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User Manifesto: Borough Road Collection Archive

“When there are no clear boundaries, routines and institutional practices to produce forms of art, subjects and knowledge such as the ones we are used to knowing, it is what we, as part of computational matter, strive for, produce and sense out, that becomes.” (p. 31, Speculative Scenarios, “Light Heavy Weight Curating” by Olga Goriunova)

The Borough Road Digital Archive would like to invite you, our network Users, to participate in building the archive together! Join us to co-write: the User Manifesto

You co-create the meaning of the archive through your networked engagement. We offer the Borough Road Digital Archive up to the network to use, edit, transform, and share. 

Join us Friday November, 6th 1pm(BST) for a virtual happening to kick-off the live User Manifesto document. Say hello, share resources, ask questions, and think together on co-producing your User Manifesto in an accessible, chat format.

In this networked, digital space, you are not a passive audience, but one element of an ever-shifting assemblage of human and non-human users who bring the visual image to (digital) life.

Curators Kelly Rappleye and Theresa Kneppers want to explore with you, produce with you, and think with you to adapt this digital archive to the realities of your use and participation in net culture. 

Through an exercise in co-writing a live document over two days, we hope to join together across timezones, IP addresses, devices, servers, & temporalities to explore:

  • Who or where is the network “User”?

  • What if you, the User, could set the Terms & Conditions of the digital archive?

  • Where does the digital archive live? 

  • How can we co-produce meaning in the digital archive?

The collaborative document will be live for two days for any users to drop in and contribute, edit, co-write, co-produce your User Manifesto. 

When you RSVP here, we will send you a link on the morning of our kick-off event, as well as resources in our exploratory tutorial. 

We can’t wait to hear from you!

“Computational matter is profoundly aesthetic, social and luxurious. This luxury, absolute excessiveness of culture, of aesthetic germination, expands spaces, out of which multiple creative acts sprout for no reason at all.” (p. 26, Speculative Scenarios, “Light Heavy Weight Curating” by Olga Goriunova)

Biographies

This event is guest curated by Kelly Rappleye in collaboration with Borough Road Digital Archive’s Head Curator Theresa Kneppers.

Kelly Rappleye

Kelly Rappleye is an independent curator and early-stage researcher originally based out of Los Angeles while currently living and practicing in Glasgow, UK. While completing her MA in Contemporary Art Theory with Goldsmiths, University of London, Kelly’s practice focuses on intersections of urban and digital spatiality, care, and the archive. 

Theresa Kneppers

Theresa Kneppers is the curator of the A David Bomberg Legacy - The Sarah Rose Collection at London South Bank University. She is currently working on a research project The Online Curation of Digital Collections and the User Experience.

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