critical creative collaborative

For students of AHIS 333—transformation and shape-shifiting

As a point of entrance to me talked, I show a few minutes from Steven Soderbergh’s film Kafka (10:30-15:45 min).

Jery Zaslove dismisses this film, because he sees it defaulting to a portrayal of Kafka in “some end-time political Messianiac techno-fantasy” (“Kafka in the Penal Colony” West Coast LINE 66 40.2, p. 47)—i.e., Kafka a prescient political thinker capable of foretelling the rise of Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust.

However, despite issue with the veracity of the films depiction a historical Kafka, I show these few minutes because they help depict something of the social space out of which Kafka’s writing comes. In the good-natured derision Jeremy Iron’s character receives from his friends at the cafe, we can get a sense of the powerful laughter Kafka’s writing, particularly “Metamorphis,” is infused. Contrary to popular conceptions of Kafka as a deadly serious writer, an inevitably upshot of the his role as a prominent (canonical) modernist writer, not to mention the absorption of “Kafkaesque” into our 20th century lexicon. The more philosophical ambivalent, and I would argue socially subversive nature of his humour, is key to my thinking about this short story. As John Updike introduction to Franz Kafka: the complete stories suggests, “Kafka used to read his work aloud to friend, sometimes laughing so hard he could not continue reading” (xiii).

This laughter, self-mocking perhaps, is a key to Kafka’s writing. As much as it tends to be submerged beneath the service of Kafka’s objective narrations and the purity of his German prose, described by writer Thomas Mann as a “consceintious, curiously explicit, objective, clear, and correct style” with a “precise almost, official conservativism” (qtd.  in Updike xiii), Kafka’s (dialogic) laughter keeps the writing lively and powerful. At the same time it keeps it in a much older tradition of writings about the power and process of metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis defined

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), metamorphosis is a noun that names a process of transformation or a changing of physical state. Making link back to Ovid’s Metamorphis and his poetic stories about the god’s taking human forms, the OED etymology suggests that we might think of Kafka’s text within a specific literary context, invoked by the title.

From Book XI of Ovid’s Metamorphosis we learn that Morpheus, the son of Hypnos, was the master of imitating human life.

“From a throng of a thousand sons, his father roused Morpheus, a master craftsman and simulator of human forms. No one else is as clever at expressing the movement, the features, and the sound of speech. He depicts the clothes and the usual accents. He alone imitates human beings.”

Reigning in the land of dreams, Morpheus is a key figure for this fiction, and in fact, we see elements of sleep represented through Kafka’s story: for the mother’s bed-head, to the father’s nightly habit of falling asleep fully clothed in his chair.

The Grotesque

One of the key tension in Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” is between the fantastic creature of Gregor transfromed and naturalistic/realistic depiction of the Samsa family.

The collision of the real and unreal creates an uncanny tension that drives the story. What makes it interesting not that Gregor’s condition and existence as a insect-like vermin is plausible. This incredible misfortune, is taken on as more or less normal part of the families life.

Interestingly, no-one including Gregor asks why the transformation has taken place. In fact, Gregor’s misgivings are relatively minor and have more to do with the strain his inability to return to work causes his family.

The unspeakable seeps into the speakable, much the same way that Gregor eventually enters the more public spaces of the home.

The rotten apple lodged in Gregor’s exoskeleton might be framed in another literary tradition. The collision of real and unreal Kafka’s figure might be connected to Rabelais’s grotesque figures of Gargantua and son Pantagruel.

There is no need of wiping one’s tail, said Gargantua, but when it is foul; foul it cannot be, unless one have been a-skiting; skite then we must before we wipe our tails. O my pretty little waggish boy, said Grangousier, what an excellent wit thou hast? I will make thee very shortly proceed doctor in the jovial quirks of gay learning, and that, by G—, for thou hast more wit than age. Now, I prithee, go on in this torcheculative, or wipe-bummatory discourse, and by my beard I swear, for one puncheon, thou shalt have threescore pipes, I mean of the good Breton wine, not that which grows in Britain, but in the good country of Verron. Afterwards I wiped my bum, said Gargantua, with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a pantoufle, with a pouch, with a pannier, but that was a wicked and unpleasant torchecul; then with a hat. Of hats, note that some are shorn, and others shaggy, some velveted, others covered with taffeties, and others with satin. The best of all these is the shaggy hat, for it makes a very neat abstersion of the fecal matter.

Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf’s skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney’s bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer’s lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of Master John of Scotland, alias Scotus. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1200/1200-h/p1.htm

Influence of Kafka

Despite the fact that he published very little during his own life-time, Kafka has had a dramatic impact on our social imaginary. Interestingly, when we google his name or terms associated with the text a number of figures associated with gaming and digital culture come up.

While there are numerous examples of Kafka entering popular culture and we might even say that the pervasive use of Kafkaesque is suggestive of a general absorption of Kafka’s texts into a mass consciousness, it might be useful to look at a specific example: Art Speigelman’s Maus.

Speigelman run’s with the idea of human vermin and creates a haunting narrative about the dissolution of Polish society under the boot of NAZI. It can be argued that the technical genius of Speigelman’s work rests on his choice of the figure of the mouse, or more directly his depiction of Jews as Mice and the NAZI as cats. Using these relatively benign animal figures, as opposed to dogs or rats for example, Speigelman is able to narrate the unspeakable.

Again we see the collision of the speakable and the unspeakable as a key element of the literary text.

In Kafka and in Speigelman the non-human becomes a powerful vehicle with which to think through a very human story, the dehumanizing cruetly of a modern state.

One of the interesting questions raised by Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” is the source and focus of the transformation. While it is obvious that the story is about Gregor’s transformation into vermin, it is not clear that the story is about Gregor or necessarily that his is the most significant transformation under consideration.

Types/Nature of Metamorphosis

To this end, I might ask what other types of transformation we might want to think about? Family, Gender, Labour, Art, Urban Culture? In the conversation that followed my initial talk, students from the AHIS 333 class generally agreed that Gregor’s transformation was the least interesting. One student likened the final paragraph of the story to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar (Gregor) in and beatiful butterfly (Greta).

I’ve been told that some of the students have decided to write on Kafka and I’m hoping that they might share some of their comments here.

Yesterday, I had a fabulous visit with Brooke Allen and Deb Shackleton’s DESN 324: Publication Workshop (link) and got to meet with the students working on the second annual issue of Current—Current 02. It was valuable opportunity for me to hear about the design decisions they are making and how these work to frame contemporary Design research around issues of Sustainability, Co-creation, Health and Well-being, Interaction Design. The visit inspired me to think about my own practice as and editor/publisher and my interest in moving in a new creative and critical direction.

I was very impressed with the team. The student editors, designers, production managers and two faculty supervisors are working together to produce the highest quality, professional-level work. I have more than a decade of editorial/publishing experience in and around creative and critical practice, and I was excited about Current‘s trajectory and the team’s determination to continue producing high-level, contemporary practice-based design research. The connection between Current to Emily Carr’s burgeoning research culture promises to be productive and exciting.  In the years to come, Current is poised to move into the flow of scholarly research and discourse, because (not in spite) of the involvement of the students.

One of the questions I posed to the students was around the issue of seriality and the productive tension of maintaining a clear understanding of the material differences between books and serial publications—as well as those separating a scholarly journal from a magazine. The balance of wanting to provide fresh new work in exciting new ways while holding onto the legacy of previous issues is difficult; managing this balance is at the core of some of the very best work.

A recurrent problem I’ve come up against during my decade long tenure as Editor of West Coast LINE is the desire to transform the journal into a book. Many guest editors and those involved with “special issues” often feel that their particular issue and the concerns it addresses are definitive, and they fail to maintain a clear view of the journal’s historical trajectory and their responsibility to it.

