----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Keith, I love your answers!
I apologize for being late--I am in Chicago (not Minneapolis where I live) for
a funeral and I dropped the robo-ball on this! I didn't bring my laptop but
will be back to it on Saturday night if that's ok.
xo
Sun Yung Shin 신 선 영
Sent from iPhone
> On Jun 1, 2017, at 4:29 AM, Keith S. Wilson <keithwilso...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Would love to hear about the process of turning to the visual within your
> works, and how it may differ from the poetic questions asked in textual
> poetry? Keith, I'm curious as to how your background as a graphic designer
> also shapes your poetry? And if both of you may have thoughts on this, to add
> to our conversation we began at the start of the month, what is robot
> poetics, and how might robot poetics help us to talk about these pressing
> issues of race?
>
> The graphic work I've done comes largely by way of game design and computer
> programming, fields that struggle against much of what I love about poetry.
> Poetry is often about a kind of intentionality: the poet intends for this
> line to break here for a certain feeling or meaning or effect, and to have an
> editor or an ebook break it somewhere else is to diminish the work in some
> way. A game or a program, however, depends on interactivity. Visual art can
> be somewhere between: you can't necessarily control where a person looks, and
> I love the idea of mussing some of the most entrenched expectations of
> poetry. Claudia Rankine does this formally with her text, but the images of
> the televisions, for instance, in Don't Let Me Be Lonely are interesting in
> part because you might expect them to be nothing, given that this seems to be
> primarily a book of text. And yet, if you stop to try to peer into the static
> you begin to see something appear. I don't know that the metaphor this
> creates is possible with either the image or the text alone.
>
> All of this relates I think to what I think about when I hear the term "robot
> poetics" which is that a robot, or any genre of art, or racism itself--all of
> these are comprised of systems. It is endlessly fascinating to me that we
> laud the artist for mastering their systems, that we vacillate between awe
> and terror at robotic systems, and that we become woefully (sometimes
> proudly) ignorant in the face of social systems.
>
> And when we look at robotics, what we are seeing is a reinvention of
> ourselves. That, to me, is poetry.
>
>> On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 12:58 PM, Margaret J Rhee <mr...@uoregon.edu> wrote:
>> Hi Sun Yung and Keith,
>>
>> I am always so deeply moved by both of your work, and thrilled for these
>> cross-connections. I think utilizing the uncanny valley as a metaphor or the
>> parallels for racial formations, resistance, and depictions of radicalized
>> violence is very powerful.
>>
>> In particular, I feel in both of your work, the utilization of visuality
>> within the textual poetics is so deeply interesting and innovative.
>> Questions around visuality in poetry is something I've been grappling with,
>> especially in Sun Yung's recent book, in which she also includes documents,
>> and I also think of Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely, and Citizen,
>> in which visual images and documents are included, and connect to Keith's
>> work as well. It is moving to think about how you both utilize
>> charts/graphs/uncanny valley in these resistant ways, and within poetry.
>>
>> Would love to hear about the process of turning to the visual within your
>> works, and how it may differ from the poetic questions asked in textual
>> poetry? Keith, I'm curious as to how your background as a graphic designer
>> also shapes your poetry? And if both of you may have thoughts on this, to
>> add to our conversation we began at the start of the month, what is robot
>> poetics, and how might robot poetics help us to talk about these pressing
>> issues of race?
>>
>> with love,
>>
>> margaret
>>
>>> On 2017-05-26 09:15, Sun Yung Shin wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> This is amazing.
>>>
>>> Keith, I include the uncanny valley chart found on Wikipedia (in
>>> English and in Korean) in my most recent book_ Unbearable Splendor_,
>>>
>>> but unaltered. Your poems are beautiful.
>>>
>>>>> how it may differ or build upon your larger body of work, and what
>>>>> is your approach grappling with robots poetically, and as Mark
>>>>> writes, and issues of difference such as race, gender, and
>>>>> sexuality?
>>>
>>> My short story “Glitch” incorporates a lot of recurring
>>> preoccupations in my writing—reproduction, twins, doubles,
>>> masks/faces, animals, sleep/waking, and emerging interest in
>>> photography and seeing. I’m interested in robots in terms of the
>>> “programmability of affection,” identity, ahistoricality,
>>> parentlessness, genealogical disruption…
>>>
>>> I’m mostly interested in science fiction film rather than
>>> literature—in Hollywood science fiction films, we are more likely to
>>> get big ideas presented, even if badly, and have ensemble casts that
>>> are, these days, more likely to have more people of color in them,
>>> even if they die first, are subordinate, etc. etc. They’re generally
>>> just as racist / nationalist / male white savior-y as other Hollywood
>>> projects but at least they’re not entirely about middle class white
>>> peoples’ domestic problems. And they’re kinetic, and include
>>> interesting machines, which is something I appreciate about the genre.
>>>
>>>
>>> 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin
>>> sunyungs...@gmail.com
>>> www.sunyungshin.com
>>> www.agoodtimeforthetruth.com
>>>
>>>> On May 25, 2017, at 8:49 PM, Keith S. Wilson
>>>> <keithwilso...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey all! All of this is so cool, thank you so much for inviting me
>>>> to participate!
