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:::::: POSITIONS COLLOQUIUM ::::::

AUGUST 19 - 24, 2008

1965 Main Street, Vancouver, BC (Coast Salish Territory) presented by The Kootenay School of Writing with & at VIVO Media Arts Centre
http://www.videoinstudios.com/

participants include

Rita Wong Tyrone Williams Darren Wershler-Henry Mark Wallace Aaron Vidaver Rodrigo Toscano Catriona Strang Brian Kim Stefans Juliana Spahr Rod Smith Colin Smith Kaia Sand Lisa Robertson Judy Radul Pat O'Riley Sianne Ngai Dorothy Trujillo Lusk Kevin Killian Reg Johanson Robert Fitterman Roger Farr LauraElrick Stacy Doris Jeff Derksen Michael Davidson Peter Cole Louis Cabri Clint Burnham Jules Boykoff Dodie Bellamy

newly commissioned works
readings + talks + panels + performances

THEMATICS
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We are deliberately leaving the colloquium thematically open-ended, having invited writers and artists whose critical and creative practices already intersect (or, in enough cases, contradict) inproductive ways. A pertinent conversation will arise from the juxtaposition of the works themselves. Our direct critical interventions in the lead-up will therefore be kept discreet.

In our collective discussions, however, some of the active terms have included old standards / conceptual pillars of politicised poetics: aesthetics, form, knowledge, and political agency/subject position. The specific set of contexts within which these items are interpreted will constitute the core question(s), constructed as such, of N 4915.832 - W 123 05.921 / POSITIONS COLLOQUIUM.

Here we might ask: How is poetry a political field of action? What can poetry un/do? What do 'limits' mean for poetry? What are the crucial issues in taking a social (ideological) position with in a poetics today? What relationships arise between cultural production and broader social projects?

With these questions in view, the following quotations are presentednot as authoritative statements, but as problems.

"Politics and poetics are united: 'This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia.'"- Brian Lennon,"Screening A Digital Visual Poetics" (Configurations Vol.8, No.1,Winter 2000)

"Can we hold onto the possibility of a self-consciousness that does not, simply because it must be critical of oppressive forces, repeatedly fold in upon itself, becoming self-referential—and self-incarcerating—in the form of that non-communicative language that Foucault (mis)recognizes as 'literature as such'?" - Rey Chow, introduction to "The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work"

"…the unpacking of the semiotic density of discourse, including political discourse, performs an anthropological function in politically dangerous environments in the sense that pure value is accorded positions that let the theorist evade statements of clear opposition to the status quo and allow him or her to defer instead to the values of ambivalence and indeterminacy. To penetrate the meaning of contemporary politics, we think, demands a different and difficult intellectual leap in which one is required to work one's way through—and out of—this subjectively experienced complexity and grasp the bald objectivity staring us in the face." - Timothy Brennan and Keya Ganguly, "Crude Wars" (South Atlantic Quarterly 105:1)

"Art as a separate sphere was always possible only in a bourgeois society. Even as a negation of that social purposiveness which is spreading through the market, its freedom remains essentially bound up with the premise of a commodity economy." - Theodor Adorno, Dialectics of Enlightenment

"Poetry, as a creative practice can aim at an 'actual [rather than 'formal'] freedom' through a language that challenges and negotiates a neoliberal structure of feelings" (9)." - Jeff Derksen, introduction to the West Coast Line anthology Poetry and the Long Neoliberal Moment

"The inability to find an 'optimism of the intellect' with which to work through alternatives has now become one of the most serious barriers to progressive politics" - David Harvey, Spaces of Hope

"Thus, there is an ambiguity of agency at the site of this decision...One decides on the condition of an already decided field of language, but this repetition does not constitute the decision of the speaking subject as a redundancy. The gap between redundancy and repetition is the space of agency." - Judith Butler, Excitable Speech,129