As an reader and editor, it is the longer view—the temporality of a journal and how it continues to remain engaging and current while reflecting a continuous flow of ideas and work—the keeps us wanting to come back, to keep reading and ideally to subscribe to a particular publication. I’m looking forward to seeing Current 02 and to following its innovations through Current 03, 04, 05, 06… 10 and perhaps, but not necessarily, beyond.

I’ve been invited by Emily Carr colleague Deb Shakleton to join the editorial advisory of Current (website). Current is a print and electronic journal produced by a student-faculty collaboration and focused Art, Media, and Design research.

To get the ball rolling and help situate my interest, Deb has asked me to provide a couple of key quotations and to think about important links.

To that end, I thought I’d offer two that have helped me understand writing as a material practice.

Roy Kiyooka—”the light that obtains in any given place permeates what is made there.”

Stuart Hall—“Culture” has ceased (if ever it was – which I doubt) to be a decorative addendum to the “hard world” of production and things, the icing on the cake of the material world. The word is now as “material” as the world. (“New Times” 128)

Lecture Notes,  English 100 Fall 2010, week 11

Readings:
Raymond Carver, “Cathedral” from Cathedral (1983).
Thomas King, excerpt One Good Story, That One HarperCollins, 1993.
Greg Kot. “Screw the Record Companies, Screw MTV, Just Go Out and Play,” Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, 2009.

Media:
Wilco Yankee Foxtrot Hotel (link)
Ok Go: YouTube Awards
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Catherdral trailer

Notre Dame Panoramas (link)
Sad Keanu meme

Key Ideas
Culture (literature/writing) Material Practice
Text vs. Book (social process vs. cultural artefact/commodity)
Paradigm Shift—internet changing production and distribution, but also meaning and location of culture
Readership—user agents, rethinking reception
Meme as phenomena and idea
Connecting across text / micro to macro and back.

General Outline.
1. Kot’s Ripped
2. Idea of Readership, culture as social process
3. Carver’s “Catherdal” as representation of an earlier shift in cultural paradigms
4. Developing a Reading of “One Good Story That” in relation to these concerns

Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music

Recent changes to the music industry mark a dramatic shift not only in cultural delivery but also its form. Following on example of the Back Dorm Boys, or looking at the OK Go example we started with, it is clear that youtube and google are but two components of a dramatic change in the way we access and appreciate cultural production.

As Phil pointed out last week one of the arguments that has come clear in the past two or three decades has to do with the complexity of popular culture: how what used to be called “low culture” function in many of the same ways as so called “high culture,”  and is in every way as rich. As an example of this blending of high and low culture and the development of new forms of critical engagement, I like to use the Birmingham Complaints Choir.
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This  example leads well into some of the issues Greg Kot raised in Ripped. Its existence on youtube.com, the social nature of the work, its  performative nature are all commensurate with the examples Kot uses.

As Kot suggests in Ripped, we are in the midst of a massive shift in the way that culture circulates and that this economic fact is chaing the way artists, producers, and promoter think and work. Everything has changed irrevocably. While this make be more obvious in the popular music industry, I would argue that it is happening across all manner of media and creative practice.

In terms of Art, Design & Media, the impact of networked computers is obvious. The rise of new media and works that foreground digital technologies are now a crucial part of any Art school.mily Carr now offers a Low Residency Masters of Applied Arts program where much of curriculum is delivered on line, including important components of the studio courses.

Throughout his book, Kot quotes users of the new system, fans and musicians alike. Thes passages suggest a strong shift in the way artists connect with real people.

Readership/audience in the creation of the text

book ? text / cathedral = social process / text = cathedral

It is conventional to think about Artists as Culture producers, who if they worry about audiences at all, do so as something of an afterthought. In fact, as was suggested earlier in this course, the individual artist or author is a key creation of capitalist modernity. The signature of the artist/author was seen as something of a guarantee, a mark of ownership that both protected the publisher against heresy and insured the originality of the work.  Increasingly with the rise of print capitalism, the sign of the author became invested with meaning and exchange value.

