I love the whole and vast literary field and spend a great deal of time reading – and NO, it is not the same as saying I love to read from every particle of the field and YES, I do think that some of it is real BS and could be chucked in the bin without hesitation. It has come to my attention that thinking and debating literature, its implications and techniques (if not with company, then with myself), is a hazard of studying the darned matter daily. It can cause what I understand from some people damages to the so-called ‘lystlæsning’ strategy (passionate or zestful reading) – as many often like to differentiate between reading for fun and reading for learning. Although I don’t adhere to this segregation of reading, because on the one hand I find reading theoretical works just as exhilarating and mind-forgetting as reading fictional works, and on the other hand, I need to deepen my knowledge of a work that goes beyond the singular work to feel like I gain something worth having, I sometimes tend to emphasize the value of technical reading more (if I absolutely must segregate), so that I forget to or don’t allow my brain not to work as hard at pressing some theory or school of thought down on a work.
It must stem from being brought up within institutionalized reading and “learning” to decode symbols, signs and meanings – I think we have all at one point in our life, knowingly or unknowingly been set to use Propp’s structured formula on fairy tales or Greimas’ actantial model, you know, the ones with the role casting: the adversary, the helper, the hero and so forth and so on, with the sole intent to prove that fairy tales are codes to social mannerism to be interpreted in a specific manner and thus recasting ourselves in specific roles in society either as proponents or opponents of known rules – meaning, however, that the interpretation is not necessarily a fixed structure with one goal to all stories. I guess it can be very comforting to claim that there is a formula to literature – so everyone can participate at every juncture. But studies show that the choices readers make (also the critical ones) are not always in favor of the intention of the formula.
Reading using taught strategies can be a great way of reading a fairy tale, no doubt about it, because it can expose inner workings of fairy tales and give your brain a mental workout – and it is often emphasized that the tools you use when learning to read say for instance fairy tales in school can be implemented on other structures in life.
But just as any other process, it can be too adamant and rigid, and cause you to lose sight of other just as important aspects of literature. Sometimes fairy tales are just good because they are fairy tales, because they come with an excess of cultural and personal baggage, connotations treading back to childhood and diffuse hints of recognition that sometimes are just as well savored affectively. And if literature is just a code to be cracked with schemes, counting alliterations and making mental notes of how many times the author uses the word asphyxiate then literature and reader have lost and the first might just as well be classified under the care instructions section. When we are taught to treat literature as code the general reader gives up if it gets to hard (often because he or she don’t know the background, setting, reason/style of writing etc.), we don’t trust our own way of reading (which can be at odds with, if not completely opposite, what we are taught), we strike out and disappoint (each other and ourselves).
We don’t always notice it but we implement an array of different reading strategies in daily life, and do so without thinking that we’ve learned it somewhere. But when the specific term “literature” is mentioned, say someone tries to explain or discuss a reading, rather than opening ourselves up to different perspectives and contesting each other we become obsessed with sticking to the right formula or saying the magic words. Furthermore, when we say we read literature, we often think of, and glorify, the type of reading that happens as a solitary event when we sit in a chair with a cup of hot beverage by our side, minimal body movement, and eyeballs loosely skimming page after page in a paper book filled with specifically fonted lettering, while our brain zooms in and out of the page and links it to the mind, which in return projects mental images that almost always seem to create immense disappointment when illusions are burst at the screen version.
I have come across many (non)theorists that can’t help but throw in arabesque explanations entailing the wonders of this type of reading and thus hierarchize the relationship between author, work and reader. And in these cases the reader often becomes a passive vessel to the words of the writer of a given work: a sort of attitude where the reader is being infused with the spirit of the previous. But in other cases I have also noticed that the institutionalized reader is being challenged, both from within academia, and outside it: some theories bank on the modern human being so fragmented and isolated that it does not trust anyone but itself – and therefore reading cannot or must not be done as others do it. The downside of that is that the human race is also characterized as a social being and so withholding the need to share experiences and being validated or contested by others can seem counter-intuitive if not downright damaging to our mental health – “no man is an island”, if you catch my drift. But the upside, when we count involving others in the process, is that an array of readings, previously found to be insufficient or wrong have gained some status in a previously closed (dare I say, uptight) arena.
I’m not sure just what I was aiming at with this, if I was aiming at anything, I just like reading and discussing literature and other people’s’ readings.
