Exhibition Research Lab
Exhibition Research Lab (ERL) is the first academic centre 
and public gallery in the UK dedicated to the interdisciplinary 
study of exhibitions and curatorial knowledge. ERL extends 
the traditional remit of an art gallery as a site for display or 
pedagogical resource, to an expanded gallery or ‘lab’ where 
experimental thinking and making takes place, and where 
artistic and curatorial knowledge is enacted, produced and 
made public.

In residence at ERL:

20 November 2019 – (196 words)

The Serving Library is an artist-run non-profit organization 
founded in 2011 to develop a shared toolkit for artist-centered 
education and discourse through related activities of  
publishing and collecting. It comprises a biannual journal (Bulletins of The Serving Library) published both online and in print, an archive of framed objects on permanent display, and a public program of workshops and events. During  
The Serving Library’s residency at ERL, the gallery space  
serves as a satellite seminar room to host occasional classes 
for university-level art, design, and writing students from 
schools across the world, as well as a regular series of public 
talks and exhibitions building upon the library’s archival 
material. More details at www.servinglibrary.org.

The Serving Library maintains a collection of framed  
objects, each the source of an illustration that has appeared  
on the pages of its house journal Bulletins of The Serving Library
 or its predecessor Dot Dot Dot. The collection  
includes items as diverse as record sleeves, watercolors, 
woodcuts, polaroids, drawings, screen-prints, airbrush 
paintings, a car number plate, and a ouija board. Together 
these varied objects decorate the walls of the library to  
be drawn into our programs, essentially serving as a toolbox  
for teaching. 

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Exhibition Research Lab

Exhibition Research Lab (ERL) is the first academic centre 
and public gallery in the UK dedicated to the interdisciplinary 
study of exhibitions and curatorial knowledge. ERL extends 
the traditional remit of an art gallery as a site for display or 
pedagogical resource, to an expanded gallery or ‘lab’ where 
experimental thinking and making takes place, and where 
artistic and curatorial knowledge is enacted, produced and 
made public.

In residence at ERL :
The Serving Library
1 April 2017 – (113 words)

The Serving Library is an artist-run non-profit organization 
founded in 2011 to develop a shared toolkit for artist-centered 
education and discourse through related activities of  
publishing and collecting. It comprises a biannual journal 
(Bulletins of The Serving Library) published both online and  
in print, an archive of framed objects on permanent display, 
and a public program of workshops and events. During  
The Serving Library’s residency at ERL, the gallery space  
serves as a satellite seminar room to host occasional classes 
for university-level art, design, and writing students from 
schools across the world, as well as a regular series of public 
talks and exhibitions building upon the library’s archival 
material. More details at www.servinglibrary.org.

Exhibition Research Lab
presents:
The Serving Library
1 April 2017 –

Exhibition Research Lab
presents:
The Serving Library
1 April 2017 –

Irregular hours or by appointment via 
www.servinglibrary.org /programs
If this door is locked please use the  
school’s main entrance


----for joasia 

Biography
 
Helen Pritchard (UK) and Winnie Soon (HK/DK) have collaborated since 2009, on machine reading/writing, operative processes, software critique and the ways computational practices parse queer life. Helen is the Head of Digital Arts Computing, a lecturer in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London and Winnie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Digital Design at Aarhus University. 

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Recurrent Queer Imaginaries 
Helen Pritchard and Winnie Soon (2019)
    
"Recurrent Queer Imaginaries" features queer manifestos, urban dreams and the new artificial intelligence entity - "Motto Assistant". As a machine learner, "Motto Assistant" continuously writes mottos for revolutions, anti-facist guiding principles of living, queer love ethics, authoritarian resistances, political movements, class struggles, municipal identities, city planning, art practices, joyful engagements and violent direct action. "Motto Assistant" applies the mottos, as a method of questioning and imagining in light of historical circumstances and cultural conditions.
 
The artwork was developed using manifestos and zines for queer and intersectional life as source text for machine learning and generative processes. It uses recurrent neural networks to train and process sequences of collective voices, as well as the diastic algorithm to establish a poetic structure. Such a queer model opens up new imaginaries and forgotten language beyond the confines of accurate prediction and effective generalization. Incoherent and worm-eaten, Soon and Pritchard invite the audience to interpret a motto from "Motto Assistant" as a guiding principle of how to reorganise your collective life and fight injustices in the present. For the code see: http://siusoon.net/recurrent-queer-imaginaries/
 
Now, start your motto...
  
