Plenary sessions: Carpa 7 conference

Published 16.8.2021 | Updated 16.8.2021

Session 3: Techno-Writing

Thursday 26 August, 14:00–15:00

Moderator Mikael Brygger

A Zoom Lens for the Future of the Text

• Dr. Christian Bök, Professor (Level E), School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia

When Murray Gell-Mann borrows the word ‘quark’ from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce in order to name the con- stituents of the nucleon, the physicist evokes an ‘atom- ism’ that has transected theories of both matter and po- etry since the time of Lucretius. With the advances made by Murray Gell-Man in quantum physics, IBM has, in turn, used a tunneling microscope to position 35 atoms of xe- non on a plate of cooled nickel so that these dots of matter might spell out the trigram for the company, thereby producing the smallest artifact so far manufactured by human- ity. The logo, in effect, consists of letters made from atoms that might recombine to make other letters for other texts. How might matter itself become an anagram for such el- emental alphabets? If the poets of my literary movement (called Conceptualism) might study the ‘limit-cases’ of writ- ing so as to undertake speculative experiments at these lim- its, then surely atomic scales of expression must fall within the ambit of such ‘conceptual literature’ (as seen, for exam- ple, in my own project, entitled The Xenotext — a scientific experiment that uses biogenetic encryption to encode a message in proteomic molecules). All ‘concepts’ for poetry may, in fact, depend upon a premise about the minimal ele- ment of composition for a text — its unit, or its ‘atom,’ from which a poem might build a poetics through the recombi- nant permutation of such materials. This lecture explores the scales of such textuality (from atomic to cosmic), ‘zoom- ing’ outward from the Planck length to the Hubble bubble. I suggest that Conceptualism seeks to prepare poetry for a future milieu, where all scales of writing can transect each other across an enormous spectrum of dimensions, from the puny scale of an atom to the vast scale of the void.

Dr. Christian Bök (FRSC) is the author of Eunoia—a best- selling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Poetry Prize. Bök is one of the earliest founders of Conceptualism (the poetic school made famous, in part, by the activities of Kenneth Goldsmith). Bök has created artificial languages for two television shows: Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. Bök has earned many accolades for his virtuoso re- citals of “sound-poems” (particularly Die Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters). Bök is on the verge of finishing his current project, entitled The Xenotext—a work that requires him to engineer a bacterium so that its DNA might become not only a durable archive that stores a poem for eternity, but also an operant machine that writes a poem in response. The Utne Reader has identified Bök as one of the “50 Vi- sionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” Bök teaches in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. https://twitter.com/christianbok

Session 12: Dis(guised) Writing

Friday 27 August, 14:00-15:00

Moderator Davide Giovanzana

In the interests of time: fragments on performance and writing

• Tim Etchells, Artistic Director, Forced Entertainment (since 1984) Professor of Performance & Writing, Lancaster University (since 2015), B.A First Class, English and Drama, Exeter University (1984)

Since the mid-1980’s I’ve produced a body of artistic work in performance, much of it in my role as artistic director of the ensemble Forced Entertainment, as well as working in diverse other forms and contexts from art works in gallery and public space to experimental fiction short and long form. Alongside (or through) this creative work I’ve pro- duced a parallel body of critical writing, speculation and in- quiry which both examines and reflects on the work itself, as well as transposing and reimagining its formal and artistic strategies for the context of academic discourse.

My interest is in producing the kinds of insights and knowledge that can be generated through non-convention- al approaches to discourse, specifically working via perfor- mative approaches and through an exploration of collage, fragmentation, inter-textuality and the dynamic relation- ship between fiction and discursive material. The lecture performance In the interests of time slips between discur- sive and poetic modes and enacts a kind of doubling of my approach. It’s a text that reflects on the creative work and process in different contexts across several decades, as well as a reflection on the act of reflection itself and an ex- ploration of the strategies I’ve developed at different mo- ments to engage with creative work.

Tim Etchells (b. 1962, UK) is an artist and writer based in the UK whose work shifts between performance, visual art and fiction. Living and working between London and Shef- field, he has produced major commissions for public space internationally and has been presented in museums, galler- ies, biennales and fairs, including: Tate Modern, Hayward Gallery, Gasworks, and Bloomberg SPACE, London, UK; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; BALTIC, Gateshead, UK; Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth, UK; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, AT; Kunstverein Braunschweig, DE; Kuns- thalle Mainz, Mainz, DE; Jakopič Gallery, Ljubljana, SI; Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, PL; Folkestone Triennial, Folke- stone, UK; Gotenburg International Biennale, SE; Manifes- ta 7, Rovereto, IT; Frieze Sculpture, London, UK; Perf4m ARTISSIMA, Turin, IT; and FIAC, Palais De Decouverte, Paris, FR.

Etchells has worked in a wide variety of contexts, nota- bly as the leader of the world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group Forced Entertainment. He is currently Professor of Performance & Writing at Lancaster Universi- ty. Tim’s collection of short fiction Endland is published by And Other Stories, 2019. Etchells’ work is held in private and public collections internationally. His performance work ‘Moving Words’ (2019) was recently acquired by Tate, UK. https://timetchells.com/

Session 21: Forms of Writing (With No Hands)

Saturday 28 August, 11:30-12:30

Moderator Leena Rouhiainen

Servant is now. But what was my name?

• Prof. Maria Fusco, Professor, Chair of Interdisciplinary Writing, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, Visiting Professor at Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Frankfurt Lead: Practice Research Assembly Scottish Graduate School of Arts & Humanities, Member: AHRC Peer Review College Research: Assessor Carnegie Trust

“I do have some dim conception at the outset, one distant- ly related to what I am looking for, if I boldly make a start with that, my mind, even as my speech proceeds, under the necessity of finding an end for that beginning, will shape my first confused idea into complete clarity so that, to my amazement, understanding is arrived at as the sentence ends.” – On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking, Heinrich von Kleist

Maria Fusco will present and discuss the experimental writing methodologies active in her new eleven-channel sound work, Mollspeak. The generative piece, made in col- laboration with French composer, Olivier Pasquet, chang- es infinitely, meaning that a listener never experiences the same thing twice. Bringing the working-class voices of servants, as a kind of subversive subservience, into a mu- seological context through archival research, ambient ob- ject writing and 3D sound scans, she will examine how so- cio-cultural concerns, which are acting as subject, can at the same time structure how a work of writing is produced through active listening. The work’s title is taken from an eighteenth-century phrase, mollspeak, that some British employers coined to mock their servants’ dialectical speech. Professor Maria Fusco is an award-winning Belfast born writer, working across the registers of fiction, perfor- mance and theoretical writing. She is Chair of Interdisci- plinary Writing at the University of Dundee, her texts are published internationally and translated into ten languag- es and she is Editor of The Happy Hypocrite, a bi-annual journal for experimental writing. Recent sound and per- formance works include Mollspeak (2020), an eleven-chan- nel sound installation in the Museum of Home; ECZEMA! (2018) a touring performance commissioned by National Theatre Wales to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service, and Master Rock, a repertoire for a mountain, performed and recorded inside a granite mountain on the west coast of Scotland commissioned by Artangel and BBC Radio 4. Her latest books are Give Up Art (2018), collected critical writings, of which Lisa Robertson has said “Fusco’s scintillating mobility invites us to savour a new kind of critical empathy” and Legend of the Necessary Dreamer (2017) an ambient novella described by Chris Kraus as “a new classic of female philosophical writing”. She is currently working on a new hybrid opera about the peacelines in her hometown, Belfast, supported by the Royal Opera House, London and The Abbey Theatre, Dublin. http://mariafusco.net/.