>>>>
>>>> My work is often about social justice, the body, otherness, love,
>>>> family, or politics and the imagery I gravitate to tends to be
>>>> animal/bird or space/sci-fi/fantasy related. In those ways my pieces
>>>> in Machine Dreams fit into the whole of my most recent work, though
>>>> in both cases my pieces reached even further than I typically
>>>> explore in terms of their speculative nature.
>>>>
>>>> I've always loved science fiction, though maybe it's an accident of
>>>> intent (I am never sure how invested a lot of my favorite sci-fi
>>>> actually is in my politics, even when they seem to claim to be, as
>>>> in the case with a movie like District 9). I think that what I've
>>>> loved about sci-fi since an early age is that aliens and robots and
>>>> androids and cyborgs are all metaphors for othered circumstances--of
>>>> being a "minority" in some sense or finding yourself in a strange
>>>> place surrounded by people who are fascinated, but not in love, with
>>>> the kind of creature you happen to be.
>>>>
>>>> So I submitted a visual piece based on the concept of the uncanny
>>>> valley and a triptych. I wrote the triptych, based on Asimov's
>>>> robotic laws, mapping the personal constraints of love (which are
>>>> psychological, societal, etc) with the ones Asimov describes. What
>>>> if we already know what it's like to, by design, be incapable of
>>>> taking an action we might otherwise take?
>>>>
>>>> The uncanny valley poem began as a sketch I was using to talk to
>>>> Krista Franklin (an awesome afro-futurist artist and poet) about why
>>>> I am so interested in the uncanny valley. To summarize: the uncanny
>>>> valley is about a feeling of confusion, unease, or terror we get
>>>> just before a thing switches between recognizable binary options.
>>>> Living in that valley can be hard (for me, it's between blackness
>>>> and whiteness) but I also think that we have used that valley for
>>>> hundreds of years to justify the inhumane. If on one hand we have
>>>> animals who have no rights and who we feel we can kill freely, and
>>>> on the other we have humanity, a human being need not actually be in
>>>> the uncanny valley at all. Instead, we find excuses and ways to
>>>> pretend as if he is, and destroy his body.This happened to Emmett
>>>> Till, of course, and his mother made the world look at him: in order
>>>> to pull him back from the valley where he was dragged.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 2:47 PM, Margaret J Rhee <mr...@uoregon.edu>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Continuing Mark and Saba's generative comments and reading of the
>>>>> Zine, and cyborg/robot poetics, I'm so pleased to introduced Keith
>>>>> Wilson and Sun Yung Shin to our conversation.
>>>>>
>>>>> This week, we will be introducing different contributors to the
>>>>> Machine Dreams Zine throughout the days.
>>>>>
>>>>> In particular, Keith Wilson and Sun Yung Shin are both incredible
>>>>> poets and writers transgressing robot poetics by way of
>>>>> intersections with Keith's work on Black history, resistance, and
>>>>> visuality, and Sun Yung's work on Haraway, Adoptee issues, and
>>>>> Korean Diaspora.
>>>>>
>>>>> Their contributions can be found on page 62 and 65, for Keith's
>>>>> powerfully visual poem on the horrifying untimely death of Emmett
>>>>> Till,
>>>>>
>>>>> and Sun Yung's enchanting short story of clones, and glitches,
>>>>> found on page 53. Their bios are below, please check out their
>>>>> work here:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://issuu.com/repcollective/docs/machine_dreams_issuu [1]
>>>>>
>>>>> https://machinedreamszine.tumblr.com [2]
>>>>>
>>>>> Sun Yung and Keith, perhaps to begin, can you talk a bit about
>>>>> your contributions, and how it may differ or build upon your
>>>>> larger body of work, and what is your approach grappling with
>>>>> robots poetically, and as Mark writes, and issues of difference
>>>>> such as race, gender, and sexuality?
>>>>>
>>>>> -----
>>>>>
>>>>> Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, an Affrilachian Poet, Cave
>>>>> Canem fellow, and graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing
>>>>> Workshop. He serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Four Way Review
>>>>> and Digital Media Editor and Web Consultant at Obsidian Journal.
>>>>> Keith has received three scholarships from Bread Loaf as well as
>>>>> scholarships from the Millay Colony, Poetry by the Sea, and the
>>>>> Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He holds an MFA in poetry
>>>>> from Chicago State University.
>>>>>
>>>>> 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea, during 박 정
>>>>> 희 Park Chung-hee's military dictatorship, and grew up in the
>>>>> Chicago area. She is the editor of A Good Time for the Truth: Race
>>>>> in Minnesota, author of poetry collections Unbearable Splendor
>>>>> (winner of the 2016 Minnesota Book Award for poetry); Rough, and
>>>>> Savage; and Skirt Full of Black (winner of the 2007 Asian American
>>>>> Literary Award for poetry), co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing
>>>>> on Transracial Adoption, and author of bilingual illustrated book
>>>>> for children Cooper’s Lesson. She lives in Minneapolis.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Links:
>>> ------
>>> [1] https://issuu.com/repcollective/docs/machine_dreams_issuu
>>> [2] https://machinedreamszine.tumblr.com/
>>
>> --
>> Margaret Rhee, Ph.D.
>>
>> Visiting Assistant Professor
>> Women's and Gender Studies
>> University of Oregon
>
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