While we can look at new media empires that have been built around the writing of Stieg Larson or JK Rawlins as a contemporary example of this complex process, it is maybe more instructive to think about Hollywood’s mega-directors, Steven Speilberg or even better James Cameron in this way. How I’m sure we’ve all wondered can one man be credited and paid so much to recirculate the same old story. The Titanic and Avatar are startlingly unoriginal in the stories they tell, likewise they have a tendency to be somewhat embarassingly trite in their aesthetic sensibilities, rehearsing well-worn stereotypes. What they both do is marshall amazing technological resources and an uncanny ability to respond to consumer demands.

Inside the Cathedral: shared knowledge

This is not new. And I’m not trying to suggest that it is. In fact, one of the reasons that Cathedral is on the course is that it provides an excellent metaphor for  thinking about both creative practice (cultural production/writing) and the shifting technological context in which this happens.

The deep irony in Carver’s “Cathedral” is the relationship between the narrator “bub” and the blindman Robert. If we look at the section in which the two watch the TV show about cathedrals it is clear 1/ the Robert knows more about them than “bub” does, even if it is “bub” who thinks otherwise; 2/ Robert decides to try and teach “bub” about them.

In the ambivalent ending of story, Carver’s narrator teeters on the brink of understanding the limitations of his own vision-based knowledge. Using the impetus of TV to activate a co-creative moment, Robert takes “bub” back into a very basic engagement with the Cathedral as a shared experience or space that works toward transcending the physicality of the house of the two individuals sitting together on the floor.

Whether we believe that this shared act is understood by “bub,” who after all ends up lying to his guest when he says his eyes are open, is a pivotal aspect of the text and relies very much on the way that we begin to create meaning out of it. It depends I would suggest on our knowledge and experience with cathedrals or more to the point, perhaps, the literary texts.

“One Good Story, that One”

Using the example of the Thomas King excerpt from the beginning One Good Story, That One, I want to look at how we go from the micro (close reading) to macro (reasoned argument or interpretation). I might argue that the story itself, based as it is on the Biblical Adam and Eve, is not particularly interesting. What is instead at stake is the way King moves between story and context: i.e., how he frames the text.

With this in mind I want to open a discussion to the entire lecture group.

the inevitable question

Last week in lecture, a brave student put up his hand and asked: isn’t all this technology dehumanizing?

For the past week, I’ve been trying to think of how to respond to this question, wondering how I might situate my own interest in new media while keeping the question open. I think the question of “the human”—how this idea or category functions in relation to the key ethical, political, legal (juridical), cultural, and environmental concern—is absolutely fundamental and can not be wished away with short responses. It probably requires a multitudes of tweets and retweets just to get the ball rolling.

The following post goes someway to provide a rough sketch of what I see as some of the important underlying issues in the human/post-human debate. It also provides a few cultural texts/contexts that have helped me to think about the impact of digital media on teaching literature and the arts.

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a bit of background

The question of the (de)human was raised in response to my clumsy introduction of deqq.com, a microblogging application we have implemented to open an extra channel for students and instructors to continue discussions beyond the lecture hall—extra in the sense of being in addition to seminars, regular office hours, and Moodle fora. It is important to note that this concern about the (de)humanizing effect of social media surfaced in the midst of a larger anxiety about a change in the format of the course delivery.

This semester my Emily Carr colleagues and I have been charged with teaching English 101: Intro to Poetry & Drama as a lecture course (with breakout tutorials) rather than as a seminar course. Predictably, the format change has caused significant trepidation among students and faculty, even before the course began. Many saw it as a regressive move—a retreat to the old model of the sage on the stage.

i like change

I should confess that, despite misgivings about the economic impetus for restructuring of first year English, I saw the change as a valuable opportunity:

1. to rethink the curriculum,
2. to radically shift our approach to teaching literature and composition,
3. to work together with a group of seven colleagues (7 sages on the stage) to re-animate the lecture format.

I saw and see this change in the delivery model as a vital point of entry into a much larger set of questions around 21st century cultural literacies, especially these impact Art, Design, and Media education.

