Last night saw the second installment of Salon. I still gaffe at the name, esp. when I think about the online mag. I am converted now to this media of group discussion, this enacting of poetry-as-social-thinking, a thinking both critical and practical, and attuned towards expanding and redefining awareness.
This morning I've been doing some research off one thread of last night's topic, and that's around Stephanie Young and Juliana Spahr's collaborative panel presentation @ the recent LA Noulipo conference. Even though Stephanie was at Salon last night, we didn't ask her to talk about the performance, or its fall-out, so an opportunity missed there. But one of the greatets things about Salon, and about any on-going engagement with a writing community is how the mind and heart expand/contract/ re-orient upon entering an arena of common concerns (and some others left out - silenced? or uncommon? - as well).
How do we enter the commons? Its often traumatic for me at first, i.e. i enter with anxiety, with a lot of emotion, indeed more than the apparent "coolness" of the discourse can handle. Maybe it was just my rough weekend. But if I stick it out - i adjust - and can bring some of that raw energy to bear on what - surprise surprise - can drifty towards the abstract and heady, a discourse more interested in demonstarting mastery than in encouraging emancipation and intimacy. But this is a writing community where an analysis of that tendency towards headiness (and the body it leaves behind) is very much welcome, if one can articulate it.
Which Juliana and Stephanie can. Together, they presented "Foulipo", a talk processed with traditional Oulipian methods (ommited "r"s, and n+7), and with an overt nod to the 70s feminist body-art performance work (i.e.: they twice undressed during the talk). The talk itself was about the problematic intersection - or lack thereof - between these two practices, their practioners, and their politics. But thats just an obvious teaser for a piece I am at a loss to do quick justice to. Check it out:
You can find general info about the Noulipo conference here.
A review of that day's panel can be found here.
And, the main course, Stephanie has posted in full, with notes, their text here.
Its been fascinating to read their paper, and the work around it, from a personal vantage point - to read it in consideration of the emotions and states i bring to the writing commons - and to compare its analysis with my own experience of writing panels, workshops, texts. It also doesn't hurt that I just saw the Kiki Smith retrospective @ the SFMOMA.
If I was less hungry I could express this differently, but I am getting a little strung out now so ciao. But thanks to both Stephanie and Juliana for once again writing something that helped redefine (re-mind?) what art is all about for me at a time when, once again, I felt I was losing just that grounded sense of what is desired, what is problematic, and what is possible. It went down with a big gulp of "oh yes" that is simultaneously "oh shit": a perfect prescription.
This morning I've been doing some research off one thread of last night's topic, and that's around Stephanie Young and Juliana Spahr's collaborative panel presentation @ the recent LA Noulipo conference. Even though Stephanie was at Salon last night, we didn't ask her to talk about the performance, or its fall-out, so an opportunity missed there. But one of the greatets things about Salon, and about any on-going engagement with a writing community is how the mind and heart expand/contract/ re-orient upon entering an arena of common concerns (and some others left out - silenced? or uncommon? - as well).
How do we enter the commons? Its often traumatic for me at first, i.e. i enter with anxiety, with a lot of emotion, indeed more than the apparent "coolness" of the discourse can handle. Maybe it was just my rough weekend. But if I stick it out - i adjust - and can bring some of that raw energy to bear on what - surprise surprise - can drifty towards the abstract and heady, a discourse more interested in demonstarting mastery than in encouraging emancipation and intimacy. But this is a writing community where an analysis of that tendency towards headiness (and the body it leaves behind) is very much welcome, if one can articulate it.
Which Juliana and Stephanie can. Together, they presented "Foulipo", a talk processed with traditional Oulipian methods (ommited "r"s, and n+7), and with an overt nod to the 70s feminist body-art performance work (i.e.: they twice undressed during the talk). The talk itself was about the problematic intersection - or lack thereof - between these two practices, their practioners, and their politics. But thats just an obvious teaser for a piece I am at a loss to do quick justice to. Check it out:
You can find general info about the Noulipo conference here.
A review of that day's panel can be found here.
And, the main course, Stephanie has posted in full, with notes, their text here.
Its been fascinating to read their paper, and the work around it, from a personal vantage point - to read it in consideration of the emotions and states i bring to the writing commons - and to compare its analysis with my own experience of writing panels, workshops, texts. It also doesn't hurt that I just saw the Kiki Smith retrospective @ the SFMOMA.
If I was less hungry I could express this differently, but I am getting a little strung out now so ciao. But thanks to both Stephanie and Juliana for once again writing something that helped redefine (re-mind?) what art is all about for me at a time when, once again, I felt I was losing just that grounded sense of what is desired, what is problematic, and what is possible. It went down with a big gulp of "oh yes" that is simultaneously "oh shit": a perfect prescription.
posted by Kyle at 2:00 PM
2 Comments:
this should ahve appeared monday, but wa mistakenly saved as a draft. CORRECTED! i.e. altered in line w/ desire.
when i read "foulipo", the removal of the "r"s reminded me of nothing so much as the elmer fudd-isms of kim il jong in "team america", a voice i love to call up at will. so i drdged it up to help me deal with mary oliver a few days later.
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