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School

for

Poetic

Computation

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Our Mission

The School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) is an experimental school in New York founded in 2013. Our school supports interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory. It is a place for unlearning and learning.

Our programs challenge the capitalistic, heteronormative and patriarchal canon of social and computer sciences. Participants are treated as collaborators and we formally encourage the power they have to determine their experience and education. The special culture of our institution is one grounded on communal care and solidarity across social differences.

Our school is a platform for people who are Black, Indigenous, of color, trans, gender non-conforming, queer, disabled, survivors, living with and/or from low-income backgrounds, and oppressed to feel empowered that their ideas are important, necessary and central.

Note: Our school has been undergoing significant transformation since 2020. Learn more about SFPC's recent history here, here, here and here.

Participate

We intentionally assemble a cohort of people with diverse backgrounds and interests who have a lot to offer to each other as peers. We center people from identities and backgrounds that are often excluded from art, technology, and continuing education spaces, and look for a cohort with a wide range of passions, skills, experiences, and technical abilities. Above all, we look for people who are open to building a shared experience around learning, critical theory, political education, art, and technology.

more about what we look for in participants...

You are viewing photos from past sessions. Read participant testimonials. You are viewing participant testimonials. View photos from past sessions.

Visit

SFPC does not currently have a physical location. Since Spring 2020, we've been online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2015 to 2020, we were located in the Westbeth Artists Community in the West Village of New York City, on the unceded land of the Lenape people. We studied within the computational and historical lineage of Bell Labs which occupied that space many years before. We’re in search of new temporary and permanent space. Contact us if you have any leads!

more about the history of our space...

All members and guests of the SFPC community agree to uphold the Community Agreement when entering community spaces, both in person and online. We commit to actively participate in the social material of our learning and work together to create boundaries that help everyone feel as safe and comfortable as possible.

Community Agreement

Stewards

Our school is cooperatively stewarded by artists, teachers, and creative practitioners who are engaged and self-motivated in communities of practice spanning art, computation, poetry, critical theory, publishing and community organizing. Every co-director was once a lead teacher, assistant teacher, student-participant, or a combination! We continue to occupy those roles as we direct our school.

Co-Directors

Archives, Communications, Community, Programming, Publishing

Zainab Aliyu

Zainab 'Zai' Aliyu is an artist and cultural worker whose work contextualizes the cybernetic and temporal entanglement embedded within societal dynamics to understand how all socio-technological systems of control are interconnected, and how we are all materially implicated through time. She often dreams, experiments and inquires through built virtual environments, printed matter, video, archives, writing, installation and community-participatory (un)learning. Zai is currently a fellow at NYU Tisch's Future Imagination Collaboratory, design director for the African Film Festival at the Film at Lincoln Center in NYC and a co-director of the School for Poetic Computation. Her work has been shown at Lincoln Center (NYC), Museum of Modern Art Library (NYC), Miller ICA (Pittsburgh), the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Hong Kong) among others.

she/her · email · website · instagram

Archives, Community, Finances, Publishing

Todd Anderson

Todd Anderson is a digital poet, software artist and educator interested in building machines to deliver creative language, experimental internet performances and computer viruses as an art form. In addition to organizing with SFPC he helps out with Babycastles and The Illuminator projection collective. He is perhaps best known as the host and curator of WordHack, the monthly language+technology talk series every third Thursday at Babycastles (now online).

he/him · email · website · twitter

Development, Finances, Partnerships

American Artist

American Artist makes thought experiments that mine the history of technology, race, and knowledge production, begiing with their legal name change in 2013. Their work engages anti-Black state violence, surveillance, and criminalization, such as predictive policing. Artist is a 2022 Creative Capital and United States Artists grantee, and a recipient of the 2021 LACMA Art & Tech Lab Grant. They have exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art; MoMA PS1; Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Kunsthalle Basel, CH; and Nam June Paik Center, Seoul. They have had solo museum exhibitions at The Queens Museum, New York and The Museum of African Diaspora, California. Their work has been featured in The New York Times, Artforum, and Huffington Post. Artist is a part-time faculty at Parsons, NYU and UCLA and a co-director of the School for Poetic Computation.

they/he · email · website · instagram · twitter

Archives, Community, Programming, Publishing

Neta Bomani

Neta Bomani is an abolitionist, learner and educator who is interested in parsing information and histories while making things by hand with human and non-human computers. Neta’s work combines archives, oral histories, computation, social practices, printmaking, paper engineering, zine making and workshops to create do it yourself artifacts. Neta received a graduate degree in Interactive Telecommunications from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Neta is currently an Instructor in the Collaborative Arts Department at New York University. Neta is also a co-director of the School for Poetic Computation. Neta has studied under Mariame Kaba, American Artist, Simone Browne, Ruha Benjamin, Fred Moten and many others who inform Neta’s work.

