Concerned in part with the act of collecting, this work is a collection of exemplary art objects. It reveals the object as the self's ultimate other. The author weaves together philosophical and psychoanalytical theory with artistic practice. He examines what is left over - debris and waste - and asks what art can make of these.
The first critical study of writing without language In recent years, asemic writing--writing without language--has exploded in popularity, with anthologies, a large-scale art exhibition, and flourishing interest on sites like tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. Yet this burgeoning, fascinating field has never received a dedicated critical study. Asemic fills that gap, proposing new ways of rethinking the nature of writing. Pioneered in the work of creators such as Henri Michaux, Roland Barthes, and Cy Twombly, asemic writing consolidated as a movement in the 1990s. Author Peter Schwenger first covers these "asemic ancestors" before moving to current practitioners such as Michael Jacobson, Rosaire Appel, and Christopher Skinner, exploring how asemic writing has evolved and gained importance in the contemporary era. Asemic includes intriguing revelations about the relation of asemic writing to Chinese characters, the possibility of asemic writing in nature, and explanations of how we can read without language. Written in a lively style, this book will engage scholars of contemporary art and literary theory, as well as anyone interested in what writing was and what it is now in the process of becoming.
"Flame Wars," the verbal firefights that take place between disembodied combatants on electronic bulletin boards, remind us that our interaction with the world is increasingly mediated by computers. Bit by digital bit we are being "Borged," as devotees of Star Trek: The Next Generation would have it—transformed into cyborgian hybrids of technology and biology through our ever more frequent interaction with machines, or with one another through technological interfaces. The subcultural practices of the "incurably informed," to borrow the cyberpunk novelist Pat Cadigan’s coinage, offer a precognitive glimpse of mainstream culture in the near future, when many of us will be part-time residents in virtual communities. Yet, as the essays in this expanded edition of a special issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly confirm, there is more to fringe computer culture than cyberspace. Within these pages, readers will encounter flame warriors; new age mutant ninja hackers; technopagans for whom the computer is an occult engine; and William Gibson’s "Agrippa," a short story on software that can only be read once because it gobbles itself up as soon as the last page is reached. Here, too, is Lady El, an African American cleaning woman reincarnated as an all-powerful cyborg; devotees of on-line swinging, or "compu-sex"; the teleoperated weaponry and amok robots of the mechanical performance art group, Survival Research Laboratories; an interview with Samuel Delany, and more.Rallying around Fredric Jameson’s call for a cognitive cartography that "seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of place in the global system," the contributors to Flame Wars have sketched a corner of that map, an outline for a wiring diagram of a terminally wired world. Contributors. Anne Balsamo, Gareth Branwyn, Scott Bukatman, Pat Cadigan, Gary Chapman, Erik Davis, Manuel De Landa, Mark Dery, Julian Dibbell, Marc Laidlaw, Mark Pauline, Peter Schwenger, Vivian Sobchack, Claudia SpringerContents:Flame wars / Mark Dery --New age mutant Ninja hackers : reading Mondo 2000 / Vivian Sobchack --Techgnosis, magic, memory, and the angels of information / Erik Davis --Agrippa, or, The apocalyptic book / Peter Schwenger --Gibson's typewriter / Scott Bukatman --Virtual surreality : our new romance with plot devices / Marc Laidlaw --Chapter 14, Synners / Pat Cadigan --Feminism for the incurably informed / Anne Balsamo --Sex, memories, and angry women / Claudia Springer --Black to the future: interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose / Mark Dery --Compu-sex: erotica for cybernauts / Gareth Branwyn --Virtual environments and the emergence of synthetic reason / Manual de Landa --Survival Research Laboratories performs in Austria / Mark Pauline --Taming the computer / Gary Chapman.
Exploring the intricate relationship between literature and the transitional states of consciousness, this work delves into the nuances of sleep, from the moments of dozing off to the struggles of insomnia. Peter Schwenger examines the philosophical implications of these liminal experiences, highlighting the significance of the threshold between wakefulness and sleep as a fertile ground for creativity and thought, bridging rationality and the unconscious mind.