The Beehive Design Collective (hey Talan lets get the other Beehive going again!!!)

I stumbled across an announcement from the Beehive Collective <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive_Design_Collective> and was admiring, as I always do, their great pen and ink posters, their aesthetics, their rich informational qualities, and their ethical commitment.  On the one hand, I find myself admiring their tried and true methods: black and white posters, created by artists working in community, distributed by hand.  I appreciate their emphasis on storytelling, not only in their images, but as they promote the causes they choose to represent.  I appreciate the fact that their research is based on actual travel and organizing and networking, and that they distribute their work across the borders they are bridging.  Even their whole “Beehive” mythology is fascinating.

The other part of the Beehive Collective’s work, however, is not simply flesh and blood art and communication.  Not only do they respond to a global situation which was created by the New Economy (in which flows of labor, resources, and capital are increasingly transnational), but their model of information exchange, activism, and distribution makes use of these very same flows.  This is not an original point, of course.  But it is interesting to look at how the Beehive Collective whose chief medium (the black and white, hand-designed poster) exudes simplicity (even if the phenomenon they wish to critique are complex).  Aside from the crunchy, earthiness that appeals to folks who feel threatened by life in the fast-paced, throwaway USA (I consider myself one of these), these posters are practical–the dispossessed people who support this fast-paced, automated commodity culture might not have access to computers, fast connections, technological skills, or the culturally specific knowledge needed to assimilate products that were made for platforms (and by platforms, I am referring to any method of dissemination, from laptops to department stores) that are intentionally or unintentionally exclusive in their character.  Sure, our clothes might be made by sweatshop workers in Honduras, but that does not mean that the Hondurans who cut and stitch the clothes are welcome in the malls where they are sold.  They are not even welcome in the U.S.  Depending on the factory, they might not even be free to leave the premises.   A poster, a flier, a story told from one person to another–messages forged through dialogue with their intended audience–perhaps, in a sense, these old media ARE the new media for an alternative globalization, which is emerging.  They are just as much creatures of the New Economy as the various market-driven logics that build the sweatshops, send the work orders, destabilize agricultural economies, privatize water resources, and fracture families.

In addition to thinking about the lovely bees and their dedication to the life of their hive, I have also been thinking about some questions raised by Sandy Baldwin at an ELO/MITH panel that I didn’t attend, but which are preserved online.  Baldwin asks, “How regional or hemispheric are the set of possible statements about electronic literature (e-lit is formalized around specific statements or conditions of possibility; certain works “appear” and others do not)? To what degree is what we talk about as electronic literature solely out of US/Western Europe? To what degree is it a function of the academic practices of these geographic regions?”  And, I think these questions ought to be answered.

To help accomplish this, I’d like to direct people to the International Electronic Literature Wiki, which presents an opportunity to put a bigger picture together.  Does the body of Electronic Literature represent a “photo album” or “archive” of life on earth in the 21st Century?  Does it really reflect the human experience (or, if you’d prefer, the story of consciousness) as it is unfolding across the globe? Am I a fool to even concern myself with this?  Does electronic literature contain some hidden generic restrictions?  Or does it embody this same sweep of globalization?  I don’t know what the answers are.  But I’d like to think about it.

I’d like to hope that Electronic Literature IS a literature that can provide a detailed account of the world as we know it.

In the meantime, you might look at the work of Horit Herman Peled <www.horit.com>.  Peled, an artist, activist, and scholar, whose work provides glimpses (images, texts, videos) of Israel/Palestine border checkpoints might provide one example of how digital writers can document aspects of the daily lives of subjects in our era of globalization.

King Davin Heckman

I have been thinking a bit about the question of “poetics” and what it means:  Does it refer to poetry specifically?  Does it refer theories of literature?  Or can it be loosened to denote theory, in general?  These distinctions have been in play for some time time, as definitions of poetry, literature and theory have been contentious throughout the 20th Century.  But in the 21st Century, specifically as it relates to “netpoetics” and the art and criticism that this forum is dedicated to, the question, “What is poetics?” appears more difficult to answer than ever.

I have come down on the issue in various ways, occasionally advocating a definition of “poetics” that is restrictive, and, at other times, arguing for a “poetics” that is broad to the point of meaninglessness.  I guess, the question I have is, what do we mean when we talk about “poetics”?  The goal of this prompt is not to stir up ideological conflict, rather, it is to initiate some discussion about the many things we mean when we approach this topic.

