Foreword to "Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe: The Kitchen’s 2022–2023 L.A.B. Research Residency"

The Foreword that appears below is reprinted from the publication, Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe: The Kitchen’s 2022–2023 L.A.B. Research Residency. To view the full publication in PDF form, click on the box on the left of this page.

This publication aggregates materials related to The Kitchen’s 2022–2023 L.A.B. Research Residency, organized in partnership with the collective-in-residence the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC)—an experimental school based in New York City—and with the support of the Simons Foundation. The twelve-month residency builds on the tradition of the program series called The Kitchen L.A.B. (Language, Art, Bodies), which ran from 2012–2020. Revolving around a specific artistic or cultural term each year, the L.A.B. series convened artists and writers across disciplines for hybrid panel discussion/performance events, during which the participants unpacked how the meaning of such terms shifts over time. The L.A.B. Research Residency expands this format by bringing together a group of creative practitioners for a durational period of research and dialogue around the shared reference of The Kitchen’s Archives. The 2022–2023 cycle of the residency set out to honor The Kitchen’s new media origins by focusing on the histories of art, science, and technology represented in The Kitchen’s archival holdings of performance recordings, program ephemera, posters, oral histories, and more dating from the year of its founding, 1971, through to the present. As the collective-in-residence and as partners in this investigation, the co-directors of SFPC brought with them their commitment to interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware, and critical theory through programs that challenge the capitalistic, heteronormative, and patriarchal canons of social and computer sciences.

In line with SFPC’s decentralized approach to education, whereby all participants are regarded as collaborators, The Kitchen worked with SFPC’s co-directors to develop a residency structure that embodied collective learning. To this end, we established four research groups, each of which paired a primary researcher who proposed a research project to pursue throughout the year with three advisors who could offer feedback and insights based on their own areas of interest and experience. The research groups were as follows: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (primary researcher), with advisors Melanie Hoff, Erik Loyer, and Eileen Isagon Skyers; fields harrington (primary researcher), with advisors Zainab Aliyu, mayfield brooks, and Sebastián Morales Prado; Romi Ron Morrison (primary researcher), with advisors Neta Bomani, Ryan C. Clarke, and Mendi Obadike; and Asha Tamirisa (primary researcher), with advisors Galen Macdonald, Chakeiya Richmond, and Tiri Kananuruk. Three additional artists—American Artist, Taylor Levy, and Che-Wei Wang—participated in the 2022–2023 L.A.B Research Residency as general advisors by consulting with all four research groups. Another key structuring element for the residency was the definition of an overarching theme that would act as the guiding framework for the year’s investigations. Conceived by SFPC in dialogue with The Kitchen, the thematic “Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe” poses questions about how racial biases impact computational systems on theoretical and technical levels.

This volume brings together writing and images that illuminate the residency theme and showcase the activities that the primary researchers pursued over the course of the year. Part 1 introduces “Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe” through a series of texts: an Introduction by SFPC Co-Directors Artist and Macdonald detailing the genesis of the concept in connection with the school’s areas of study; an essay by invited writer Che Gosset that considers the theme in relation to the philosophy of technology; and a conversation between SFPC Co-Directors Aliyu and Artist and teachers Levy and Wang that delves into the ways “Instruments” examines emergent intersections between previous SFPC classes, illustrated with images of artworks by SFPC community members that are informed by the content of these classes. Part 2 is divided into four sections, corresponding to the four primary researchers: Bertram, harrington, Morrison, and Tamirisa. Each section highlights the primary researchers’ efforts to engage with the theme “Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe” while conducting research in The Kitchen’s Archives. As a record of both their behind-the-scenes processes and the outcomes of their work, the primary researchers’sections contain a selection of research notes, reference images, and submissions from their advisors and invited interlocutors alongside documentation of the public programs and projects they created to mark the culmination of the residency.

Offering a glimpse into a fruitful year of collaboration between The Kitchen and SFPC that animated The Kitchen’s Archives as a site for collective inquiry, this publication aims not only to make visible the work of the many contributors to the 2022–2023 L.A.B. Research Residency, but also to spotlight what we see as the vast potential for The Kitchen’s Archives to act as inspiration and source material for manifold forms of research and production.