May 2025: Recipient 56, Emil Woudenberg
The 56th Recipient of the White Pube Creatives Grant is … Emil Woudenberg!! Emil is an artist and designer based in London, since 2016 they’ve been running Strike Design Studio. We’ve always been personally and professionally interested in the aesthetic and politic of the early internet, site builders like piczo and the vibe of personalising ur very own mySpace page, webrings etc etc. If you remember the OG TWP site, it’s something that has haunted (and informed) our literal existence. I came across Emil’s work (specifically SDS Server) a couple years ago, when we were thinking about artists' websites, RSS and trying to escape the algorithm – tl;dr we were very pleased to come across Emil’s application in the funding inbox, they do so much cool work, and we’re excited and glad to be able to support it in this way.
BIO:
Emil Woudenberg is a 33-year-old queer trans artist and designer originally from Toronto, now based in London. Since 2016, Emil has operated under Strike Design Studio, designing brands, websites, and printed materials. Emil Woudenberg developed an audiobook for SuperHi titled The Website Owner’s Manual, a do-it-yourself guide for creating independent, queer, de-platformed, or decentralized websites. In 2023, Emil created a website hosting server called SDS Server with support from the School for Poetic Computation. That same year, during a residency with Montez Press and a presentation at Mesh Festival, Emil wrote a semi-speculative poetic fiction exploring the Dead Internet Theory and the potential for automated bots to evolve into radicalized computer comrades. In 2025, Emil is set to release Rich Text, a project presenting ten curated works examining the interface of the rich text editor, funded by the Ontario Arts Council. Emil has previously collaborated with institutions such as Temple Contemporary, Sam Fox School, The Bentway, MOCA Toronto, and Art Metropole. Their research residencies include Ukai, Montez Press, SuperHi, Trinity Square Video, Digital Justice League, MOCA, and Whippersnapper Gallery. Emil frequently hosts workshops for artists, including Mind the Platform at Inventory Art Book Fair, On Becoming Bots & Bugs at Hackers and Designers, Decentralized Publishing for London Pattern Club, and a reading of bot4bot during Mesh Festival at the House of Electronic Arts Basel. Emil is also a current recipient of the Somerset House Exchange Bursary.
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