The 10th bumper edition of the online journal Drunken Boat has just been published containing a wealth of fascinating material, including Electronic Literature (in Performance): A Report from the 2008 Electronic Literature in Europe Conference, by Scott Rettberg. His welcome report concentrates on works presented with video documentation of some of the performances, thanks to Martin Arvebro. I’m honoured to be included:
Christine Wilks Demonstrating “The Dressmaker’s Daughter” at the Electronic Literature in Europe Conference from Scott Rettberg on Vimeo.
There’s also video documentation of readings/performances by Renee Turner; Maria Mencia; Noah Wardrip-Fruin; Talon Memmott; Judd Morrissey, Mark Jeffery and Fanny Holmin; Ian Hatcher; and also Robert Coover’s keynote speech.
This was a great conference organised by Scott, who in his report says:
In putting together the conference, I had a few specific goals in mind. The first was to bring together the critical, theoretical, pedagogical, and infra-structural thinking that might typify an academic conference with the creative writers who are actually producing the works on which the field is based. I think that in electronic literature we are really privileged in that the scholars and creative writers are not divided into two separate communities, but are part of one coevolving community. To this end, I thought it would be important to present both academic papers, and to do so within the framework of a peer review structure, but also to present readings of electronic literature, in environments suited to performance of digital works.
The majority of the stimulating academic papers that were presented are available on the conference site here: elitineurope.net