any pronouns · email · website · instagram · twitter

Development, Finances, Operations, Partnerships, Programming

Melanie Hoff

As an artist, educator, and organizer, Melanie studies the role that technology plays in social organization and in reinforcing hegemonic structures. As co-director of the School for Poetic Computation, Soft Surplus, and the Cybernetics Library, Melanie strives to cultivate spaces of learning and feeling that encourage honesty and permit people to overcome divisions created by systems of gender, racialization, and class and by the trauma that these systems inscribe upon our bodies.

they/them · email · website · instagram · twitter

Community, Development, Partnerships, Programming, Operations, Finances

Galen Macdonald

Galen Macdonald is an artist and arts organizer based in Tkaronto/Toronto whose work currently straddles hand craft, kinetic sculpture, poetry, and new media. He uses whatever tools are available to make delicate and limited tools for communication. Galen has a Masters in Design from Goldsmith's, University of London, and is an alum of the School for Poetic Computation intensive program. He has run community-facing work shops at Yestermorrow Design Build School and InterAccess Media Art Centre in Toronto. His work has been shown at School for Poetic Computation (NYC), Magic, the Gallery (Austin, TX), Long Exposure Festival (Toronto), Roundtable Residency (Toronto), and Whippersnapper Gallery (Toronto).

email · website · instagram

Development, Partnerships

Celine Wong Katzman

Celine Wong Katzman is Curator at Rhizome and serves as one of seven co-directors at the School for Poetic Computation. Previously she was a NYSCA Curatorial Fellow at the Queens Museum. Celine is committed to supporting creative practitioners experimenting with new media, particularly those who engage in a thoughtful and community-oriented approach. Her writing appears in publications such as The Nation, Art in America, Rhizome, as well as in the New Museum's exhibition catalog, The Art Happens Here: Net Art's Archival Poetics and Paper Monument's Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts. She holds a B.A. in Visual Art with honors from Brown University.

she/her · email · website · instagram · twitter



Community Support

Community Services Coordinator

Essie Leso

Essie (Es) is here to be a listening ear, advocate, resource guide, mediator, & anything in between. Please let us know if you need their services and we will gladly connect you with them. More about them:

Es is a second-gen, mixed race non-binary femme has had the privilege of dreaming & building in queer/trans, disabled movement spaces in NYC for the last decade-and-a-half. Es has also worked as a social worker for the last ten of those years utilizing their tendency for encyclopedic nerdism to build an extensive rolodex of accessible & queer-affirming programs, services, and community spaces throughout the city. Es has experience facilitating many'a community workshop; ranging from abolitionist sex education programming to art-alchemy empowerment groups. Es is a fervent believer in the power of human connection, resilience, & the sacred art of oral story-telling.

they/them · email

Communications Manager

Sara Martínez

Sara Martínez is a writer, designer and interdisciplinary artist based in Querétaro, México. Her work has taken different forms such as installation, digital mixed media, performance, essays, electronic poetry and short fiction. Her work explores themes such as poetic terrorism, poetic practices of intentional illegibility and text corruption, the body and the avatar, and the question of the subconscious in computational mediums and machines. Her practice also involves socializing her explorations through workshops, games and materials such as workbooks and guided meditations. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Digital Media from Universidad Iberoamericana. Her work has appeared in Mvseo Privado, Revista 404, Museo Cabañas and the gallery Rosario Sánchez.

she/her · website · instagram

Accountability stewards
We’re supported by the following people who help ensure the school stays committed to our shared vision:

Emma Rae Bruml, Luke Demarest, Nabil Hassein

Acknowledgements
We’re thankful to the following people who stewarded SFPC during our leadership transition:

CW&T (Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy), Sebastian Morales Prado, and Tiri Kananuruk

Previous leadership
We’re thankful for those who’ve come before us and made our school possible:

Amit Pitaru, Jen Lowe, Taeyoon Choi, Zach Lieberman; Casey Gollan, and Lauren Gardner

Work Opportunities

If you’re interested in applying to become a lead or assistant teacher at SFPC, but are unsure about how to proceed, the following are our current processes for hiring teachers:

We send invitations requesting class proposals by current and former lead and assistant teachers, in addition to friends and community members within and adjacent to SFPC twice a year. We also invite former participants and alumni who express interest in teaching in our final feedback form to apply to become an assistant teacher.

