Itch Away blog

[...T]here seems to be a necessary hope that pointing to language itself (particularly the language of war, media, and politics) is a first step toward action and change. But in what ways is that pointing poethical?¹

In this essay from Jacket 32 (part of the “Pressure to Experiment” feature from the issue), Osman weighs up differing approaches to realising formally procedurally composed texts, prompting questions of the aesthetic and formal (intrinsic to) social placement of poetic ‘found’ texts.

Cecilia Vicuña’s statement that

The media and the [political, social, and economic] powers have found a way to speak about democracy as if it were a given, something that is already here. That’s a substitution of reality. It represents a desire to see an image instead of what is real.²

is interesting given the differences of approach she has to Alfredo Jaar’s work:

I don’t see the point of utilizing the language of publicity to go against publicity. For me, his visual approach simply gets absorbed by the current system of knowledge. Shiny photos of pain do not question pain.³

I’m not so sure I agree entirely with this statement.  Jaar’s images present stark dichotomies with fairly easy-to-interpret implications as a result.  For want of a better word, there’s no ‘trick’ here, which could use absorption to point towards the substitutions of reality Vicuña has discussed.

Can formal and aesthetic contexts too be treated as ‘found’ material in the same way as textual material?  In addition to stripping context (Goldmsith’s ‘nude media’ approach) or creating overtly opposition formal situations, a tweaked kind of détournement comes to mind as another alternative, in which the passive consumption through the aesthetics of new-media-based texts might actually be advantageous when placed in tension with its content. A method of drawing one into the pointing.  Straightforward reactive statements, decontextualised / recontextualised news bytes are all very good, but how might certain levels of subtlety, inviting a culturally specified form of reading, be more effective precisely through a level of formal and implied textual transparency, a (largely false) return to a tradition, as a site for reinterpreting a text in a digital context where collage-based approaches to reading are common, and where one might point to the transparency from within transparency? I wonder how this might too constitute a poethic approach.

1. Osman, Jena, “Is Poetry the News?: The Poethics of the Found Text,” paragraph 8, from Jacket, 32 (April 2007). http://jacketmagazine.com/32/p-osman.shtml (accessed 17 July 2008) [↩]
2. Ibid., paragraph 23 [↩]
3. Ibid., paragraph 27 [↩]

Even in the 3 years I’ve webmastered How2, I’ve noticed more and more in the way of potential for interaction with some of its features. As of the past few issues, this is not solely possible through writing postcards; Jena Osman’s Public Figures work featured in Volume 3, Issue 1 is accepting ongoing submissions of work, four of which are now up and linked from the current issue.

In this issue, a new piece of work in the new media section – GilbertandGrape’s Lone Ranging Romance 2004-2008 –invites readers to embark on an audio-visual interactive hike, before plotting his or her own route for G&G, through a rather nifty Flash-based freehand drawing interface. Draw it, save it, and your route is saved with everyone else’s.

These pieces, as well as the ongoing postcards, are daring ventures. They rely on the participation of the readership to help them succeed in growing and becoming something unpredictable to the author. But they need you in order to achieve this.

Lone Ranging Romance 2004-2008 can be seen here.

Public Figures can be seen here.

View postcards here.

And pass on the word that with a little momentum, How2 can evolve and expand between issues…!

There is a new addition to the ongoing submissions in response to Jena Osman’s ongoing Public Figures project, featured in Vol.3 No.1 of HOW2.

Go straight to Frances Presley’s Anne R here.

See other submissions here.

Submissions are ongoing. If you would like to submit work in response to the project, check out the submission guidelines, and email Lauren Shufran with your submission.

There’s a new postcard contribution up – between issues no less – at HOW2 Postcards. Add it to yer RSS feeds.

Those of you who are familiar with HOW2 will know about the incarnation of Jena Osman’s ongoing “Public Figures” project (set in Flash by me indeed) in the current issue. Well, the ball is rolling with a new contribution by Francis Raven.

ALL readers of HOW2 are encouraged to submit their photos and texts in response to the project. Send em to Lauren Shufran. Come on, you’ll need to walk off the Christmas dinner.

J