Friday to Sunday you absolutely must come (if you are not restricted geographically or otherwise) to THE literary conference at KUA. The topic is “Literature in the Expanded Field” and there is lots to talk about. Look, read, and come!
(oh and by the way: I am one of the contributors to the student panels – so be there Friday at 9, if you want my pearls of wisdom).
I have taken the liberty to copy the program as it stands in Facebook Events – feel free to rsvp, share, invite, be inspired and spread the word.
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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE LIMITS OF LITERATURE ARE
Q U E S T I O N E D? C H A L L E N G E D? E X P A N D E D?
FIND OUT MAY 6th-8th, LOK. 21.5.54, KAREN BLIXENS VEJ 1 INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND CULTURAL STUDIES
S T U D E N T P A N E L S
about:
book covers, uncreative writing, sms literature, pattern poetry, street art, authorial originality, textual transformations, conceptual writing etc. …
K E Y N O T E S
Charles Lock
Tania Ørum
Charles Bernstein
Martin Glaz Serup
Marianne Ping Huang
Martin Larsen
Caroline Bergvall
Christian Bök
P O E T R Y R E A D I N G S
at Gyldendals Forlag,
Christian Bök
Ursula Andkjær Olsen
Lars Skinnebach
Anne Blonstein
Charles Bernstein
Cia Rinne
Caroline Bergvall
FRIDAY MAY 6 -Students’ conference and Readings by Students from The Danish Academy of Creative Writing.
Dramasalen 21.5.54
9.00-10.30 Textual Transformations
The challenges of literature today: Revolution, evolution or deconstructionof the literary traditions?
Amanda Egebo “What is a text? – Towards new theories of narratological understanding.”
Marie Louise Poulsen “Novel transformations. A historical approach to the possibilities of the novel genre in the digital.”
Charlotte Kirketerp “From author to writer – destructive stategies”
Jenny Johannessen “Reading the reader reading the text: Exploring the role of the reader in the transitional phase from print to digital text.”
10.30-10.45 BREAK
10.45-11.15: Readings by Daniel Dalgaard, Hanne Viemose.
11.20-12.50 When Literature and Image Meet
Mikkel Damkjær Paaske ”Judging a Book by its Cover.”
Shekufe Tadayoni Heiberg ” Pattern Poetry.”
Marie Nedergaard-Larsen ”Textual and Visual Interplay in Children’s Picture Books.”
Charlotte Sørup Lorenzen ”Picture Books and Avant-Garde.”
12.50-13.45 LUNCH
13.45-15.25 Sound Literature and Orality
Ditte Pradsgaard Holm “Tactility as Poetic Meaning?”
Jane Rud Pedersen “Orality in Hans Sydow’s Sagnsymfoni [Symphony of Myths].”
Alexander Vesterlund “The Poetics of Orality in “Vi sidder bare her [We’re just sitting here]”.”
15.30-16.30: Readings by Bjørn Rasmussen, Ursula Scavenius, Caroline Minor og Zoltan Ará.
SATURDAY MAY 7 – Students’ Conference and International Conference
Dramasalen 21.5.54
9.00-10.45 Reaching out Democratic (im)possibilties of literature in the expanded field
Naja Kirstine Kjærgård Laursen “Word on the street.”
Ulla Ewald Stigel “Homeless readings – the literary debate redistributed.”
Ragnild Lome “Literary expressions on Faceook.”
Signe Nordgaard Andersen “Literature to Go – sms literature”
Anna Eistrup “Reflections on Linguistic Consequences of an Expanded Notion of Literature in the Light of Cultural Politics.”
10.45-11.00 BREAK
11.05-12.45 From the Original Author to the Programmed Machine
Niels Udby Sørensen “The Restrictive Demands of Originality.”
Lærke Rydal Jørgensen ”The Art of Borrowing or the Crime of Stealing.”
Peter Eske Vinum ”Postproduction, Uncreative writing, and the Conceptual Author.”
Nicolai Koch, ”Conceptual Writing.”
12.45-13.45 LUNCH
13:45-13.55 Welcome and introduction/ Tania Ørum
13.55-14.25 Charles Lock ”Anne Blonstein: words and letters / the measure of space.”
14.25-14.55 Tania Ørum ”Danish Writers in the Expanded Field”
14.55-15.25 BREAK
15.30-16.30 Charles Bernstein, “The Present of the Word”
READINGS Gyldendal, Klareboderne 3, København K.
