There it is. The two points that keep me traveling back and forth between the literary and design worlds and matchmaking collaborations.
Many solid experiments with such commingling were on display at &Now.
Personal First Impressions
It's been a while since I've been in a literary setting (and this one was much more fun and lively than the usual) I tried to use that freshness to make some simple observations.
1_ Not many of us are interested in this kind of writing.
2_Across the board, across age, medium and strategy, there is a pretty consistent writing style here -- a flat, pseudo-scientific or pseudo-historical prose with few rhythmic changes to break the smooth surface. Like a style that has forgotten that it began as a parody. Little variety in sentence structure. A specialized Literary Vocabulary used only in work like this. The flat style feels to me like it's used to distance writer and reader from emotion, as though emotion can only be handled through a heavy fire-suit with yard-long tongs. I was going: I want Speedos and bikinis! Hugs and kisses! I want confetti! Extravagance! Baroque style! Generosity! Jokes and stunts! Color and drumming! Silliness-and-seriousness, rather than seriousness-and-seriousness.
3_As people, the writers seem like a group of courageous shy people.
4_The Norwegian student who traveled all the way from Oslo for the festival was quite surprised that nearly all the writers earned their livings by teaching at the university level.
Baja
David Matlin (whose reading I missed, unfortunately) spoke eloquently over breakfast of the cultural energy of the Northern Baja California region of Mexico, particularly the cities of Tijuana and Mexicali. Adds to the list of clues that makes SW California / NW Baja sound very happening these days.
Delightful Surprise
A wonderful discovery of the festival for me was the painting of Maria Tomasula, which some of us got to see during one of the two parties held on festival nights at Casa Tomasula. Precise, eerie, smart, haunting, the panels occasioned lively conversation and a chorus of oohs and ahhs. She has a show coming up soon.
Martone-isms
Author Michael Martone read his hip-pocket definition of Postmodernism = the shocking of the avant garde by the middle class (e.g. Jerry Springer, et al.) Nice quip. It struck me overall at the conference that there was a danger of believing that one's education in historic avant gardes somehow confers automatic avant garde status on one's own work. For all the quirky craftsmanship and dedicated pursuit of weirdness in the &Now Festival writing, this particular avant garde still seemed to me to be pretty much in the caboose of culture.
Martone also has developed a nice image of universities as "cold storage" for cultural practices (like the cold storage for nearly-eliminated diseases the government doesn't quite want to get rid of yet). Reminded me of my old vision of Grand Opera performances, and certain poetry readings as "historical reenactments" of a once-living art form (a la reenactments of Civil War Battles).
Big Picture
Eduardo Kac's short, but punchy, presentation ---- a speculative list of possible bio-literary projects like texts written in bee-dance language for an audience of bees, or molecules created to spell words, or texts translated into DNA sequences and then read back generations later --- was refreshing.
After a couple of decades of computing science being the pet scientific discipline of progressive writers --- what one might call the Space Age --- biology is now the pet scientific discipline of progressive writers; in particular 1) genomics, and 2) the neuroscience of emotion; Literature as an elaborate method for triggering the production of seratonin and dopamine.
What this may mean in practical terms is that presentations of computer-based or computer-assisted literature may no longer begin with descriptions of the technology, but will launch right into performance, mood and story. The computer itself is moving into the background as a tool or substrate.
CGP
What makes Larry McCaffery different from so many critics is his ATTITUDE of CGP --- Curiosity, Generosity, Playfulness. It's refreshing. |