Sunday, September 07, 2008

kenneth goldsmith via linh dinh via tony tost

(for Linh Dinh)



"I thought to myself, wow, writing is so far behind other art forms in this regard. . .

Twenty five years after Baudrillard, these poetry students were still prioritizing Romantic notions of authenticity -- "truth", "individuality" and "honesty" -- over any other form of expression. My god! Is it a case of naivety, amnesia or just plain ignorance?. . .

Now is the time of possibility we can be everyone and no one at all. With digital fragmentation any notions of authenticity and coherence have long been wiped. When we're everywhere and nowhere at once -- pulling RSS feeds from one server, server-side includes from another, downloading distributed byte-size torrents from hundreds of other shifting identities -- such naïve sentiments are even further from what it means to be a contemporary writer. Identity politics no longer have to do with the definition of a coherent self, rather it has to do with the reconstructed distributed, fragmented, multiple and often anonymous selves that we are today. We're infinitely adaptable and changeable minute-to-minute. Shouldn't our notions of art expand once again to include these as well?"

-- Kenneth Goldsmith

5 comments:

timarmentrout said...

YES!

celestual said...

I think the consideration needs to take into account that the self is just one physical body. While the one can manifest many, it is still generating form from a single self that is trying to multiply - that inherently seems to be the barrier. Like taking a mirror or hologram image of a thing the new product is a reduction of the original - lacking the before, though maybe gaining a new face or body in the recreation, but again all stemming from an original source. It's like a memory of an action now mutated to be the past action - a new self generated from teh original or old self would lessen or like the process of the art and then the final product there is a displacement in that movement from one to the other.

akp said...

Jared,

I can't believe you posted this cause I found it meself awhile ago and almost posted it. Plus I was just watched the doc of Goldsmith on Ubuweb "Sucking on Words" the day you posted this! Freaky freak-freak.

Hayes said...

andy, trans-continental coincidences rule! viva la internet tubes!!! i'm watching "sucking" right now!!!

freaky freak-freak back at ya...and let's start up some bluuuuuuuuuues or pantuuuuuuums!!!

jcooper said...

andy, i think you and i should start collecting coincidences...hmmm