technologies of writing
30th October, 11:00 am – 05:00 pm
SAVVY Contemporary (Plantagenstraße 31, 13347 Berlin)
“In this age of information overload, only physical commitment is meaningful. In this age of information overload, what is significant is not freedom of ideas, but rather freedom of form” (Stelarc)
“Writing is pre-eminently the technology of cyborgs, etched surfaces of the late twentieth century. Cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism. That is why cyborg politics insist on noise and advocate pollution, rejoicing in the illegitimate fusions of animal and machine.” (The Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway)
Technology is the active human interface with the material world. Thumbs, rock, paper, scissors and iphone screens, all surfaces upon which the different spheres of life intersect and transactions of all sort take place. As technologies, the rock is the site where the bone meets its fracture –real or imagined– and the teeth, the platform where a group of archaeologists negotiate the sex of the skeleton or where words find the hardness of their forms. Despite of the form it takes, understood as an interface, technology promises the possibility of a future in which a relation, never before imagined –or maybe perhaps only imagined–, can be realized. In short, it promises survival. But, what exact set of ideas, ideologies or identities does technology aid in survival? What kind of future does the quest for technology hold?
The laboratory technologies of writing brings together 8 different poets with the sole invitation to dismember and un-think together the technology of the English language. Together with the public, they will explore the possibility of a kind of writing practice that is corruptive and dissociative; that defies the promise of pure meaning (for survival’s aid) and the word and language as constitutive wholes. The question posed to them is whether we can imagine a language technology which instead of promising clear communication turns to contradiction, nonsense and disassociation in the attempt to clear the ground for something else to emerge.
This day-long workshop will bring together a diverse group of Berlin-based authors and artists who will be invited and participating, but the workshop is also open to the audience. All material that results from the workshop will be presented at an exhibition the following weekend.
(lunch break 13:00 – 14:00)
Our invited writers are:
Marie-Pascale Hardy (Canada)
Alan Mills (Guatemala)
Sarnath Banerjee (India)
Göksu Kunak (Turkey)
Jane Flett (UK)
Kenny Fries (USA)
John K. Peck (USA)
Find out more about the writers and the workshops here.