Having taught first year English for most of past fifteen years, mainly in seminar classes, I am familiar with the pros and cons of small group learning. Furthermore, I have no interest in returning the massive survey courses—e.g., English 101: Beowolf to Hemingway. Yet, from my teaching, learning, and research on creative and critical collaborations, I’ve become concerned about a kind of complacency (mine own and others) with regard to received knowledge about the role and function of culture. A concern that, for me, goes to the heart of how and what we teach when we teach English.

teaching beyond print-culture

In the context of English, Critical thinking is one of the key learning outcomes. This usually means that students are encouraged to practice textual analysis (close reading, see also this howto from the Harvard Writing Centre) and to participate in in-class discussions (usually modeled on the Socratic method). Critical thinking is important. Given the current anti-intellectualism of our political leaders, I think it is vital. However, what often passes for critical thinking tends to rely on various out-of-date assumptions about communication and the importance of print culture.

What happens when we consider 1/ the nature and transformation of texts as we move from analogue output (objects) to digital texts (an environment) and 2/ the impact of communication technologies on staging and mediating  meaningful dialogue or debate? In a nutshell, I wonder how long English, as an academic discipline, will last after the disappearance of the book. What comes next?

Being able to interpret or unpack literary texts and then to be able to engage in dialogue with one’s peers—these are absolutely fundamental skills. And university English can be (often is) an extraordinary opportunity for many people to learn about influential cultural texts and critical contexts. Having devoted a life to reading, studying, writing about, and publishing literary texts, I am aware of power of Literature and print-based culture.

Nevertheless, we need to be clear that English Studies, as it developed during the twentieth century, came to be dependent on  the availability of print media, which was became affordable with the mechanization of printing processes (movable type), and print-based literacies, which were a major focus of government investments in educations and culture. As consequence, English as we now know it is deeply intertwined with the development both of mass media and the influence of the British Empire.

Since the 1950′s with the advent of television and the emergence of post-colonial resistances throughout the English speaking world, this has begun to slowly change. Across a number of fronts, there has been a dramatic shift in power and a growing mistrust of print-culture, particularly outside dominant cultures. (Perhaps, I need to follow this up on a post about Stuart Hall and legacy of the Birgminham University Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.)

if you google it, does it not bleed?

The state of literature, the nature and meaning of twenty-first century comminications technologies, a world without printed texts—books and newspapers—these are huge philosophical and sociological concerns. And I can’t begin to answer them here. I’m not even sure, to be candid, that I want to save English by transforming it, or updating it. Still, I have trouble ignoring the impact of new media on how, why and what we teach under the guise of English.

What strikes me about our current situation—in many ways this is crucial to how we might positively transform the Humanities—is that the new modes of communication, which are  irrevocably reorganizing all facets of twentieth century life, have yet to take hold in English class. Granted many of us now rely on Moodle, Blackboard or other Course Management Systems. Most universities I know have committed to “smart classrooms” and trying to provide faculty with computers and lcd projectors in the classroom. And in many institutions, the course packs that replaced books as a less expensive alternative are in turn being replaced by Open Courseware. I imagine too that many instructors are increasingly dependent on Youtube, Flickr, Google and other web-based tools to provide supplementary materials.

In good old Marxist terms, one might have talked about this change in terms of base and superstructure. I might ask how can we discuss about the importance of English Literature, when even the most committed of us have all begun to abadon books? If reading and writing are what matter to us, why are we not shifting our focus on to wiki’s, blog post, email discussions, or even tweets.

Why are more of us teaching courses like UBC Prof. John Beasley Murray’s wiki-based “Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation”? Granted this is a Spanish Literature course, but I sure we can develop similar approaches with English texts and contexts.

If it is critical engagement that motivates us, might we not be more inclined to find connections between the growth of English what do we make of Google’s recent struggles with China?

social knowledge / social space

Relative to books, newspapers, and other older forms of mass media, Social media open new possibilities for educators and cultural producers, particularly for artists, educators, and designers.

