Raison d'

I missed you all so much yesterday! The Krikri festivals up to now have been centred on performances, so the poets / performers / musicians have always been there in the flesh. We’ve had time – and in later years, consciously made time – to eat, drink and party together. Talking with the artists has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the festival, and I’m looking for ways to recreate it with the exhibition, which has a much smaller budget and few possibilities for the participants to attend. I’m starting to feel that my original plan to keep a permanent archive of the exhibition online doesn’t meet (all) our needs. It will just be there, a finished, dead thing. There is little opportunity to discuss it, criticize it, talk to each other about what we are doing or think collectively about where we might be going.

Hence the blog. I do still plan to put the exhibition online in the late spring or early summer, and hopefully make a free, print-quality pdf of any works I can get the rights to (Dusie/Ubu style), but in the meantime this is an attempt at something less formal and more dynamic. It is mainly intended for the infusoria participants, but it is public and anyone interested in visual poetry (specifically women’s vispo) is welcome to comment or e-mail me something to post. If you’re an infusoria participant or Krikri member, you’re welcome to co-author the blog – just mail me and I’ll add you to the list. I can translate any posts / comments in Dutch, French or German; if you want to post in another language, go ahead and hopefully someone will understand and translate for you.

This is all a bit of an experiment, but I’m hoping it will turn into something multi-authored and thought-provoking. We’ll see. I also want to be able to post photos for all of you outside Belgium, so that you can see what is going on without having to wait until I get round to writing all that html. If you’re in Belgium, get off the internet and come to the exhibition, dammit!

I’d be really interested in any reviews, commentaries or criticisms of the infusoria exhibition, reflections on individual participants’ work or writing on women’s visual poetry in general. You don’t need to be a visual poet or a woman to comment. On the other hand I’m really not interested in pointless bitching, especially if it’s aimed at individuals. As if you would. If you hate what the exhibition is about or if you think it really turned out badly, send me honest and well-argued points, and I’ll post them. I’m definitely open to constructive criticism, doubts and questions (because my head is full of all that anyway).

From my own perspective, I’ll be spending the whole week at the exhibition in Brussels. There’s no one else to supervise the exhibition, so I’ve set up home in a corner of the exhibition room with my laptop, camera and a big pile of translation work for company. I don’t have an internet connection here, which means I have to wait till I get home to post everything (sometime round midnight central European time). I’m exhausted, frazzled, and my English is suffering from speaking French and Dutch all week, so don’t expect any polished gems of vispo wisdom. And don’t be too surprised if I delete my posts suddenly without notice, if I get an attack of the cringes.

I do plan to blog about the experience of being locked in a box full of vispo for a week. I also want to include a post a short feature on each participant’s work, with the information you sent me and photos of how we’ve exhibited it.