Flickering Monstrosities
Hyperfiction Reading Group
Session 1: Wednesday 8 May 2019, 7-8.30pm
Session 2: Wednesday 12 June 2019, 7-8.30pm
Hyperfiction is a genre of electronic literature that emerged in North America in the 1990s and operates through hyperlinks that enable a non-linear path through a narrative. The two sessions will include an opportunity to read and discuss both contemporary and historical works of electronic literature as a group.
The sessions aim to ask: why are these hyperlinked and non-linear forms of storytelling returning into popular use? What does this format afford, particularly concerning the ownership of certain gendered and ‘othered’ bodies they often address as a subject? Whilst this first generation of artworks featured fragmentary subjects such as the bride of Frankenstein’s monster, thereby recursively reflecting the postmodern conditions of the format, how do we re-read these now historical subjects as well as the return of the monsterous figure in the contemporary works?
Contextual further reading will be suggested for reading in advance whilst reading of the hyperfiction will take place during the session.
Session 1: Weds 8 May 2019, 7-8.30pm
More than 20 years apart in their creation, the two works are tethered in their narration of a monstrostrous ‘She’ body, composed through a hyperlinked, electronic-literature format.
In the 2018 work The Laughing Snake Allahyari reclaims the mythology surrounding djinn female figures of Middle-Eastern origin, that the artist describes as monstrous, dark goddesses. Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, produced in 1995 reclaims the multiplicity of bodies that configure the bride of Frankenstein’s monster, as a critical device to formulate postmodern authorship.
The ‘She’ who “embraces otherness” (Allahyari) is a “hideous progeny” (Mary Shelley, preface to Frankenstein, 1831) that is both the author, the subject, and the reader. We will discuss the qualities of these subjectivities, produced in their embodied reading.
For contextual reading we will begin with Posthumanist scholar and literary critic N Katherine Hayle’s analysis of electronic novels, in particular her chapter on Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, which describes the disjoined postmodern body of Frankenstein realised through both the form and content of the novel. Alongside this are two texts that provide us with reflections by the artists.
We will have both works on screens and available to read during the session. Patchwork Girl was produced on proprietary software Storyspace and must be purchased here if you would like to own your own copy and read in advance. Otherwise you can wait and read the copy during the session. The Laughing Snake is available online.
Email contact@beingres.org to RSVP
Background reading:
Shelley Jackson, Stitch Bitch: The Patchwork Girl, November 4, 1997, transcript of Jackson’s presentation at the ‘Transformations of the Book’, Conference held at MIT on October 24-25, 1998.
N Katherine Hayles, ‘Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl’ in My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, University of Chicago Press, 2005. pp.143-167.
Refiguring Monstrosity, interview with Morehshin Allahyari by Joel Kuennnen, Seen Journal, 2018.
Session 2: Weds 12 June 2019, 7-8.30pm
Porpentine Charity Heartscape and Rook, NO WORLD DREAMERS: STICKY ZEITGEIST, 2017 (episode 1 is free and streamable online so can be easily accessed, episode 2 and 3 are more tricky as available for download for a donation and require a PC
Shu Lea Cheang, BRANDON, 1998-1999. Commissioned by Guggenheim Museum, New York.
We will also view: Danielle Braithwaite Shirley, BLACKZILLA: TRANSITIONING AT OUR OWN PACE, 2018. This work is not technically hyperfiction but is a video work that plays upon tropes of gamified reading. You will be asked to donate to Danielle’s paypal if you attend the session.
For the second session we will look at works that evoke the figure of the monster, rage and trauma in relation to trans*, femme and queer experiences. Porpentine and Rook’s 2017 work NO WORLD DREAMERS, immerses the reader in the everyday life of a genderqueer ‘furry’ who has a seemingly ambivalent relationship, to their chemically mediated body. Shu Lea Cheang’s BRANDON from 1998-99 is a recently conserved interactive journey that both reconstitutes and speculates upon an ‘all American’ road trip and is inspired by the tragic true story of Brandon Teena, a trans* teenager who was raped and murdered after being ‘outed’. Braithwaite-Shirley’s Blackzilla is “based around the new world being born when Blackzilla, a ‘Black, Trans Robot Archive’ descends to earth. I made the film as a way to reclaim the idea of being seen as something freakish and demonic as a Black and trans body”. Stryker’s and Koch-Rein’s texts further contextualise the figure of the monster in relation to trans* experience. Andrea Long Chu’s essay assists in framing how the expression of rage and trauma, in particular by femme and black bodies, is silenced, within contemporary American society.
Have a look at as much or as little as you have time for ahead of the session. We will read NO WORLD DREAMERS and BRANDON and watch BLACKZILLA on a projector screen together during the session.
Email contact@beingres.org to RSVP
Background reading:
Yin Ho, Shu Lea Cheang on Brandon, May 10, 2012, Rhizhome
Julie Muncy, Porpentine’s new Twine game isn’t just a Twine game, September 13 2017
Anson Koch-Rein. “Monster” May 01 2014. In Transgender studies quarterly.
Helen Kaplinsky is an Independent curator and this reading group is part of her a visiting scholar position within the Exhibition Research Lab at the Liverpool School Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. She is currently developing a programme for the Science Gallery London, part of Kings College London. An element of this research, concerning gender, technology and narration, will be explored in these sessions.