Art Line is an international art project running from 2011-2013, and featuring fourteen partners from five countries in the South Baltic region: Sweden, Poland, Germany, Russia and Lithuania. In October, Art Line comes to Karlskrona, with a range of events planned, including the above seminar. Check out the last name on that interesting list of speakers. W00t! I feel like an obscure chill wave band performing for the first time at Coachella. Or something.
I have seen things you do not wish to see,
in any theatre, not even in war. Together
we have seen & done what few could ever
imagine, even inside these dream machines.
The men emerging from cubicles with their
dicks hanging limp & out. Or the couples
fracking with impunity by the dance floor.
I knocked the glass of Nazi liqueur from
your hand just for kicks, & then ordered
another round. O it felt good to slosh my
boots in the sticky stuff, to the tune of
that song about Barbara Streisand. Truly,
we're lucky to be alive (these eye-popping
times, when men & women of all ages flock
from the outlying villages towards naval
bases at night. The beggar’s wooden hand,
washed clean by rain & piss. A mini-golf
course, winking at us all with its eighteen
darkened eyes. I hit you, a drunken man
admitted. I hate you, I replied, only half-
joking. We laughed but as he walked away
he whispered bastard & I had to follow him
to the cubicles - just to sit him down &
finish him off. I have done things you
would not wish to do, in any theatre, not
even in war. And I have done them all in
a Swedish sports bar to which you'll never
be admitted, not even after we have gone.
I have smashed myself upon the cool marble
floor of Stars & Stripes but you'll never
find a single shard of me there. Call me a
foreigner, call me what you will - but touch
me again
& you fracking die.
I realise that things have been a little quiet on this blog recently. I blame the onset of a fair-to-middling Swedish summer, which has encouraged me to get out of the office slightly more often than usual (not to mention the fact that the entire campus here in Karlskrona seems to have shut down over the summer break, library included).
Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking a lot about electronic literature over the past few months, which is just as well given that I’m currently undertaking a post-doc on the subject. I have to admit that even six months into the post-doc, I still feel like a complete n00b when it comes to e-lit. In many ways it’s been a real challenge to my preconceived notions about writing and the digital realm.
One experience that really helped to put my mind into focus in terms of grappling with these issues was attending the ELMCIP workshop my colleagues and I organised last month in Karlskrona on the subject of electronic literature pedagogy. While I did not present at the workshop, I did undertake the task of updating the ELMCIP twitter feed for the duration.
I must say, as someone who’s always thought that the people at the BBC who update the ball-by-ball text commentary during cricket matches have the best job in the world, that I really enjoyed the experience of composing short tweets on the presentations, responding to the tweets of others following the proceedings and re-tweeting various pithy statements.
The problem of course, as with many manifestations of electronic or digital media, that much of the context of that experience is/was temporal – ie, impermanent. It’s impossible to capture the full extent to which the ELMCIP stream was followed, responded to and digested. Nevertheless, I think it’s still necessary to do whatever one can to document these sorts of experiences.
So, I’ve made a screenshot of the hundred-odd tweets I wrote during the workshop. While the screenshot cannot capture the number of tweets that were re-tweeted, it does, hopefully, give a kind of summary which I can look back on with pride in my dotage (ie the duration of my life post-post-doc). Check it out, as they say, ‘over the fold’.
This is the phase you will need to get through
very quickly now. It’s already too late to plead
ignorance, or a special case. You’ve strayed in-
to the grey zone between care factors. On one
hand: zero. And on the other: none. Someone
is about to tap you on the sholuder, asking for
something: papers, identity, drugs. It doesn’t
matter what they want exactly, only how you
react. It must be in time. It must seem casual,
beyond effortless. You must act as if you truly
could not care less. This is good. This is very,
very good. As a reward, please find two single
bus tickets enclosed. The first one will get you
to the station. The second has already expired.
This sound, that stinks of dirty sneakers
(never boots, they’re meant for da smeris
speaks of djungel, uprooted flowerpots
(never flares, maybe strobelight analysis
strewn across the asfalt like the remains
(not the actual remains, mind, but echoes
of tribal war, racial war – bloooood! Yeah,
(not just like Junior Reid, more an actual
song of the thrice-dispossessed, sampled
(never played, not spat by some kannibal
to oblivion! AKA K-Town, Babylon. Chant
(but do not actually sing, try screaming --
until I find myself somewhere in Somalia,
buying Camels for the old man. Slutspurt.