reflections

This  exhibit  acknowledges  the  wide  range  of  community  practices  converging  and  sharing  reflections,  tools  and  processes  with  electronic  literature,  as  they challenge  its  ontological  status.  Implying  an  existing  set  of  relationships,  communities, such as those represented in this exhibit - the Artists’ Books, ASCII Art, net  Art,  Hacktivism/Activism,  Performance  Art,  Copy  Art,  Experimental  Poetry,  Electronic Music, Sound Art, Gaming, and Visual Arts communities - share a common aesthetic standpoint and methods; but they are also part of the extremely multiple  and  large  community  of  electronic  literature.  Our  aim  is  to  figure  out  the nature and purposes of this dialogue, apprehending, at the same time, their fundamental contributions to electronic literature itself.

Communities: Signs, Actions, Codes is articulated in three nuclei: Visual and Graphic Communities; Performing Communities; and Coding Communities. Each nucleus is porous, given that some works could be featured in several nuclei. Because it is necessary to negotiate the time-frame, locations, situations and genealogies of electronic literature, this collection of works expands the field’s approaches by proposing a critical use of language and code — either understood as computational codes, bibliographical signs, or performative actions. Therefore, the exhibit adopts both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, presenting works from the 1980s  onwards,  and  showing  the  diversity  of  art  communities  working  in  nearby  fields  which,  at  close-range,  enrich  the  community/ies  of  electronic(s)  literature(s),  either  in  predictable  or  unexpected  ways.  Distributed  authorship  and co-participant audience are key in this exhibit.

(Source: Book of Abstracts and Catalogs)