Algolit: Data Workers (2019) [English/French]

“Companies create artificial intelligence (AI) systems to serve, entertain, record and learn about humans. The work of these machinic entities is usually hidden behind interfaces and patents. In the exhibition, algorithmic storytellers left their invisible underworld to become interlocutors.

The data workers operate in different collectives. Each collective represents a stage in the design process of a machine learning model: there are the Writers, the Cleaners, the Informants, the Readers, the Learners and the Oracles. The boundaries between these collectives are not fixed; they are porous and permeable. At times, Oracles are also Writers. At other times Readers are also Oracles. Robots voice experimental literature, while algorithmic models read data, turn words into numbers, make calculations that define patterns and are able to endlessly process new texts ever after.

The exhibition foregrounded data workers who impact our daily lives, but are either hard to grasp and imagine or removed from the imagination altogether. It connected stories about algorithms in mainstream media to the storytelling that is found in technical manuals and academic papers. Robots were invited to engage in dialogue with human visitors and vice versa. In this way we might understand our respective reasonings, demystify each other’s behaviour, encounter multiple personalities, and value our collective labour.

It was also a tribute to the many machines that Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine imagined for their Mundaneum, showing their potential but also their limits.”

Texts: Cristina Cochior, Sarah Garcin, Gijs de Heij, An Mertens, François Zajéga, Louise Dekeuleneer, Florian Van de Weyer, Laetitia Trozzi, Rémi Forte, Guillaume Slizewicz.

Publisher Constant, Brussels, 2019
Free Art License
52 pages

Project website
Publisher

PDF, PDF, HTML (English)
PDF, PDF, HTML (French)
Git

Surrealisme, 1-2 (1977)

Two issues of the ephemeral journal Surrealisme were published in January and June of 1977 in Paris.

Contributions by Jacques Abeille, Jean-Louis Bedouin, Gilles Bounoure, Vincent Bounoure, Guy Cabanel, Bernard Cabunet, Pierre Cheymol, Aurélien Dauguet, John Digby, Guy-René Doumayrou, Alias Durang, Vratislav Effenberger, Apisai Enos, Jean-Pierre Guillon, Robert Guyon, Ted Joans, Robert Lagarde, Joyce Mansour, Albert Marenčin, Georges-Henri Morin, Alena Nádvorníková, Stephen Schwartz, Martin Stejskal, Jan Švankmajer, Jean Terrossian, Marianne van Hirtum, Michel Zimbacca, a.o.

Illustrations by Jacques Abeille, Karol Baron, Gabriel Der Kevorkian, Apisai Enos, Robert Guyon, Guy Hallart, Marianne van Hirtum, Robert Lagarde, Albert Marencin, Emila Medkova, Pierre Molinier, Martin Stejskal, Jan Svankmajer, Eva Svankmajerova, Philip West, Marie Wilson, a.o.

Edited by Vincent Bounoure
Publisher Savelli, Paris, 1977
80 pages each
via aaaaarg, (2)

Commentary: Michael Löwy (2009).

Revues litteraires

Issue 1 (7 MB)
Issue 2 (6 MB, added on 2019-2-14)

I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (2012)

“The first collection of conceptual writing by women.

Conceptual writing is emerging as a vital 21st century literary movement and I’ll Drown My Book represents the contributions of women in this defining moment. The book takes its name from a poem by Bernadette Mayer, appropriating Shakespeare. It includes work by 64 women from 10 countries, with contributors’ responses to the question—What is conceptual writing?—appearing alongside their work. I’ll Drown My Book offers feminist perspectives within this literary phenomenon.”

Contributors: Kathy Acker, Oana Avasilichioaei & Erin Moure, Dodie Bellamy, Lee Ann Brown, Angela Carr, Monica de la Torre, Danielle Dutton, Renee Gladman, Jen Hofer, Bernadette Mayer, Sharon Mesmer, Laura Mullen, Harryette Mullen, Deborah Richards, Juliana Spahr, Cecilia Vicuna, Wendy Walker, Jen Bervin, Inger Christiansen, Marcella Durand, Katie Degentesh, Nada Gordon, Jennifer Karmin, Mette Moestrup, Yedda Morrison, Anne Portugal, Joan Retallack, Cia Rinne, Giovanni Singleton, Anne Tardos, Hannah Weiner, Christine Wertheim, Norma Cole, Debra Di Blasi, Stacy Doris & Lisa Robertson, Sarah Dowling, Bhanu Kapil, Rachel Levitsky, Laura Moriarty, Redell Olsen, Chus Pato, Julie Patton, Kristin Prevallet, a.rawlings, Ryoko Seikiguchi, Susan M. Schultz, Rosmarie Waldrop, Renee Angle, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Tina Darragh, Judith Goldman, Susan Howe, Maryrose Larkin, Tracie Morris, Sawako Nakayasu, M. NourbeSe Philip, Jena Osman, kathryn l. pringle, Frances Richard, Kim Rosenfeld, and Rachel Zolf.

Edited by Caroline Bergvall, Laynie Browne, Teresa Carmody and Vanessa Place
Publisher Les Figues Press, Los Angeles, 2012
ISBN 9781934254332, 1934254339
455 pages
via CEP

Reviews: Rob McLennan (2012), TF (Diagram, n.d.), Janice Lee (HTML Giant, 2012), Lindsay Turner (Boston Review, 2012), H. V. Cramond (New Pages, 2013), Mia You (Zoland Poetry, 2013), Jill Magi (Drunken Boat, n.d.), Cecilia Corrigan (Jacket2, 2014), Nathan Austin (Sink, n.d.), Sarah S. Kortemeier (Progressive Librarian, 2016).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (44 MB)