It used to be that if you wanted to participate in political dialogue you would have to travel to a particular space: Agora, Altingi, Parliament, House of Commons. Likewise for so called “higher learning,” one would have to travel to the University: Bologna, Oxford, Heidelberg, Harvard, or the U of T. The central buildings for these great universities were their libraries. Much like the banks or treasuries at the centre of political capitals, the university library functioned as storehouse for what was most valued: information, debate, knowledge.

The traditional function of libraries has been superseded. Digital Archives such as Project Gutenberg or perhaps more importantly those collected by Google are rendering libraries obsolete. This does not mean that I think librarians and archivists are no longer relevant (as my original draft of this post suggested (see comments bellow). In fact, the opposite is true their knowledge and skills are increasingly important as we struggle make sense of the at times overwhelming flow of information. With the emergence of the web and growing ubiquity of mobile communications, individuals can participate in political dialogue, scholarly research, and various cultural forms of cultural production from almost anywhere. The most powerful institutions will be those who can facilitate access to their massive storehouses—e.g., MIT or the Bodelian library at Oxford.

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The example of  the Back Dorm Boys (wikipedia entry), featured in the above video, is instructive: the original response by the English speaking media to their viral youtube posts was to poke fun and to marvel at the number of “hits” these videos they were getting. Few recognized that these videos were produced by Wei Wei and Huang Yi Xin, two students at the Guangzhou Arts Institute, or that their off-centre mimickry of American culture might be anything but a pale imitation of the real thing, if one is allowed to refer to the Back Street Boys as such.

The a tendency to disparage new forms of communication limits the development of new ideas, and in so doing, it allows for the exclusion of individuals and groups who don’t immediately fit the norms of a dominant culture. Perhaps the ability to normalize or naturalize certian modes of representation to the exclusion of others is, unfortunately, one of the most enduring legacies of the Humanist project.

Arguably some of the most influential and innovative interventions in contemporary culture are happening off or under the radar of West’s major arts/culture institutions, and are often hard for people to recognize or accept as Art or Culture. This idea, as controversial as it is, has been fundamental to the reconfiguration of curatorial practices, particularly in the wake of  curator Okwui Enwezor’s radical (re)programing of the Document for Documenta XI across a series of geographically dispersed platforms (Frieze Article)—to give one famous example.

a conclusion of sorts

This long, a slightly rambling post has touched on a number of complicated issues around the cultural politics of representation, including thinking about the history of English Studies, the Enlightenment, Post-coloniality, contemporary Curatorial practices and more. The points I’ve raised in the post are but the tips of a much larger idea flows, which I will continue to explore in future posts. Nonetheless, I hope they might help situate this prickly question of “the human” or more to the point our assumptions about the dehumanizing nature of these technologies with were are so embroiled.

In my last post, I suggested that I’d share some basic blogging advice, gleaned from the numerous blogging howtos I’ve been reading. The following post discusses a few of the more interesting or provocative examples of this large and growing genre.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a blogging-related rss feed from my delicious account.

NB. I’ve embedded a bit of php code that I hope will allow this list to grow and update.

I have had different websites and blogs over the years. Yet, none have been particularly meaningful or useful—to me or others. With sporadic, haphazard, and disjointed posts, my blogging has been flawed by limited research, rudimentary technological prowess, and a decided lack of commitment. This time around, I propose a more serious engagement. Time to “change life”—at least, my approach to writing and creative practice

No late comer to computers or to the internet, I’ve been on email since 1989 when I started grad school at Simon Fraser University, which at the time saw itself as a leader in networked learning. And I began browsing the World Wide Web with Mosaic sometime in late ’92 or early ’93. As an undergrad in the mid 1980s, I started with a (then) fancy, digital Sharp typewriter (my parents picked up in Japan) that I replaced with a Commodore 64 with “word processing.” In grad school, after trying a couple of DOS/Windows boxes, I settled on Mac and began a long love affair with all things Apple—iPhone, iPods, iMacs, Macbooks etc. Read the rest of this entry »