Deep Curation: A New Dialogic Poetry Reading

Deep Curation embodies the magic of literary studies very generally speaking—interpretation is driven by the mind of the critic reading a text, studying an author, formulating an argument. By placing poems and authors in intricate dialogue with one another, the Deep Curator sensually tracks and imprints an interpretation of literature into the act of listening

Retrospective Resonance on Listen Deep: Poetry, Sound and Multitudinous Remix

Two years ago today, we participated in the event Listen Deep: Poetry, Sound and Multitudinous Remix, curated by Margaret Christakos and hosted at the University of Toronto on 8 March 2019. What follows is a brief description of the event’s activities, and then a transcription of a conversation that we had shortly after the event. We met at the Hinnawi Bros. Bagel Café across from Concordia’s Hall Building (hard to imagine a work date at a coffee shop these days), and discussed our immediate reflections on the day. Playing with Friedlaender’s idea that all spoken words remain in the world as vibrations that are imperceptible to the human ear—vibrations that can be picked up and made audible with the right imaginary amplification device—we wish to discover what other frequencies our past spoken words might tune us into. If you attended and/or participated in the event, we invite you to add your thoughts, memories, and reflections to a Google Doc version of this post using the “insert comment” feature; these comments will be transcribed and added as footnotes to this post on SWB (please let us know if you would like to be named or remain anonymous in your comment). We hope to continue the practices of listening and responding initiated in the original event in this written medium—that is, at least until our voices can sound together again

The Power of Listening to Voices: An Interview with Nina Sun Eidsheim

On Thursday, May 20th 2021, Nina Sun Eidsheim delivered a keynote address as part of the 2021 Listening, Sound, Agency symposium. Titled “Re-writing Algorithms for Just Recognition: From Digital Aural Redlining to Accent Activism,” she argued that “voice- and listening technologies carry and reproduce the same social bias, discrimination, and racism […] as Kodak film and HP cameras [which] were calibrated for white skin colour.” Elaborating on this important research, Nina generously answered some questions about her current projects and interests, providing poignant backstory to her keynote, and inviting all readers to events at her UCLA PEER Lab in the next weeks and months

Zoom Aid or Zoom Raid?: An Interview with Stephen J. Neville

Klara du Plessis speaks with Stephen J. Neville about his early research (co-authored with Prof. Greg Elmer and Anthony Glyn Burton) on some of the risks associated with online videoconferencing; specifically, the racist and misogynist underpinning of many so-called Zoom-bombing attacks

The Relational Poetry Reading Series In Live Performance and Audio Archives, Montreal from the 1960s to the Present: Positing Framed, Open, Self, and Deep Curatorial Modes of Literary Event Organization

Recognizing a gap in audiotextual criticism that focuses on the poetry reading series as subject, my interdisciplinary doctoral research imports vocabulary from curatorial into literary studies through sound archives of poetry performance. I borrow Irit Rogoff’s distinction between practical curating and the curatorial as a dynamic field of critical exchange (“Curating/Curatorial”) to schematize and theorize four curatorial modes relating to the formulation of literary events: framed, open, self, and deep curation. Each mode shifts the relational tension between the responsibility of the curator and the creative field activated at the series by featured authors: some curators direct expected outcomes, while some model an open space that invites experimentation; some curators are themselves performers, while some conceptualize curating as artform. My research recognizes the interconnection of innumerable elements active at literary events and calls this network of exchange curatorial relationalities, highlighting the vibrant reciprocity between curator, poets, poetry, audience demographic, venue, technology, historical moment, and more. My research originated in parallel to Beatrice von Bismarck’s 2022 monograph The Curatorial Condition that contends that “the activity, the subject position, and the resulting product [of curating...are] always already dynamically interrelated in their genesis, articulation, and function” (8-9). It is also indebted to Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics and Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, pivotal studies on art and poetry that rely on sociability, knowledge transfer, and an unstable locus of constant interchange. I apply the terminology of curatorial modes and relationalities to a Montreal-based context, using case studies from the past sixty years with a chapter each on the Sir George Williams poetry series (1966-1974), Véhicule Art Inc. (1973-1983), the Words and Music Show (2000-ongoing), and Deep Curation (2018-ongoing). While Deep Curation is a curatorial mode, it also materializes in a personal research creation project and experimental curatorial practice. I have organized and archived eight Deep Curation events in collaboration with leading Canadian poets, including Oana Avasilichioaei, Liz Howard, Kaie Kellough, among others. My dissertation thus straddles an investigation into contemporary, local poetry in performance equally as it theorizes vocabulary that can be applied and developed in relation to other literary curatorial performative contexts