Roderick Coover and Scott Rettberg reflect on the cultural values, political debates, power structures and architectures of exploitation underlying much of contemporary digital culture. As digital artists and collaborators, they also identify aesthetic reactions that actually combat what they critique. But for this to happen, we need literary works that are themselves produced, and actively circulating within digital environments.
Forum Stadtpark
Stadtpark 1
8010 Graz
Austria
From Mai to June Forum Stadtpark Graz and three other European institutions for contemporary literature (Lettrétage – Berlin, Nuoren Voiman Liitto - Helsinki, Ideogramma – Nikosia) will carry out a project called CROWD which will host a literary bus-tour from Finland to Cyprus featuring around 100 authors with the main aim of establishing a more interwoven network for European Independent-literature.
In the framework of this bus-tour we will also make a stop at the Forum Stadtpark, where the symposium Text World World Text – About the relationship between experiment, politics and literature will be held. On two days (17th and 18th of June, 2016) more than 20 authors from Europe and beyond, who are working in the field of so-called experimental literature will discuss todays role of the author in society and also offer an in-depth look on their literary and aesthetic approach and perspective.
There has always been a brisk interaction between the political and artistical/literary discourse. Especially considering the most recent political developments the question what kind of role the artist/author can and should play in a society, becomes even more urgent. Particularly relating to the more experimentally working authors the question arises which role new artistic forms and methods can play in this relationship between literature and society. Can these new forms possibly activate new emancipatory and society transforming potentials? Is it even possible for art/literature to be a means of emancipation? How political can art/literature be at all? What are the coercions and restraints the process of literary production is allegedly or actually subjected to? What kinds of strategies exist to escape from or to deal with these internal and external restrictions of the literary production?
(Source: Forum Stadtpark)
Wandering Meimei / Meimei Liu Lang Ji is a bilingual interactive fiction app designed for mobile interfaces for the Chinese market. This story is an intertext to the traditional Chinese comic strip, Sanmao Liu Lang Ji (Wandering Sanmao), a homeless boy. Meimei, meaning little sister, is an allegorical character and contemporary representation of the largest migrant population the world has ever seen: the migrant female factory worker. Through the app, you can make contact with the character Meimei who works in a smartphone factory in the Pearl River Delta city Guangzhou. Meimei's only technology and access point to the outside world is through her own phone. The social media hub and interface enable you to enter and become a part of Meimei's story.
(Source: ELO Conference 2014)
