summary: XPUB and Varia are delighted to invite you to this double launch of the publications *Learning How to Walk While Catwalking* and *Vernaculars come to matter* on Friday the 17th of December.
XPUB and Varia are delighted to invite you to this double launch of the publications *Learning How to Walk While Catwalking* and *Vernaculars come to matter*.
The starting point for these publications is the project *VLTK*, a Vernacular Language Toolkit in the making by Cristina Cochior, Manetta Berends and Sofia Boschat-Thorez. During XPUB's trimester project, the Special Issue 16, Cristina Cochior has channeled VLTK research threads as a guest tutor.
XPUB (the Experimental Publishing master from Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy) welcomes you to the Special Issue 16 on vernacular language processing: *Learning How to Walk while Catwalking*. Our Special Issue is a toolkit to mess around with language. We want to legitimize failures and amatorial practices by proposing a more vernacular understanding of language through these tools.
We decided to release the Special Issue 16 toolkit in the form of an API (Application Programming Interface). APIs organise and serve data on the Internet; what is not always evident is that they facilitate exchange of information following mainly commercial purposes. However, our API is an attempt at a more critical and vernacular (personal) approach to such model of distribution.
**ONLINE**: From 13.00 to 17.00, the website of our Special Issue 16 will go on EVENT-MODE: special content will be available ON-THAT-DAY-ONLY™ giving you more insight on our process. You are welcome to navigate our tools from wherever you are in the Whole Wide World. From 16:00 to 17:00, there will be an online chat where you can ask us questions.
**IN PERSON**: From 13.00 to 17.00, join us IRL at Varia for some experimental street get together. Due to the current COVID-19 regulations, XPUB and Varia cannot welcome you inside, but we are happy to meet with you at safe distance on the streets and share a warm drink and some snacks. Hand sanitizers will be made available on site. Please be mindful of your well-being and others' and stay home if you are sick or present one or more of the corona symptoms. We are required to run this activity as a 2G event, so we kindly ask you to show a coronavirus entry pass at the entrance, in accordance with the COVID-19 regulations of the Dutch government and Hogeschool Rotterdam.
This Special Issue was created by Gersande Schellinx, Mitsa (Dimitra Chaida), Erica Gargaglione, Kamo (Francesco Luzzana), Chaeyoung Kim, Emma Prato, Myriam Schöb, Supisara Burapachaisri, Jian Haake, Ål Nik (Alexandra Nikolova), Kimberley Cosmilla, Carmen Gray in collaboration with Experimental Publishing (XPUB) staff.
What is the role of the vernacular in language and technology? We invite you to join us online for the launch of *Vernaculars come to matter* which brings together a range of stories and practices that address this question.
In this publication, the vernacular appears in the counterdictionaries and formatterings of language; as a plurivocal remix bringing together recycled skills, diskarte practices, and humble templates; at eye level in the reverse diasporic circulation of Dutch-Turkish street typography; as an ongoing struggle with bureaucratic rigidity while transitioning gender or name; as a way to navigate the Leftove.rs archive of MayDay Rooms, where the ephemera of radical, anti-oppressive, and working class movements requires a very particular attention; or in the attitudes of photo editing software, such as ImageMagick, manifested as software culture.
*Vernaculars come to matter* is edited by Cristina Cochior, Sofia Boschat-Thorez, and Manetta Berends with contributions from Cengiz Mengüç, Clara Balaguer, Michael Murtaugh, Ren Loren Britton, and Rosemary Grennan. During this launch, the contributors will introduce their work and talk about different forms of vernacular culture.
