A new web project was launched last week: CWILA—Canadian Women in the Literary Arts—which offers a range of research on and responses to (including excellent interviews) the current interface of gender and critical reception. The work of over 70 Canadian women poets, novelists and scholars, at the core of the project are a series of colourful graphs and pie charts—the results of extensive research—that show just how slanted reviewing presently is in the country, in terms of how many more male-authored books receive critical attention than female-authored books (the total number of books published by men and women are remarkably equal).
Gillian Jerome, one of the project organizers, writes in her “Introduction”:
“The CWILA Numbers 2011 make clear that if we hope to foster a culture in which women’s intellectual contributions are valued as much as men’s, more critical attention must be paid to books written by women.”
Ethnographer Lorri Neilsen Glenn glosses the statistics:
“Like fish, we can’t always see the water we swim in.
The following dialogue was composed partially in-person and partially via e-mail. The initial conversation was a symposium held at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts between Tania Ørum and Vanessa Place, on the occassion of the Danish publication of Noter om konceptualismer (Notes on Conceptualisms). As this conversation was the impetus for the series, it made good sense to start here.
Tania ØrumNoteson Conceptualisms is co-authored by Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman, so it seems appropriate to present it in a joint discussion. And since conceptual writing is an international phenomenon, it seems equally appropriate that the discussion should take place between an American writer and a European scholar.
In the last decade or so, the proliferation of digital technologies has created an unprecedented interest in the art of the book, its history and culture, what William Everson called ‘the book as icon,’ and yet I’m not entirely convinced that people are reading more in the poetic sense of the word, that is, more deeply, broadly, tactfully, consciously, skeptically—dare I say imaginatively?
During a double reading with Robert Duncan at San Francisco State University in 1983, Michael McClure performed an ode to Jackson Pollock. The recording of the Duncan/McClure event is available, as of today, as segmented audio at PennSound (thanks to the precise work of Anna Zalokostas). Here is your link to McClure's "Ode to Jackson Pollock": MP3.
Åke Hodell, Orderbuch (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1965):pdf Åke Hodell, CA36715(J) (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1966).:pdf Published by EPC Digital Library.
In 1965 the Swedish writer and former fighter pilot Åke Hodell (1919-2000) published the unsettling pseudo-documentary Orderbuch and the year after the complementary CA 36715 (J). Both books relate to the Nazi death camps. The "order book" consists of long rows of numbers, prisoner numbers, followed by a J in parenthesis, a J as in Jude - Jew. Under the prisoner number is a single word that describe what the prisoner can be used for – Seife, Lampenschirm, Grundausfüllung, Unbrauchbar[1] etc. Some of the numbers, and still more the further we get into the book, are crossed out. The last number in Orderbuch that is not crossed out is CA 36715 (J). In the book of the same title from the following year the angle has changed – from reading the registrant of a KZ [konzentrationslager]-bureaucrat we now follow the diary of a KZ-prisoner; for every page we read we get closer to extinction. Or read or read – the book is written by hand and the handwriting is unreadable. “It is the handwriting itself that tells the story,” the Danish literary critic Hans-Jørgen Nielsen writes in an essay on Hodell, “A diary like that of Anne Frank, but perhaps even more chilling. The slow disintegration of a human being."[2] The handwriting is changing from page to page, getting more confused, dissolving into lakes of ink. As were it a metaphor for something. Here is more on Hodell's use of pseudo-documentary.
CWILA to the avant-garde
A new web project was launched last week: CWILA—Canadian Women in the Literary Arts—which offers a range of research on and responses to (including excellent interviews) the current interface of gender and critical reception. The work of over 70 Canadian women poets, novelists and scholars, at the core of the project are a series of colourful graphs and pie charts—the results of extensive research—that show just how slanted reviewing presently is in the country, in terms of how many more male-authored books receive critical attention than female-authored books (the total number of books published by men and women are remarkably equal).
Gillian Jerome, one of the project organizers, writes in her “Introduction”:
Ethnographer Lorri Neilsen Glenn glosses the statistics:
'Notes on Conceptualisms': A dialogue between Vanessa Place and Tania Ørum
22 February 2012 – 22 June 2012
The following dialogue was composed partially in-person and partially via e-mail. The initial conversation was a symposium held at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts between Tania Ørum and Vanessa Place, on the occassion of the Danish publication of Noter om konceptualismer (Notes on Conceptualisms). As this conversation was the impetus for the series, it made good sense to start here.
Tania Ørum Notes on Conceptualisms is co-authored by Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman, so it seems appropriate to present it in a joint discussion. And since conceptual writing is an international phenomenon, it seems equally appropriate that the discussion should take place between an American writer and a European scholar.
Facsimile again
Pt. 1
In the last decade or so, the proliferation of digital technologies has created an unprecedented interest in the art of the book, its history and culture, what William Everson called ‘the book as icon,’ and yet I’m not entirely convinced that people are reading more in the poetic sense of the word, that is, more deeply, broadly, tactfully, consciously, skeptically—dare I say imaginatively?
Michael McClure on Jackson Pollock
During a double reading with Robert Duncan at San Francisco State University in 1983, Michael McClure performed an ode to Jackson Pollock. The recording of the Duncan/McClure event is available, as of today, as segmented audio at PennSound (thanks to the precise work of Anna Zalokostas). Here is your link to McClure's "Ode to Jackson Pollock": MP3.
Åke Hodell, Orderbuch and CA36715(J), with a commentary by Martin Glaz Serup
EPC Digital Library
Åke Hodell, Orderbuch (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1965): pdf
Åke Hodell, CA36715(J) (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1966).: pdf
Published by EPC Digital Library.
In 1965 the Swedish writer and former fighter pilot Åke Hodell (1919-2000) published the unsettling pseudo-documentary Orderbuch and the year after the complementary CA 36715 (J). Both books relate to the Nazi death camps. The "order book" consists of long rows of numbers, prisoner numbers, followed by a J in parenthesis, a J as in Jude - Jew. Under the prisoner number is a single word that describe what the prisoner can be used for – Seife, Lampenschirm, Grundausfüllung, Unbrauchbar[1] etc. Some of the numbers, and still more the further we get into the book, are crossed out. The last number in Orderbuch that is not crossed out is CA 36715 (J). In the book of the same title from the following year the angle has changed – from reading the registrant of a KZ [konzentrationslager]-bureaucrat we now follow the diary of a KZ-prisoner; for every page we read we get closer to extinction. Or read or read – the book is written by hand and the handwriting is unreadable. “It is the handwriting itself that tells the story,” the Danish literary critic Hans-Jørgen Nielsen writes in an essay on Hodell, “A diary like that of Anne Frank, but perhaps even more chilling. The slow disintegration of a human being."[2] The handwriting is changing from page to page, getting more confused, dissolving into lakes of ink. As were it a metaphor for something. Here is more on Hodell's use of pseudo-documentary.