3.1.08

2008 on that-unsound, submissions, interviews and a phd

Here's what’s I'm planning for this year that you'll see reflected in this blog...

I just signed up for a PhD. I'm focusing on Gertrude Stein and Sounded Language. I'll also create a parallel creative text, and the smaller pieces that come off its writing, which I’ll self publish. At this stage I see the possibilities exist to develop this creative text as poetic/theory into an opera without music, a play without characters, or a pornographic film… shot in total darkness. I'm really interested in weaving the thesis as creative/poetic/sounded theory, through the creative work and works. So this site will function as a collection site of ideas for this research.

I’ll also continue to work on my multi-media, sound and film projects.

But further to that I would like to build community with more like minded writers/artists/soundies. So I'd really like to hear from who is reading this site (about 30 a nite - I'm touched :) and appreciate any comments and feedback and appreciate further knowing what your interests are, what your doing.

Around March I'm going to put a call out for submissions re 'sounded text-voice-image works' and put together a self published catalogue of ideas and work. So if you’re interested please keep this in mind. I am a big fan of self publishing.

Other things I'm planning... at that-unsound...

I'll be publish here juicy bits of my research.

I'll be creating a comprehensive list of what’s happening and going on in this area of sound and experimental language/text work, both within Australia but also (thank god), overseas.

I'll be brainstorm up some new collaborative projects. Always open to new ideas. Contact me if interested.

I'll invite people to submit articles to that-unsound.

Run a survey to find out who's thinking/doing what.

I'm also interested in self publishing more of my books.

Start adding pertinent questionings...

I'd also like to conduct some interviews on this site (and I will).

I'll also publish more experimental text's which I like to call XXperimental... so just to let you know I'm interested in doing that. Send stuff in.

I'll also review more books, since Ive got a pile a mile high already as back log to get through, mainly sound/language based but also some great XXperimental poetry.

I also want to show art work that works as poetic space generators... you'll see what I mean when you see it hopefully in the meantime see Hugh Watson below.

I also want to get a bit of a personal perspective on Feminist Critical feedback and start shaping that as a tool as well...so its a big year ahead.

I have my last novel Sounding of the Other Light --- a biography at a New York publishers short list at the moment so fingers crossed I will get that in a be rich!!!... I'm kidding about the rich bit. So wishing us all a real sound year. The image is Annie's Portals of Pretty Petty Pleasures by Majena Mafe (myself.)

P.S Now heres something yummy Hugh Watson at Clementine Gallery..."For his New York solo debut, Hugh Walton will present new high definition videos that explore his experiences growing up dyslexic and struggling to learn and communicate within the educational system. He approaches language on his own terms, often aggressively, and uses the healing power of creativity to exorcise the frustrations associated with his past. Working with an array of untraditional materials, from alphabet soup to urine, Walton is empowered to both create and destroy language..." http://www.clementine-gallery.com/hw/index.html

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year Majena!
You have lined up some very interesting projects for yourself. I'd enjoy participating in some way. Can the Wordsalad radio program be part of your activity? Maybe we could collaborate in some kind of real-time across-the-globe presentation.....

Ibitsu said...

Wow, looks like you have a very busy, although fascinating year ahead! I am vey pleased you left a comment on my blog otherwise I may not have found your work. It looks fascinating and it's always great to read other peoples ideas on areas similar to ones own, especially someone who is working in so many fields.

I look forward to seeing more of your work. I love the idea of "an opera without music, a play without characters, or a pornographic film… shot in total darkness." Perhaps one may say a sound without sound, a sound unheard; not silenced but consciously rendered inaudible, a sound unheard which nevertheless resonates.

majena mafe said...

hi thanks for leaving a comment here, i really like your 'sound unheard which never the less resonates'. On starting to look into what sort of sounded language i am interested in, I'm flooded with the nuances and more that are sound related...just starting this research really, whats your connection to sound...are you writing/sounding?

Ibitsu said...

I would say writing. I am from a philosophical background and I am examining what has come to be called noise music, found in the likes of Merzbow, CCCC, Hijokaidan etc. I am now working on a music MA and I am focusing on noise as a concept and what it means to typical musical discourse, i.e. music as harmony and rhythm. I want to explore the musical via the philosophical. It's often conceived that noise is not music, or something outside. I intend to suggest that noise is music, that from a Derridean perspective the outside is always folded inside, so that the very economy of music contains within it that which is deemed exterior. From Deleuze and Guattari's persepctive I would suggest that noise is a perpetual deterritorialization of music; that is, noise names an audio nomad, an impossible limit of music.

Anyway, that's the kind of ideas I am working with academically. However, on the blog I am sure, as I have done thus far, I will broaden my examination of noise and perhaps examine it culturally; as societies incessant murmur which becomes the sounds for sonorous individuation.

Being very ignorant in your specific area, could I ask for more detail in what kind of ideas you plan on exploring and what facets you are examining which constitute a sounded language? I am just very interested in this idea as I haven't came across this angle before.

majena mafe said...

Hi thanks so much for your reply, your work for your research sounds really interesting to me. Where to start eh? I’m an artist whose transformed into a writer and have been working on writing philosophy as a poetics for the last few years…I just finished a large-long text piece called sounding the other light a biography, exploring the possibilities for another light talked of by the pre Socratics as lux and how it might function inside and outside the body. It’s weird but weird is an interesting space in terms of it just being and it being ‘outside’. The research and the text gave me a space to explore those ‘un-named spaces like your talking about under/in/vibrating out noise and music… (the word lux and the original idea of it now is defunct-outside language frames and especially philosophic frames for experience –the last good write up was the medieval mystics- but I think Gertrude Stein was also hinting at it) I’m really interested in sound now as there does seem to be something operating under language in the same way as you are finding in music. I find it in the awareness of some experimental writers-those that break language frames seem to be aware of it anyway, I think Stein was riding the wave of it so to speak. I’m going exploring to see if that’s so… or to play with the idea anyway, it’s all a big deadly serious push/play with possibilities; I believe that moves things forward. That’s in very brief my overall frame… reading Michel Serres French, you probably know him… but he’s good on this sound space, calls it an event (calls lots of things events actually) and the gang Barthe/Lyotard/Blanchot/Kristeva too. I like – I need – I feel strong affinity with her idea of the semiotic the chora…always at the edge so to speak. So as I like to put research into things I’ll also create those ‘other’ forms as mentioned on top of, or next to the ‘paper’…

The exact area is stil being inched towards but its between Serres/ stein and Kristeva's ideas because they point to a space (chora)that though totally wild is a place i would never the less like to hang out in and watch for what I hear there and then how I can ever possibly say it...or sound it.

I haven't heard of these sound people you mentioned but am just about to see if i can find out who they are through mother google...cheers (and ra ra the deleuze guattari team forever)