Reading/performing of Separation / Séparation (2003) New Years Eve, 19h15 CET in A Toast to the Flash Generation. Besides celebrating the end of an important creative period and showcasing the wonderful Flash e-lit collected by the Electronic Literature Organization in its Repository, this event also intends to document the flash poetry, narratives, & essays for posterity.
Ania Szremski* wrote about my 18 year old interactive poem for the New York based 4Columns website. During the spread of corona 4Columns continued to write on art and commissioned writing that addresses specifically works of culture that are still available in the public sphere, in one guise or another.
You must click repeatedly on the pale-yellow field of a pop-up window to get the narrative to unspool, word by word, its story of pain, the lament of one suffering body being taken over by another, demanding, unfeeling one. The suffering seems to be caused by the melding of human and computer, but it’s not totally clear who is suffering.
in Separation / Séparation, Abrahams anticipates our impatient behaviors and both goads us into them, so we become conscious of these automatic operations, and induces us to comport ourselves differently, to adopt a gentler attitude in front of the poor pounded-on computer.
That escape comes easiest through technology, but not here: Abrahams bars the door to fugitive, algorithmic reprieve.
Ania Szremski is the managing editor of 4Columns. From 2011–15, she was the chief curator of Townhouse, a nonprofit contemporary art space in Cairo, Egypt; she was also a founding editor of Mada Masr, Egypt’s premiere platform for independent, progressive journalism. She is a recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
ps I found the Italian translation in a powerpoint version + plus the article that relates the difficulties of recreating a flash piece without sources.
Suddenly, cultural life takes place entirely on the internet, which until nowwas mainly used for marketing. How should you play the online stage, how to emote your audience there too? “Don’t get eaten by the screen.”
Alex Burghoorn, art critic of one of the biggest Dutch newspapers, De Volkskrant, interviewed me a few days ago and in his article he states that it is worthwhile to dwell on my work, now that not only a period of great financial worries for the arts, but also of digital experiments has begun. It feels as this is my moment of glory :).
I hope some readers got inspired and now start weaving moments of Distant Feeling(s) in their online meetings. Fork Distant Feeling(s)!, it could be good for your health!
“My work can be difficult, some find it scary to participate,” says the pioneer of net art. “It can also fail, that there is no special feeling. I don’t mind, that emphasizes the vulnerable side of people.“
ps The article also touches upon other digital art experiences.
Mauro Carassai and Renata Morresi made an Italian powerpoint and javascript translation (2012) of Separation/Séparation (2002). They didn’t have the flash source codes and so imagined how translation of this piece of E-lit could be done from its experience alone.
That’s what time can, will do with a piece of electronic art, I thought. E-lit also is like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall.
