On Monday I presented a new composition of page tectonics at the Graduate Research Fair. Part re-working of posters I created for class in the fall (ENGL505: Rhetoric of Science and Technology), and a writing fluxkit (version 2.0?); part re-cycling of my proposal of materiality for the WIDE-EMU ’11 (un)conference, Marcel Duchamp’s “Mile of String” (an image I cherish as representation of work), the box collages of Joseph Cornell, George Maciunas’ “Fluxus Manifesto”; and part collage of newly collected materials: George Maciunas’ Fluxkit “1964/65”, and a series collage of an image I found, cut, and copied (and copied the copy, and copied the copy, and copied the copy).
That’s what I had before the start of the poster session. (I’m trying to give an inventory because the pictures I took are crummy.) After active audience/intrigued passersby/compositionists/cool folk made use (!) of the fluxkit to write the next re-working of this text, here’s what I had:
- “Glossing to the max?” (on a notecard attached with string)
- “look + talk + natural artifacts” (on a sticky note with a “note” tab)
- “What haven’t you written? Why not?” (on a sticky note)
- illustration of five spring lowers (on a sticky note)
- an arrow note tab that points
- ” when the earthquake happens in writing – will social media or ‘formal’ writing survive the shake?” (a sticky “Important Message” note)
- “fill a gallery build x – disciplines/relationships” (a sticky “Important Message” note)
- “pop archives Jenny Rice @ C’s” (a spinning notecard with a sticky “note” tab – on a grommet)
- “value and meaning are breathed into life by the linking – add add add” (a sticky note with black art tape connections to text. made use of stencil to draw a winking emoticon)
- (a piece of string to connect open space – the interzone)
Also, an email/conversation with the Special Education Department Head who wants to share/exchange ideas/work and reference what I’m doing; and reference/recognition by my colleague/journal co-hort/friend in her class. I feel in surging energy. Waves. Radiations. Illumination.
Below: Luna lends her assistance in cutting/eating paper. Fluxkit contents. Poster before and after as a text in the making.
This experience in conjuncture with attending The Conference on College Composition and Communication in St. Louis last week have my brain absolutely jumbled, in the best kind of way. Will focus this energy on new work/ideas/intrigue soon.
page tectonics 
cat envy.
and on a more serious note, i thought about this while writing my post on your presentation. the add, add, add. the fact that i could link to someone else’s work to use as a supplement to something yours had made me think of. everything in flux. but wasn’t jenny rice talking about *not* viewing things as suspended in time? my notebook is put away right now – what did she say? what was the alternative? instead of looking for longevity and timelessness, letting things be pop-archives? i think that was it.
I’m away from my notebook, too. I think you’re right – not assembling and curating for timeless preservation, but letting things be “pop archives”. So, letting this connection between work exist as long as we see useful for our at this moment interests, and letting it go when we move on to something else. I’m not sure; I’d love to read more by Jenny Rice. This isn’t against fluxus/box logic/happenings, because in these attitudes toward composition, the composition itself is just the trace of work, the real composition lives within the individual student/artist/designer/collector/compositionist. So, it’s not necessarily off limits and archived within a plastic box, but can be broken down, carried, and re-assembled into something new/different.
This make me think of someone’s comment at the research fair, they essentially asked why I wasn’t upset that people were “wrecking” my poster. I tried not to laugh, but I said this is it, right now, it will never be the same thing after this moment, and it wasn’t meant to be. Not that my work is disposable, but I know it. I could make it again. I was thinking to myself what all of the other presenters would do with their posters after the session anyway?