19.30- 22:00
Welcome / Tania Ørum
Christian Bök
Ursula Andkjær Olsen
Lars Skinnebach
Anne Blonstein
Charles Bernstein
Cia Rinne
Caroline Bergvall
SUNDAY MAY 8 – International Conference.
Dramasalen 21.5.54
12:00-12.05 – Welcome and introduction/ Tania Ørum
12.10-12.40 – Martin Glaz Serup “Documentary and pseudo-documentary in contemporary postproductive witness literature”
12.40-13.10 – Marianne Ping Huang Radiophonic space/place inprint/voice: on Charles Bernstein’s “I’m speaking to you from Princetown, Massachusetts” and Pia Juul’s Radioteatret (2010)
13.10-13.30 – Martin Larsen “Zoom into the Butterfly Valley – Notes on the Sigma
13.30-14.00 – BREAK
14.00-15.00 – Caroline Bergvall “G/hosting practices: excavations, encounters, the role of writing today”
15.00-16.00 – Christian Bök “The Xenotext” presentation of ongoing work with genetically engineered poem
Just finished watching ‘Ordkraft’ on DR K about the linkage of literature and new media. It was very interesting and especially relevant for me because this is exactly what I am studying this semester. This whole area is so fascinating and there is so much going on right now that challenges the boundaries of literature, how we understand literature, both as authors, critics, readers, the whole of literary industry.
Klaus Rothstein interviewed author Merete Pryds Helle and scholar Stefan Kjerkegaard about the subject, and they talked about the traditional book versus the digital one, the author and reader relationship and what types of pro’s and con’s are associated with this new media for literature to expand into.
Merete Pryds Helle is a Danish author of an iPad-novel called Begravelsen that will be released later this year. It is based on 8 obituaries and has over 40.000 possible combinations of being read, thus playing with the progression in storytelling, giving the reader the option herself to choose how and what one wants to read. She said that she believes that she relinquishes authority over her text more in this app than with the traditional novel. Her notion of the function of literature gave the impression that she is very reader-oriented and has given a lot of thought into how the digital aspects of her story plays out. She also said she wants to be able to expand the field wherein literature can operate and is driven by curiosity towards the electronic devices that surround her. She has previously written a SMS-story, where the reader signs up to get a story in multiple text-messages on her phone. Other takes are the exploration of poetry on Twitter and Facebook-novels. Helle talked about how new media could assist literature in fusing the intimate and public spheres, so that literature on the phone or on a tablet/laptop would move the notion of when and where literature is to be used/consumed/read/acted on.
One of the things I am very interested in and study is the field of the reader – the how’s and why’s of reader meets text – when there is a notion of literature moving in a wholly new direction. In its novelty the medium runs the risk of eclipsing literature to perform its own song and dance making literature play second fiddle; when that happens literature cannot be said to occupy the site of a new medium in a beneficial collaboration. But slowly we are beginning to understand what the digital realm has to offer when we see it as nothing more or less than a partner. It is undeniable that a very big hindrance for the reader is in fact the media in which new literature is written; many readers will simply not have the adequate skills or knowledge of digital media to make use of it. So there is the possibility that there is forming an information gap between those who can and those who can’t follow this progression. I must admit that a lot of the stuff I have been introduced to this semester is all new to me – somehow, much of the “new” electronic literature and experimental literature I now browse (and may I say, absolutely fascinates and engages me) through has flown right under my radar most of the time (either when I have not realized its claim to novelty or just not engaged in it). For myself I apologise that. But then again, with all the information overflow that has characterised communications of sorts, it is sadly to be expected if you are not specifically looking for it. There needs to be more noise about this field without a doubt, because a non-progressive literature is an antiquated literature dripping with nostalgia without the ability to move or shake anything or anyone.
Back in the interview Klaus Rothstein talks to Stefan Kjerkegaard from the University of Aarhus. One of the things he pointed out was that good literature takes into account the media it occupies, whether it be the traditional book or an app on your tablet. The possibilities from a readers point of view have been largely opened up with these new emerging forms. Going back to the applicability or user friendly aspect of digital literature one of the positive aspects is that there is a whole new readership out there that could get excited about literature in a way traditional books wouldn’t have inspired them to be. When you look at it that way you both have the readers you might loose because of the shift in media, but also of the possibility of a new reader whose consciousness is built up and around the workings of digital apps and electronic gadgets. However, he also empasised the importance of not forgetting literature as we know it from paper based books, which is made up of the reader’s imaginative space with characters, plot development etc., and this active participation by the reader gives life to the book on the readers terms. Modern culture is very visual and when new media is used in relation to literature it can also yield a dull reader, one who does not have to imagine the space or flow of the text, because it is already laid out in front of her.
