Evergreen Course Blog | Spring 2011 | Reclaiming Public Spaces

Let us take “collaboration” to mean a) physical/active/real time work with your peers, and b) the work or contribution the “audience” or “readership” puts in to that which you and your peers have created.  You don’t know who (b) consists of, but you want the words on the page to move.  That is, you strive for “motion on the page” in a poem, or a piece of text.  Thus, a performance of this text, among other possible things, could be the reader(s) making the poem move - by the eyes scanning this way and that, by the work being read aloud, by the work being read aloud by multiple persons or in multiple ways, depending on how one reads the words on the page.  How do you get the poem or piece of text and/or the person who is reading the poem or piece of text to move in, say new or potentially unfamiliar ways?  In what way does a recipe (like, for cooking something) relate to this question?

For this week: write a very 1-2 page max. “response” to the questions above (due by Saturday).  Email them to David by Saturday.

For this week: read the links below (due this Wednesday):

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175675 -George Oppen, “Image of the Engine”

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/coolidge/space.html – Clark Coolidge, from “Space”

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/passages/passages5/the.html – Larry Eigner, excerpt

http://www.altx.com/thebody/ – Shelly Jackson, My Body (it’s a book, but with hypertext, so play with it – I don’t expect you to read even close to every word, but get the idea, read it all when you can)

We’ll read and work with Mallarme, arguably one of the earliest to complicate the ideas about text and motion, on Saturday.  Feel free to look ahead of time:

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/MallarmeUnCoupdeDes.htm#_Toc160699751

http://www.artistsbooksonline.org/works/loan.xml – Charles Bernstein & Susan Bee (artist book)

http://lowerhalf.blogspot.com/ – David Wolach (altered book)

http://lowerhalf.blogspot.com/2009/03/rachel-defay-liautard.html (mathematical hyberbook)

http://theuse.info/ – Chris Mann (cybernetic sound prose-poems)

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Morris.html – Tracie Morris (sound poem – composition)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKgHrE7OaXY – Rodrigo Toscano &, (Collapsible Poetics Theater)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M4N9olU3V8 – Artaud, Jet of Blood (Ignite)

And what about Cage and stretched out speech units?  Or gesture in Kenneth Goldsmith, or Merce Cunningham, or interactivity & ephemerality in Kaprow & Debord? Or Carrie Noland & computer generated work?  More to come!!!  Even Toscano, here, has moved from the written, to the “acted” to now, lately, the almost purely genstural…

Rodrigo Toscano, from “Pig Angels of the Americapolypse,” at PRESS: A Cross-Cultural Literary Conference at The Evergreen State College, 2008 (photo courtesy of poet Tom Orange)

for live action of this performative piece, performed at last year’s spring conference, watch an excerpt here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKgHrE7OaXY

Dear All,

Welcome to Experiments In Text: Writing Off The Page.

[PLEASE READ TO END, IMPORTANT INFO PLUS READINGS]

I’m sure many of you have questions about this course, and so the first day of class (Wednesday, 6-8pm Sem II D1105) we’ll go over those questions.  Here are a few things to start with:

General Schedule:

Wednesdays will be days for lecture and discussion of course materials, including (short) readings, large group work on collaborative projects, and guest speakers.

Saturdays will be peer collaborative work days: small groups will be responsible for building a collaborative “performative event,” to be performed, read, displayed, etc., in some way during the last week of the quarter.

Collaborative Performative Events: These collaborative projects I will talk more about first day of class, but the two main stresses here are: 1) WORKING TOGETHER, on a WEEKLY BASIS, will be essential to the material each group comes up with; and 2) each event will necessarily have to incorporate text – poetry, prose, found materials, etc – or, in other words, will have to address the central question of the course: what, absent normative definitions in poetry, theater, and the arts generally, can “performing the text” come to mean?

Course Readings/Syllabus: There will be weekly readings for this course, which will be short but at times quite dense.  These readings are meant to interact with the way we, collaboratively and individually, understand and create things.  They are not just supplemental, but are moments of possible discourse, deeper idea-making, appropriation, and development.  “Readings,” will sometimes, in fact, be audio or visual files.  ALL READINGS WILL BE SENT VIA EMAIL & PUT ON THE COURSE BLOG, except on a few occasions when such materials will be handed out in class (usually Saturdays).  The first reading, to be done for Wednesday, is linked below.  I will send you another email this week with a general syllabus (list of readings).  There are, however, NO BOOKS TO PURCHASE for this course.

Expectations/Covenant: because I believe that course covenants, at times, can be as much of a cruch as they are helpful in our question to treat each other with mutual respect, I am inclined not to have one for this course.  If, on the other hand, some of you would like to develop a course covenant, I am happy to help facilitate that.  It should go without saying, however, that mutual respect is a must, as is regualr, timely attendance, given that this course is so dependent on collaboration.  Moreover, it should go without saying that what will not be tolerated is any kind of discrimination–that based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation – anything.  I expect that, as usual, those sorts of issues will not arise.  I also expect everyone to regularly do the readings, have read the assigned readings by Wednesday’s lecture/discussion.  Lastly, a sense of play, of taking pleasure in our own work, i.e., to be able to play when we are together, is, well, if not expected, then hoped for.  Otherwise, why make anything?

