Zur Vorbereitung auf seinen ersten Deutschlandaufenthalt arbeitete Ming Wong aus Singapur 2007 an einer großartigen Videoinstallation. Es berührt eine ganzes Spektrum von Themen um Identität, Individualität und Kreativität. Grundlage seines Werkes ist eine zehnminütige Szene aus Rainer Werner Fassbinders filmische[m] Lesben-Drama "Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant" (1972). Verlassen von ihrer Geliebten, dem Modell Karin Thimm (Hanna Schygulla) bricht die erfolgreiche Modeschöpferin Petra von Kant (Margrit Carstensen) zusammen - zu sehen und hören ist ihr Monolog: eine Mischung aus Hasstirade und Selbstmitleid. [art-magazin.de]

At art academy in Singapore I studied traditional Chinese art: calligraphy, ink painting, seal carving. I was interested in getting a foundation in traditional arts while it was still an option, since I was already planning to go abroad for further studies. But traditional Chinese art was such a strict discipline that I got restless and started working outside the academy as a playwright in Singapore's English-language theater scene. That's when I started exploring language, one of my other loves. [Art It]

The process of learning an unfamiliar language and repeating it and the failures that are involved in that process are all part of the work. There's this mimicry, this parroting or imitation, which is a basic activity of forming your own identity. Actually it's not just in language but also applies to behavior, when people copy what they see on TV or in popular culture. This mimicry affects how we speak and how we carry ourselves. Language is just one particularly strong aspect of it. [Art It]

installationen & performances von:

j.r. carpenter http://luckysoap.com/
peter moosgaard http://duebomba.blogs.sonance.net/
jörg piringer http://joerg.piringer.net/
[machfeld]

A computer mystery/romance set five minutes into the future of 1988. Crawl BBSes, uncover conspiracies, commit telephone fraud, fall in love. Welcome to the 20th century. [www.scoutshonour.com]

Create and control tiny sound-creatures in the shape of letters that react to gravity or each other and generate rhythms and soundscapes. Dive into a micro world of sounds, movement and touch. [joerg.piringer.net]

TA: What does the advent of the e-reader mean for reading - for the health of narrative storytelling as a form, for the market for fiction, for the future of books? E-readers certainly make it easier to tote lots of novels and other texts while traveling. But don't we lose something - in sustained concentration, or in a sense of permanence, or in the notion of a book as an art object - in the migration away from the codex?

PT: Movable type seemed magical to the monks who were illuminating manuscripts and copying texts. Certainly e-books seem magical to me. I started my writing life in the 1940s as an elementary student at the Washington School in Medford, Massachusetts, using a steel-nibbed pen and an inkwell, so I have lived through every technology. I don't think people will read more fiction than they have in the past (as I say, it's a minority interest), but something certainly is lost - the physicality of a book, how one makes a book one's own by reading it (scribbling in it, dog-earing pages, spilling coffee on it) and living with it as an object, sometimes a talisman. Writing is one of the plastic arts, which is why I still write in longhand for a first draft. I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.

TA: Does the migration to e-readers increase access to good stories or diminish it?

PT: Greatly increases access. I could not be more approving. But free libraries are full of books that no one reads.

TA: What has the Twitter-ization of our attention spans, and the hyperlinking of our storytelling, and the Google-ization of all our knowledge meant for imaginative literature as an art form and a vehicle for transmitting ideas?

PT: In a hyperactive world, the writing of fiction - and perhaps the reading of it - must seem slow, dull, even pedestrian and oldfangled. I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction. Have I just described the average younger person's room? I don't think so. But the average younger person is multitasking. The rare, unusual, solitary, passionate younger person is writing a poem or a story. [The Atlantic]

Das Josefinische Erlustigungskomitee läßt sich durch die schockierende und skandalöse Rodung des Augartenspitzes nicht absägen und startet mit einer ganzen Reihe hochkarätiger Lustbarkeiten in den Frühling. [erlustigung.org]

Location: Party

You are at a great party. There are lots of people milling about. It is a lot of fun.

You see several lines of cocaine here.

You can: snort cocaine

[kitten: The Text Adventure]