REGISTRATION
information Fees

$100 = full registration
$30 / full day (both sessions)
$20 / daytime session only
$15 / evening session only
$10 / Tuesday night reading + party

subsidies available, please contact us

Everyday:
Readings, talks, panels 11 am - 3:30 pm +
Readings, performances 7 pm - 10:30 pm
Payable by cheque or Canadian money order to The Kootenay School of Writing Society Dominion Building 309-207 West Hastings St. Vancouver, BC, V6B 1H6, CANADA

direct all electronic correspondence to positions.colloq AT gmail DOT com


SCHEDULE

August 19 - 24, 2008 at/with VIVO Media Arts Centre 1965 Main St, Vancouver

TUESDAY 19 August
Afternoon-Evening Session only *not* at VIVO, location TBA
4:00 pm - late Opening day social - a party + bbq with readings by poets who have been members of the KSW board or collective.

} tentatively including {
Sachiko Murakami, Donato Mancini, Maxine Gadd, Peter Culley, Steve Collis, Ted Byrne, Andrea Actis + surprise guests

WEDNESDAY 20 August
Morning - Afternoon Session

11:00 am Panel presentation Title / theme: "On Line: Poetics and the Distribution of Meaning" Moderator and Curator: Andrew Klobucar
Panellists: Darren Wershler-Henry, Brian Kim Stefans, Judy Radul, Sianne Ngai

1:00 pm Theatrical presentation Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy w/guests "The Clifford Irving Show" Dinner Break 3:30 pm (circa)

Evening Session
7:00 pm Readings, presentations, and performances by: Darren Wershler-Henry, Brian Kim Stefans, Colin Smith, Robert Fitterman, Clint Burnham

THURSDAY 21 August
Morning - Afternoon Session

11:00 am Panel presentation Moderator and Curator: Rita Wong Title / theme: "Alpha Bets: Language Gambles on a Gift Economy"
Panellists: Juliana Spahr, Pat O'Riley, Reg Johanson, Peter Cole

1:00 pm Talk Michael Davidson "On the Outskirts of Form: Cosmopoetics in the Shadow of NAFTA."

Dinner Break 3:30 pm (circa)

Evening Session

7:00 pm Readings, presentations, and performances by: Rita Wong, Juliana Spahr, PILLS (A. Vidaver, R. Johanson, R. Farr), Pat O'Riley, Peter Cole, Louis Cabri, Jules Boykoff

FRIDAY 22 August
Morning - Afternoon Session

11:00 am Seminar Seminar leaders: Kaia Sand and Jules Boykoff
Title / theme: "Landscapes of Dissent: Guerilla Poetry & Public Space"
Respondents: Catriona Strang, Colin Smith, Juliana Spahr, Nicholas Perrin, Laura Elrick, Clint Burnham

1:00 pm Panel presentation Moderator and Curator: Jeff Derksen
Title / theme: "Neoliberalism and the Politics of Poetics"
Panellists: Rodrigo Toscano, Rod Smith, Dorothy Lusk, Roger Farr, Laura Elrick

Dinner Break 3:30 pm (circa)

Evening Session
7:00 pm Readings, presentations, and performances by: Rodrigo Toscano, Rod Smith, Kaia Sand, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Jeff Derksen

SATURDAY 23 August
Morning-Afternoon Session

11:00 am Seminar
Seminar leader: Sianne Ngai Title / theme: "The Zany Science: Post-Fordist Performance and theProblem of Fun"
Respondents: Tyrone Williams, Mark Wallace, Andrew Klobucar, Rob Fitterman, Stacy Doris, Michael Davidson, Louis Cabri, Dodie Bellamy

1:00 pm Audio feature
Lisa Robertson and Stacy Doris "The Perfume Recordist"

Dinner Break 3:30 pm (circa)

Evening Session 7:00 pm Readings, presentations, and performances by:
Tyrone Williams, Mark Wallace, Catriona Strang, Judy Radul, Laura Elrick

SUNDAY 24 August
Afternoon-Evening Session only *not* at VIVO, location TBA

3:00 pm - whenever
closing-day social