Collaboration With Arun and Rob’s Program: in mny next email, along with a reading list, I will also be sending out information on, tentatively, when, and in what sorts of ways, we’ll be collaborating with Arun Chandra and Robert Esposito’s program.  They’re looking at performance through the lenses of experiments in music and dance, with some text work as well.  Our course will in some ways be the inverse: we’ll be primarily doing work in text arts (poetry, prose, hybrid work, etc), but will be looking at, appropriating, and working through, issues in experimental music and gesture.

Guest Artists: we anticipate having at least 2 guest artists come to campus, including performative poet, member and founder of The Nonsite Collective, and activist (and Evergren alumn) Rob Halpern.

I greatly look forward to seeing you all, getting to know you as the quarter goes on, and reveling in your creations.  If you’re shy, that’s okay.  As those who worked with me in previous courses this year can attest, we tend to be a friendly bunch and generate a mutually supportive atmosphere.

See you Wednesday at 6.  Meantime, here’s your first reading for this first Wednesday (below).

Solidarity,
David

http://grace.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/enslin/enslin/enslin.html – Mark Enslin, Teaching Composition

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Please feel free to read the whole thing, but what is required is everything except the section “Composing the Performance of Teaching.”  You can either skim or skip that.  Pay special attention to the first and last sections.

Hi All,

First, here are the readings we’ll be working with today, in addition to the Edward Said article I handed out in class.  These are a bit late, but read them asap. We’ll be discussing the other side of the private/public movement of writing, not focusing as much on economy, but otherness, silence, protest in the form of form and formlessness.  How does translation – now literally, translation of works from one language to another – relate to notions of literature-as-other, or literature as “monstrous” (Derrida) and/or unnameable, not yet categorizable, etc.  & importantly, in what sense does this movement of thinking and writing mirror and complicate displacement, globalization, refugee-ism, as described and analyzed by Said here?  Go and read! And only after that, read below these links for info on this week, both in class and slightly outside it…  Best, David

Paul Celan – Death Fugue,  http://www.artofeurope.com/celan/cel8.htm

Edomnd Jabes – Book of Questions, Read up to Page 20 (this is actually very small – maybe 5 whole pages, as most pages are a line or two)

http://books.google.com/books?id=cOu5tMLb_RoC&dq=Edmund+Jabes&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=UtyFr2NAEi&sig=ph5_-zI9ygjq5gST2QxXtO9jGTg&hl=en&ei=Kyq4ScyhFIKOsQOz9NUw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result

Dear All,

(read whole email – important info for the next 2 weeks!)

Welcome back to me!  Seriously, I hope you had a good experience with Tyler & Adorno, Daniel & Bataille.  I meant to catch the Saturday workshop, but unfortunately, I had to attend a funeral.  Both Tyler and Daniel have said that there were excellent questions, critiques, discussion.  Cool.  Beyond covering any follow-up questions or conversation about last week, below are tomorrow’s readings, followed by the schedule for the last 2 weeks.

BUT FIRST!  PLEASE attend Steven Hendricks’ job talk TOMORROW, WEDNESDAY @ 12 NOON in LECTURE HALL 5! Some of you have had classes with Steven, others not yet.  He is one of a small number of writing faculty here and he is up for a full-time position at Evergreen.  I’ve taught with Steven and trust me when I say (my opinion) I think he is the most outstanding writing/book arts professor I’ve ever worked with, as faculty or as student.  His job talk/interview is not only a chance to show your support for a continued expansion of writing offerings here at Evergreen, and of Steven’s worth to the College if you feel so inclined, but it directly ties in to what I’ll be lecturing on tomorrow – the pedagogy of writing, the art of collaboration, ritual and performance, the private (writing) turned public, individuals and collectivism.  So, do come (not required as part of class, of course)!

Also a reminder that for those of you who are interested in taking my spring course, running in parallel with Arun Chandra’s program, that of “writing off the page,” a writing-project based course that culminates in music-writing performance events at end of spring, feel free to sign up early at the academic fair, 4pm, in the gym.

So, here are the readings for tomorrow (very short stuff):

From Private to Public, Ritual to Perfomance, Sacred to Profane, & Why Categories Matter: A Prologue to Poetic Thinking & The Invention of New Languages/New Collectives

http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com/editors_note.html – Wolach, on cross-genre writing (or non-genre writing)

http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com/prose/PSYCHOPOMP.pdf – Hendricks, the poetry of prose & the prose of the private/sacred

http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com/poetry/decomposition_of_powers.html – Gabbert & Rooney, collaborative writing gone viral

http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com/poetry/shape_minima31.html – Stamatakis, Found Inter-Ekphrastic Poetry?

http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com/poetry/04_MeetAndDanceWithDeath.mp3 – Shmailo, writing off the page

SCHEDULE:

Weds, Week 9: Lecture on above readings/theme

Between Weds & Sat: write 1-2 pages of critical essay on one of the readings above, with the statement, about which you wrote before, in mind “(creative) writing is a unique way of thinking, produces a kind of knowledge unlike any other form of knowledge.”  Email your essay to me and to the members of your writing group.  Also, perform first part of fire ritual (instructions will be provided tomorrow).

Sat, Week 9 (weather and campus permitting): fire ritual, Longhouse fire pit

Weds, Week 10: Lecture on the possibility of new international collectives in the face of globalization & its consequences (readings by Edward Said)

Between Weds & Sat: work on individual creative projects, critique over email, etc., with your group – i.e., send latest drafts, ask 1-3 questions about the work you would like answered by your peers.

Sat, Week 10: readings/performances of new work by students, end of quarter party (location TBA)