To offer an illustration, I would like to hold up the example of the MAICgregator <http://maicgregator.org/>:

MAICgregator is a Firefox extension that aggregates information about colleges and universities embedded in the military-academic-industrial complex (MAIC). It searches government funding databases, private news sources, private press releases, and public information about trustees to try and produce a radical cartography of the modern university via the replacement or overlay of this information on academic websites. This is a necessary activity in light of the contemporary financial “crisis”.

On its surface, we might easily situate such work in the category of advocacy and activism.  In terms of what you see, it delivers fairly straighforward informational content, culled from various official sources.  On one level, the MAICgregator functions seeks to be something other than poetic, literary or even theoretical.  It is highly practical.

Beneath its surface, the MAICgregator does contain the sort of technical “virtuosity” that Rita Raley highlights in her book Tactical Media (University of Minnesota Press, 2009).  While I am not qualified to comment on the ease or difficulty of creating and maintaining such a project, I am impressed, and am thus inclined to accept that it qualifies as a masterful performance, regardless of its aesthetic dimension.

But there is another angle to consider, and that is how successfully the MAICgregator intervenes against an aestheticised backdrop.  What makes this particular piece so interesting is not the aesthetics of the project itself, but the way that it interacts with the poetics of the various university websites that it modifies.  The MAICgregator is interesting because it disrupts the seamless and (often deceptively) innocuousness of public relations, to add a splash of reality against which the idyllic depictions of the space of the university can be contrasted.

To come back to the question, then, I would ask, in a culture where everything is “designed,” does the critique of this landscape also amount to a poetic practice?

Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments.

–Percy Bysshe Shelley.  “A Defence of Poetry” (512).

I love electronic literature because I hate computers.

I know it sounds crazy, because everyone who knows me surely must think that I love my computer.  I’ve been active in online publishing for about 10 years.  I served as a tech editor for the journal Rhizomes, a founding editor of Reconstruction (which was initially described as an “online cultural studies community”), and recently responded to Jason Nelson’s call to launch Netpoetic.  So confessing my irrational hatred for a thing that I rely upon everyday must come as a surprise to many of you who are reading this.

And to be fair, there is more to my antipathy than meets the eye.  I don’t really hate particular computerized gadgets, rather, I hate the love of the thing.  Underneath what you see is a tangle of circuits, twitching with energy that is slowly burning our world to a crisp, soldered together by some poor underpaid person in a sweatshop, and running on highly technical (and often hidden) languages.  For all this human sacrifice, a computer is still just a machine.  It just crunches numbers and does what it’s told.  Yet, we are often told things like “Social networking will bring the end of capitalism!” or “Kids are more information savvy than any generation in human history!”  If technocapitalism is a religion, the computer is its word made flesh, here to free us from our sins and lead us into utopia.

And so, when I approach the altar of the god-machine, whether it be in my office or in my home, rather than pray, I am seized by the spirit of revolt.  Sometimes I want to pull its plug.  Sometimes I want to pretend it is not there.  Sometimes I want to break it, slam its head in a door, toss it down a flight of stairs, and kick it out a window.

But how better to break the computer than to subvert its purpose, to make it the vessel of the human?

Now, I am not talking about using the computer as a tool.  I am not talking about using a computer to facilitate activities like communication or relaxation, sexuality or scholarship.  Facilitation is the virtue that leads to efficiency and interdependence.   I am not talking about smoothing over the bumps of daily life or salving the embittered psyche.  I am talking about using the computer itself to transmit truths which are contrary to its own nature—I am talking about the ultimate and original hack—I am talking about poetry.

In order to better understand this, we need to first understand the origins of our crisis.  To get beyond the various hymns that we mistake for blasphemies (The death of God, the end of history, the death of the author, and the death of the human), we must first revisit the problem.  While many revel in the various clichéd perversions that can be found with equal ease at the shopping mall, on TV, or in your inbox, we have to accept that a revolutionary gesture is only revolutionary if it revolts against something.  The only kings that can be overthrown are those which are enthroned.  And the only revolutions worth having are those which have the potential to fail.

To do this, I am going to look back to the past, towards the origins of technocapitalism (Which, in its own way, is transgressive).  Second, I will advance a definition of poetry (Another sin).  Third, I am going to do this by way of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Defence of Poetry” (Which, as sad as it is to say, is yet another violation of the order of things).  The method we will use will be the opposite of “common sense,” which some will regard as “nonsense,” but which I hope might be “uncommon sense.”

To be continued in a couple days…

References: Part 1

Shelley, Percy Bysshe.  “A Defence of Poetry.”  The Selected Poetry and Prose of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Carlos Baker.  New York: The Modern Library, 1951.  494-522.