OdaniO

statement: Are avant-garde practices still important to you?

Obviously, my work—particularly with the typewriter—is clearly and explicitly indebted to and working from various historical avant-garde practices. It is my firm belief that all writing is writing in conversation, and to work in experimental and avant-garde modes of writing means to borrow ideas and tactics. The process of referencing, citing, and making manifest the ways that our new work progresses and advances the older ideas is central, is political, is feminist, is decolonial. If we do not do this work of showing our debts and critiquing our influences, we risk perpetuating ideas of a rather closed writing self and a rather naturalized avant-garde writing practice.

project: Introduction to Digital Poetics, a story

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project description:

The attached poem is a merger of the classic kind of codework poetics and my own lyrical/experimental tendencies. It is written at first by breaking down the source code of various webpages that lead you to being able to buy or navigate Michael Joyce’s now classic hypertext novel, afternoon, a story, which is now inaccessible on my devices because it is presented in Java. The poem also meditates briefly on the issues of archival practices for early digital literature artefacts and other issues of the old avant-garde of digital poetics including gender, the academization of creative work, the denigration of memoir and confessional poetics, and the elitism of the practices in general.

text: Introduction to Digital Poetics, a story

STARTUP=”afty_title”
SEARCH=”title.htm”
SCROLLING=”NO”
NAME=”afty_control”
SRC=”controls.htm”
SCROLLING=”NO”
MARGIN=”NO ROOM FOR ERROR”

FOR DIRECTIONS CLICK=”Yes”
TO JUST FUCKING START CLICK=”Go”

CLICK=Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction special web edition
CLICK=Paywall CLICK=Paywall CLICK=Paywall CLICK=Go

SELECT=history of this place this thing these buttons wearing away with the oils of my fingers like an erosion
OPEN=memories of taking the van out five times hitting something three of them
OPEN=two doors four doors locked doors

FRAME=a speaking voice like a ghost, a machine
EXECUTE=forkbomb in a crowded temperature-controlled room
SEARCH=denewithfifteencopiesofafternoon

<a href=”mdcoverlyaskingmehowtoinstallawhitenoisemachineonherphone”>I’m trying to wake up in a new province but these provinces are all the same</a>
<a href=”mezbreezeinvirtualrealityholdingmybookoveraustralia”>Applying for the same jobs, the same jobs I’ve been doing</a>
<a href=”omgthebiggestdataI’veeverseenhonestly”>There’s no room for that in here</a>

FRAME=a digital poet gets programmers to do all the work; a visual poet gets artists to do all the work; a graphic designer can do both

To wander through the hypertext as it forms itself around you black and neon green like the internet in a nineties movie, turn left. Turn left again to arrive at a crossroad, there are two
choices, both lead back to the text. Turn left again my father is playing slots on his laptop watching NCIS on the TV both screens reflect in his glasses on the table not on his head
on the table not on his face on the table he can’t see. Turn left again my mother is on the second floor doing the same but watching Friends.

FRAME=six photos of my family on the wall

NAME=”graduation.html” “graduation.html” “graduation.html” “graduation.html” “baby.html” “baby.html”

© perspektive 2024

ABC - avantgarde-boot-camp

perspective publishes a literature magazine as a double issue twice a year, is located in graz (austria) and berlin (germany) and values socially critical form awareness in literary and essayistic texts.