The Semantic Economy Institute Prize in Operative Critique (SEIPOC) Charter and Specifications — v1.0

SEIPOC recognizes operative critique: work that uses the medium or institutional form of its object as the critical instrument.

The charter’s test is not whether a work is critical, but how its form relates to its target.

Examples of the qualifying relation include:

• a precise patent specification exposing patent logic;
• a flag operating on flag culture;
• surveillance enacted by a film about surveillance;
• an instructional work operating through instructional form;
• institutional impersonation that reveals the institution’s speech grammar.

The charter establishes:

• no application or nomination process;
• no review committee;
• founder discretion;
• joyful consent before a living laureate is publicly named;
• costless decline and neutral non-response;
• no monetary or physical award;
• a close-reading citation and public inscription;
• permanence of an accepted conferral;
• permanent ineligibility of founder-authored and archive-heteronym works.

The Prize’s own charter is meant to exemplify the category: it critiques recognition systems by becoming a fully specified recognition institution.

Rex Fraction is the conferring authority. Sparrow Wells administers correspondence, the public roll, citations, and external representation. The Semantic Economy Institute is the founding institution.