federal civil rights case, Lee v. Intercruises, and later extended through a dedicated Wagenknecht Auctions event. Her work with the gallery and its artists was also featured in a television interview.

• Wagenknecht Society for Marine Conservation Inc., initiated after the rescue of hermit crabs.

• BrainNForce, a now-defunct neurodivergent-centered platform borne from her experiences within academia.

Operating not merely as a creator, but as a steward of transmissions that bridge disciplines and centuries, she works under the name Ab Aeterno (AA). This same custodial impulse shaped her long-term assembly of rare books, manuscripts, maps, scientific instruments, and historical material.

Over time, that archive developed into The Major André Collection™, an independent museum and research institution devoted to the preservation, study, and interpretation of Major John André and the wider intellectual world in which he lived. Its development is supported by her partner, U. Wolfgang Wagenknecht—a former Minentaucher (German naval mine-clearance diver), director, and screenwriter.

Approaching the Collection as both a scholarly undertaking and an act of custodial repair, Wagenknecht preserves material across multiple centuries as evidence of the complex intellectual worlds that history too often simplifies.

Additional & Forthcoming Work

In addition to the work above, Wagenknecht is developing projects for the screen exploring the structural echoes connecting 1780 ⟷ 2026.

The first installment is Forever is Also Now.