Teachers offered positions at SFPC are invited to choose their own assistant teacher from their own network, or from SFPC’s cohort of assistant teachers. While we’re a small organization of seven people who don’t currently have the bandwidth to facilitate a robust hiring process, it’s a long term goal for us to create and maintain clearer pathways to teach at SFPC. We appreciate your patience and consideration, as there’s limited time and space available to teach at SFPC.

We prioritize teachers from diverse backgrounds and interests historically excluded from and underrepresented within art, technology, and continuing education spaces. We look to assemble cohorts of teachers every season with a wide range of studies, disciplines, skills, experiences, technical abilities, and pedagogical offerings. If you have any questions regarding our hiring process, contact us. Please note: SFPC does not currently accept unsolicited class proposals.

Accessibility

Our programs are conducted in English with audiovisual materials such as automated live captioning, presentations, code examples and video recordings. Online programs are hosted on Zoom. If you have accessibility requests or need assistance, contact us. We’ll co-create an accommodating learning environment with you.

Scholarships

SFPC distributes scholarships via our scholarship fund under a pay-what-you-can model and an honor system. Our application asks how much you can pay. We offer subsidized positions in every class, once there are enough applicants in the prospective cohort to do so.

We believe no one should be denied an educational opportunity for financial reasons. We direct scholarship funds towards people who are Black, Indigenous, of color, trans, gender non-conforming, queer, disabled, survivors, living with and/or from low-income backgrounds, and oppressed.

more on scholarships...

Donors

We’re thankful for our generous donors, Withfriends members, and foundations for supporting scholarships directly. There’s enough wealth in our community to make SFPC the meaningful, imaginative, transformative center of poetry and justice that makes it possible for no one to be rejected because of their inability to pay.

donate to our scholarship fund...

Foundation, Organization & Individual Supporters

  • Art for Justice Fund
  • Ford Foundation
  • Jeffrey Alan Scudder
  • Knight Foundation
  • Rauschenberg Foundation
  • YCAM
  • ARTECHOUSE
  • Dan Shiffman
  • Wave Farm


Updated on December 22nd, 2021.

Community Memberships

  • Omayeli Arenyeka
  • Fletcher Bach
  • Christopher Bailey
  • Sonia Boller
  • Lewis Chesebrough
  • Jonathan Dehan
  • Meghna Dholakia
  • Shane Dollinger
  • Yatú Espinosa
  • Joe Germuska
  • Samantha Griffith
  • CAROLINE HERMANS
  • Joshua Horowitz
  • Dana Kim
  • Savaah Lim
  • Jen Lowe
  • Galen Macdonald
  • Bomani McClendon
  • Alexandra Millatmal
  • Ramsey Nasser
  • Maxwell Neely-Cohen
  • Allison Parrish
  • Matt Romein
  • Natalie Rothfels
  • Danica Sapit
  • Brendan Schlagel
  • Daniel Shiffman
  • Oren Shoham
  • Brian Solon
  • Liza Stark
  • Matthew Visco
  • Rachel White
  • Herma Zschiegner


Updated on December 22nd, 2021.

Community Donors

  • Kenly Albright
  • laissa alexis
  • kelli anderson
  • Carly Ayres
  • Ladan Bahmani
  • Emma F
  • EMMA BURGESS-OLSON
  • Ayana Cotton
  • Andrés Cuervo
  • Muñeca D
  • Juliyen Davis
  • kelsey du
  • Chad Eby
  • Rebecca Glowacki
  • Michael Hurtado
  • Gisselle Jimenez
  • Sara Martinez
  • Zahara McGa
  • Rupali Morzaria
  • Jea Muphy
  • Shefali Nayak
  • ee Ogboaya
  • Yael Ort-Dinoor
  • Thanh-Mai Phan
  • Gabrielle Rucker
  • Ariel Ruvinsky
  • Diana Ryu
  • Laura Sinisterra
  • Dave Teent


Updated on December 22nd, 2021.

Press

We’re open to sharing our story with others. For press inquiries, please contact us.

About our Website

Our website was designed by Zainab Aliyu and built with Todd Anderson. It is fully keyboard accessible for non-mouse users. It is typeset in Hershey Naoille and Courier.

Read more about the creative direction of our website here.

Leave feedback on our website here.

Contact Us

Please don't hesitate to reach out to us with any questions!

email
for general inquires:
info@sfpc.study

questions related to admissions:
admissions@sfpc.study

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