Supported by Aarhus University, Goldsmiths, University of London, Goldsmiths Digital Studios and Liverpool John Moores University's School of Art and Design.  
 
 ----- short one--- 
 Recurrent Queer Imaginaries 
Helen Pritchard and Winnie Soon (2019)
    
"Recurrent Queer Imaginaries" features queer manifestos, urban dreams and the new artificial intelligence entity - "Motto Assistant". As a machine learner, "Motto Assistant" continuously writes mottos for revolutions, anti-facist guiding principles of living, queer love ethics, authoritarian resistances, political movements, class struggles, municipal identities, city planning, art practices, joyful engagements and violent direct action.The artwork was developed using manifestos and zines for queer and intersectional life as source text for machine learning and generative processes with neural networks. Incoherent and worm-eaten, Soon and Pritchard invite the audience to interpret a motto from "Motto Assistant" as a guiding principle of how to reorganise your collective life and fight injustices in the present. 
 Now, start your motto...
 
 --
 
 Exhibition Research Lab
presents:
Recurrent Queer Imaginaries 
Helen Pritchard and Winnie Soon
20 Nov 2019 –

Exhibition Research Lab
presents:
Recurrent Queer Imaginaries 
Helen Pritchard and Winnie Soon
20 Nov 2019 –

If this door is locked please use the  
school’s main entrance


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Exhibition 

Recurrent Queer Imaginaries
Helen Pritchard and Winnie Soon (2019)

Exhibition Research Lab
November 20, 2019 - January 5, 2020
Preview November 20, 6 – 7.30pm 

Recurrent Queer Imaginaries is an exhibition of queer manifestos, motto writing and urban dreaming.  It features the new artificial intelligence entity from Pritchard and Soon, the "Motto Assistant".
 
"Motto Assistant" is a machine learner, who continuously writes mottos for revolutions, anti-fascist guiding principles of living, queer love ethics, authoritarian resistances, political movements, class struggles, municipal identities, city planning, art practices, joyful engagements and violent direct action."Motto Assistant" applies the mottos, as a method of questioning, revising, imagining and developing in light of historical circumstances and cultural conditions. Incoherent and worm-eaten, Soon and Pritchard invite the audience to interpret a motto from "Motto Assistant" as a guiding principle of how to reorganise your collective life and fight injustices in the present.
 
The exhibition takes as its starting point the histories and uses of manifestos and mottos as operational instructions/guidance for living together and organising urban space. In particular Recurrent Queer Imaginaries explores how queer and feminist manifestos have been used to propose imaginaries for life in cities that "could be" or "could have been". The artwork explores that when these manifestos, these words, are read together they might as Ursula K Le Guin speculates, "activate our imaginations" to rewrite living. 
 
The artwork was developed using manifestos and zines for queer and intersectional life as source text for machine learning and generative processes. It uses recurrent neural networks to train and process sequences of collective voices, as well as the diastic algorithm to establish a poetic structure. Such a queer model opens up new imaginaries and forgotten language beyond the confines of accurate prediction and effective generalization. 
 
As part of their process the artists took on some practices of urban dreaming, seeking out manifestos that are housed in the radical books shops and libraries in Kings Cross and Euston, places that are historically important for the queer movement.  Although sites of historic significance for queer spaces, Kings Cross and Euston are both areas that have been effected significantly by the construction and changing urban fabric of London: Queer night-time spaces have been replaced by the relentless gentrification by tech companies and start-ups. 
 
The seed text Not for Self, but for All is used in different parts of the text generation. This seed text, which at first was mistaken for a corporate slogan, is Camden Council’s motto for their municipal identity which hangs prominently next to the Google offices in the heart of the new development of Kings Cross. Recurrent Queer Imaginaries is a call to reclaim queer spaces from corporate neocolonial imaginations, operational injustices and reimagine them differently for all, as a commitment to queer liberation. 
 
Now start your motto. 

Helen Pritchard (UK) and Winnie Soon (HK/DK) have collaborated since 2009, on machine reading/writing, operative processes, software critique and the ways computational practices parse queer life. Helen is the Head of Digital Arts Computing, a lecturer in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London and Winnie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Digital Design at Aarhus University. 

More Information

Supported by Aarhus University, Goldsmiths, University of London, EAVI, Goldsmiths Digital Studios and Liverpool John Moores University's School of Art and Design.  

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