Manifesto

Traditionally, .exe is the file extension that marks something as executable — a program ready to run, to activate, to perform. But in a time where culture is increasingly flattened into streams and scrolls, .exe becomes a space to “run” something different. An entry point not into digital code, but into physical media, collective memory, and embodied culture. 

.exe is about executing a counter-current: archiving art and subculture through print, vinyl, and tangible gatherings. We’re reclaiming the language of the digital to mark an active resistance to its total dominance. Here, to execute means to materialise — books, records, gatherings, collections.

In Glitch Feminism, Legacy Russell redefines the “glitch” as a refusal, a disruption, and a possibility. Traditionally seen as an error in a system, the glitch becomes a tool for resisting binaries, breaking out of constraints, and forging new forms of identity, presence, and community — especially in the face of cisnormative, heteropatriarchal systems that govern both digital and physical space.

.exe, in that sense, is a glitch in itself. We’re reclaiming a digital signifier — something executable, associated with systems, programs, and automation — and re-routing it into the physical, the archival, the slow. It’s an intentional misfire: an executable that doesn’t run code, but culture. A file extension that opens a space for queer methods, feminist thought, and tangible media. Like the glitch, .exe operates as a refusal of the digital-only future. We are not anti-digital, but we are against erasure—of bodies, of histories, of material traces. We archive to remember. We gather to resist. We print, press, and record as acts of preservation and provocation.

The name .exe is also a nod to The Power of Three by Experimental Jetset — a meditation on triads, modularity, and the poetic potential of structure. Just like their exploration of language through repetition and rhythm, .exe plays with meaning in layers: it’s a file extension, an entry point, and a gesture toward action. The dot, the letters, the suffix — three elements forming a compact system that feels digital, yet opens into something tactile and conceptual.

We see .exe not just as a name, but as a modular framework: Books, records, events. Archive, community, memory.  Execute, resist, reimagine.