Michael Joyce, "Reading by Michael Joyce from -Remedia: A Picaresque- "
-Remedia: A Picaresque- will be launched in September 2018 by Steerage Press. It has been described as "a [reinvention of] the genre of the picaresque novel in a mode suited to the 21st century. With a light touch and sure sense of prose rhythm, he introduces a leitmotif of randomly appearing doorways, thresholds into and out of the world, to puncture the narrative space of this engaging [novel]." -Johanna Drucker (Please see attachment for more information about the novel.)
Nick Montfort, "Sizecoded Commodore 64 Concrete"
I propose to screen executable concrete poems I have written for the Commodore 64, in BASIC and in 6502 assembly language, in a performance that relates to the framework of DJ and VJ media presentation. These programs will run, producing visuals and sound. I won't deliver a talk or offer banter. I'll show a set of one-line BASIC Programs “after artists,” including “After Barnett Newman,” “After Damien Hirst,” “After François Morellet,” “After Jasper Johns,” and “Zen for Commodore 64,” all part of the Boston exhibit Programs at an Exhibition, along with the new “After Glenn Ligon.” Also, I'll show one-liners “for poets,” including “Answers to ‘Legion’ for Craig Dworkin,” “Islets for J. R. Carpenter,” “MEM for Steven Zultanski,” “OR ABLE for Amaranth Borsuk,” “The Tapeworm Engine for Darren Wershler,” and “Voyelles for Christian Bök.” Finally, I'll run short program I wrote in assembly language, including “PET Codes” and “Running All Night” (128 bytes), “Traumaphore” (64 bytes), and “Chronon” (32 bytes). I do visualizations for music (DJs, chiptune musicians, livecoded music) using a pair of stock Commodore 64s with a monitor and a video switch. I turn these on and write BASIC programs from scratch, coding on one while displaying the output of a just-completed running program on the other. I will use this setup but will load these programs, also offering explanatory titles.
Barrett Watten, “The Poetics of S P L M N T and _The Annotated ‘Plan B’_”
I am in the initial stages of organizing a new publication project, titled _S P L M N T_, which follows the series of publication platforms I have completed over several decades: _This_, This Press, _Poetics Journal_, and _The Grand Piano_. These projects began by focusing on language-centered formal innovation, then on writings in poetics, and finally on multi-authored writing in a hybrid form of serial narrative. S P L M N T will follow this series by developing a platform for discontinuous experiments in hybrid poetic forms that will, in every instance, explore a faultline between binary oppositions, including: poetry/prose; primary text/interpretive framework; generational divides; gender/ethnic binaries; translational and transnational projects. . . . My intention is to publish _The Annotated “Plan B”_ to coincide with the rollout of the publication project overall and also with the &Now conference. The poem was written immediately after the 2016 election and explores a poetics that refuses to “normalize” the results; it draws from my decades-long experience of “coming to terms with the past” in Germany, and uses the key term _Gleichschaltung_ (switching over; conformity) that was employed in March–April 1993. The translational possibilities of the poem explores the latent fascism congealed within the deformed use of language we have been and are subject to. The poem has now been translated into German and French; when preparing the work for French translation I produced a 50-page, stanza-by-stanza gloss of the poem for the translator. . . . For my presentation at &Now, and depending on the appropriate context, I will explain the publishing project of _S P L M N T_, talk about how _The Annotated “Plan B”_ is the kind of project I want to develop, and read from the poem, translations, annotations—whatever there is time for. As it proved impracticable to organize a multi-author session, I am applying as an individual, and will be happy to present in whatever format is appropriate.