If you didn’t catch Ordkraft this evening have no fear, re-runs are on April 2nd, 3rd and 8th – and here is a link to Ordkrafts website.
Further readings (in no particular order):
Interview with Merete Pryds Helle in Politiken (in Danish)
Electronic literature: What is it? (1st chapter in N. Katherine Hayes’ Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the literary)
Electronic, conceptual, visual, concrete, structural literature, literature, literature (entry on literature in new media on penciltwister.com)
Screening the page/Paging the screen (article by Marjorie Perloff on digital poetics)
Twelve Blue by Michael Joyce (hypertext that requires new interactions on the part of the reader)
This is not a poem by Alan Bigelow (Flash poetry including audio, text and video)
SENGHOR ON THE ROCKS by Christoph Benda (novel with online satellite imagery – the reader follows the journey’s action on a map)
epiphanies by Cristophe Bruno (Google Poetry – you type, it answers in related terms based on google searches)
UbuWeb (a massive database filled to the brim with avantgarde literature, music, film etc.)
Uforståelighed som æstetisk strategi: Marianne Ølholm (In Danish. English title: Illegibility as aesthetic strategy. Lend it or buy it, either way it is a very good introduction to different theories on postmodern experimental literature and reader-response).
Last, but not least: have fun, explore, don’t be discouraged if things don’t make sense (sometimes that is the whole point of someone’s project), read about the works and projects, open your mind to new impulses and play your way through the net. You just might find your next true love.
Last week another semester started at uni, and this time I will be delving into the vast field of literature as more than just the piece of text inside a book. On Thursday we were introduced to the semester plan and the curriculum with bonus literature.
The course is really fascinating. When I first read the course description I didn’t really know what to expect, and only had a vague idea of what the “expanded field” of literature covers. I have talked about the e-book before on my blog, but more as a concrete tool for reading a piece of text without anything extra to it, or introducing the possibilities that come with an electronic book. The e-book has spawned new directions for literature and at the same time reintroduced the book as physical form and an integral part of the context where no text can stand alone.
One take on the e-text is taking advantage of the multi-touch function of smartphones or tablets. Aya Karpinska has created a children’s story, a so-called zoom-narrative, where you use the zoom function to maneuver around in the story. It’s an app that can be downloaded to your iPhone, and there you can explore and create your own paths through the narrative. The story is called Shadows Never Sleep and there is also a demo video.
In the physical realm there are creations such as Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest book, Tree of Codes, which combines the visual and the tactile with the cognitive. There is more than continuous text on page after page after page. What he’s done is he has taken a novel by Bruno Schulz and made his own story out of the already-existing words by cutting chunks out of the “original” and the pages therefore are fragmented. It is a piece of text that is much more, that takes into account its physical presence.
Cue hypertexts and the children of the digital age, children in a way that you get to play with the internet, try its boundaries and piss people off by not abiding to rules and regulations. Today (and I have like 143 tabs open, my computer is ready to give up, and I don’t have enough time in the day to read all of them, so I am on a continuous journey that takes me longer and deeper into different corners of literature+art+internet) I found Jane Wong/Joe Davis with Ways to carry you, and Jason Ockert/Mattias Dittrich Shirtless Others. I will not say to much about it, except invite you to try it, see what you think. And then there is Kenneth Goldsmith’s Soliloquy, which is an unedited transcription of everything Goldsmith uttered in one week of his life. It’s quite funny to browse through.
UPDATE: I keep finding new stuff, but this last one is so good I have to make an update and include it: it’s Seoul based web-art group Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. They make text animations with funky music, you have to check it out. I stumbled onto Dakota (a reading of Ezra Pound’s Canto I & II), which is linked here, and a transcription here, but there is much more if you go to the mainpage: http://www.yhchang.com/
I picked these (sorry) almost at random, just as an introduction to the vast amount that is just lying out there, and all my tabs are waiting, nay pining, for me to explore them (as I assume, of course, my tabs have emotions resembling that of humans, and not, as I heard at a party, fish, who have no feelings and thus can be eat by vegetarians, over and out).
Update: The announcement has been made. Mario Vargas Llosa is this years winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
For further information see here.