57143 Experiments in Writing

Handbook description

This subject addresses the boundaries of contemporary writing practice as well as looking at the recent histories of innovative literary forms which have influenced both mainstream and avant-garde literature, whether modernist or post-modernist. The subject asks students to research both familiar and unfamiliar generic and practical possibilities within contemporary literary forms, whether of fiction, script, narrative or essay. In particular, it asks students to respond to how new forms of writing are generated by new nonlinear technologies and formats, as well as more broadly by aesthetic sensibilities formed by decades of cinematic, multimedia and intermedia creative practice. Students are encouraged to engage with these emerging and multimedia forms throughout the subject whereby texts, images and concepts are manipulated to create hybrid or ficto-critical forms.

Throughout the semester students produce and critically reflect on their own creative work and practice. Students are encouraged to experiment with form while remaining strongly engaged with the specific materials they have gathered, and the contexts they create or use for publication or performance.

Subject objectives/outcomes

On completion of this subject, students will be able to:

1. appreciate the critical and technical requirements which influence innovative approaches to composition
2. compose a work or part of a work in an innovative format
3. produce a researched critical essay on contemporary innovative practices
4. understand the nature of creative composition as it applies to the specific works on which the student is engaged
5. apply constructive criticism to their own work and that of their peers.

Contribution to graduate profile

This subject:

• increases understanding of the technical possibilities of innovative and experimental formats
• enhances specific creative skills in the writing and production of innovative contemporary works
• encourages students' critical and creative thought in terms of individual art practice
• encourages practical understanding of inherited historical and literary critical contexts of innovative literary practice.

Teaching and learning strategies

Weeks 1-7 (up to the mid-semester break) will be primarily devoted to the study, reading and viewing of appropriate historical and contemporary works. There will be lecture style material in each class. Students will present papers which relate to Assessment 1 during this period and take part in guided discussion of relevant topics. Students will also begin presenting and workshopping their creative projects for Assessment 2 in Weeks 1-7. The second part of the semester the class works in a workshop based mode, principally concerned with developing and testing out the student's own objectives and ideas in relation to this specific creative project. Students are asked to respond to and reflect on the ongoing work of the class and to present their work (whether in print, on line, mixed media or performance mode) in the final two weeks of the class.

Content

Experiments in Writing provides a context in which innovative practices, the history of such practices and contemporary approaches and theories can be studied. Course content derives equally from post-modern, historical avant garde, ficto-critical, visual, cinematic and online examples and the critical studies associated with these examples. Students are asked to reflect on the sources of innovative creative practice as well as the emergent structures of such practices. They do so by engaging in a study which is both cross generic and cross media. Students are asked to position their own creative practices as writers and designers in these contexts and to produce new work.

Assessment

Assessment item 1: Essay

Assessment item 2: Portfolio

Minimum requirements

Students are expected to read the subject outline to ensure they are familiar with the subject requirements. Since class discussion and participation in activities form an integral part of this subject, you are expected to attend, arrive punctually and actively participate in classes. If you experience difficulties meeting this requirement, please contact your lecturer. Students who have a reason for extended absence (e.g., illness) may be required to complete additional work to ensure they achieve the subject objectives.

Attendance is particularly important in this subject because it is based on a collaborative approach which involves essential workshopping and interchange of ideas. Students who attend fewer than ten classes are advised that their final work will not be assessed and that they are likely to fail the subject.

Indicative references

Readings will be made available, as well as selected websites and hypertext works and selected screen works.

Books:

Aarseth, Espen, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997

Artaud, Antonin. Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings. Ed. Susan Sontag. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1976.

Artaud, Antonin, Watchfiends and Rack Screams: Works From the Final Period. Ed.& Trans. Clayton Eshleman with Bernard Bador. Boston: Exact Change, 1995.

Bernstein, Charles, A Poetics, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1992

Breton, André'. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. N.p.: Ann Arbor Paperbacks, U of Michigan Press, 1924.

Breton, André. Paul Eluard & Philippe Soupault. The Automatic Message, The Magnetic Fields, The Immaculate Conception: Atlas Anti-Classics of Surrealism. Trans.: David Gascoyne, Antony Melville & Jon Graham. London: Atlas Press, 1997.

Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch. London: A Flamingo Modern Classic, 1993.

Burroughs, William S. The Adding Machine: Collected Essays. London: Penguin Books, 1985. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.Trans. Brian Massumi. London: The Athlone Press, 1988.

Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists' Books. New York: Granary Books, 1995.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans.: Willard R. Trask. New York: A Harvest / HBJ Book, 1959.

Gibson, Ross, Seven Versions of an Australian Badland, St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2002

Hayles, N. Katherine (2003) 'Translating Media: Why We Should Rethink Textuality' The Yale Journal of Criticism, 16(2). Yale University and The Johns Hopkins University Press. 263–90.

Hejinian, Lyn, The Language of Inquiry, Berkely: University of California Press 2000

Irigaray, Luce. To Speak Is Never Neutral. Trans. Gail Schwab. New York: Continuum, 2002.

Jones, Patrick, ed. Words and Things, Trentham, Vic: Reverie Press Publications, 2004

Kahn, Douglas. Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999.

Kahn, Douglas and Gregory Whitehead (Ed.) Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-garde. Ed.. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992.

Muecke, Stephen, Textual Spaces: Aboriginality And Cultural Studies Kensington, N.S.W: New South Wales University Press, 1992

Muecke, Stephen, No Road (bitumen all the way), Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1996

Perloff, Marjorie. Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy. Tuscaloosa, The University of Alabama Press, 2004.

Perloff, Marjorie, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre and the Language of Rupture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986

Perloff, Marjorie, Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Rasula, Jed and McCaffery,Steve, Eds. Imagining Language: an Anthology, Cambridge: Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1998

Queneau, Raymond, Exercises in Style, trans Barbara Wright,London : Calder, 1998.

Rhodes, Colin. Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

Riley, Denise, The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000

Rothenberg, Jerome (ed). Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe & Oceania – 2nd Ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

Saussure, FD Course in General Linguistics. Ed.: Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, in collaboration with Albert Reidlinger; trans.: Wade Baskin, London: Owen, 1974.

Sebald, W.G., Vertigo, trans Michael Hulse, London: Harvill 1999

Smith, Hazel, The Writing Experiment: Strategies for Innovative Creative Writing, Sydney, Allen and Unwin 2005

Snyder, Ilana, ed Page to Screen: Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era, London: Routledge 1998

Stein, Getrude and Ulla E. Dydo, A Stein Reader: Northwestern University Press 1993

Ulmer, Gregory, Heuretics: The Logic of Invention, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press 1994

Webb, Francis. Cap and Bells: The Poetry of Francis Webb. Ed. Michael Griffith and James A. McGlade. Sydney: Collins Angus & Robertson Publishers Pty Ltd, 1991.

Weiss, Allen S. Phantasmic Radio. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.

Weiss, Allen S. Shattered Forms: Art Brut, Phantasms, Modernism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Zurn, U. The House of Illnesses. Trans: Malcolm Green. London: Atlas Press, 1977.

Zurn, U. The Man of Jasmine. Trans: Malcolm Green. London: Atlas Press, 1977.