RIP Roeg og Bertolucci

Nicolas Roeg

Bernado Bertolucci

Pasolinis sidste interview

You are a poet and a filmmaker. Is there a relation between these two roles?

As far as I'm concerned, there is a profound unity between the two of them. It's as if I were a bilingual writer.

Interviewet kan læses i sin helhed her

SEBASTIAN MAZZA IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHANNES GÖRANSSON

FRA UDP

“THE POEM DROWNS ME AND I RESURFACE WITH A TRANSLATION”: SEBASTIAN MAZZA IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHANNES GÖRANSSON

UDP intern Sebastian Mazza interviewed poet and translator Johannes Göransson in early 2018 on the occasion of the release of his guest-edited Swedish poetry edition of Interim. Among Göransson’s numerous works are translations of Aase Berg’s Transfer Fat (UDP, 2012), With Deer, andHackers(Black Ocean, 2009 and 2017), and his volume of poetry The Sugar Book (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2015). His memoir Poetry Against All is forthcoming. Mazza and Göransson discussed translation as drowning, the ingestion of foreign texts, the underworld of poetry, dense grief, “blubber biters,” and the translation of translations.

Hackers seems to take a bit of a middle ground between the prose poetry blocks of With Deer and the sharp taps of Transfer Fat. I wanted to begin by asking you about shape: how does this visual aspect of the poetry affect translation? This seems especially fraught when regarding some of the skeletal short lines in this book: a word in English might require a few in Swedish or vice versa. Does this require of the translator a visual language thinking that departs to some extent from syntax? How does the choice of line length over semantic content, or vice versa, happen?

I think this is a very perceptive question. But also difficult to answer! I am sure that it does affect my translation just as it affects the reading: the shorter poems put a different kind of pressure on individual words. But I’m not sure exactly how I was affected by the form. It’s often hard for me to talk about my method. People often ask me: What’s your method? How do you make your choices? What do you give priority to? I think it’s hard to answer those kinds of questions. One of the reasons why it’s hard for me is that I don’t see myself as a “chooser.” I translate in a more intuitive way. I also don’t see myself as being “in control” in this way: I feel like the poem asks me to translate it in certain ways. It’s a collaboration of sorts, though I don’t like to use exactly that word because it feels practical – it’s more like the poem drowns me and I resurface with a translation. No, I don’t resurface. We both drown. The poem is the underworld because the underworld is where translations can happen.

Maybe related: Do you have any reservations about the original-facing-translation format of the book? I personally like it, as I can check the rhythms and shapes of the original language whenever I’m curious, and even look up a word. But it also means that I’ll probably never forget that I’m reading in translation. Does that kind of forgetfulness have any merit? It seems like a translation is always trying at the same time to be not- just-another-text-in-translation, and also, unavoidably, a translation.

I think there’s something to be said for reminding people that they are reading a translation, and there’s something to be said for what you so beautifully call “forgetfulness.”

I think it’s great to have the foreign text in the original because it does remind the reader that it’s not a US text, thus undermining simplistic ideas of “accessibility” and “simplicity.” Not everything exists without noise in English. There is a world “out there” that may run counter to established norms. Perhaps more importantly, the presence of the original may allow the reader to explore the inter-lingual energies of the poems. And some people may actually read the foreign language—so then it’s nice for them to be able to read the original as well as the translation.

But there is definitely a point to “forgetfulness.” It may allow us to read a foreign text the way you would read an American text: with the same kind of intensity. I feel like people often read translated texts in brackets: as if they don’t really read the text. They want a national “context” so that they can read the foreign text separately from their own US poetry. As a result, they are not as deeply affected by it. There’s a political problem in appropriating a foreign poem and taking it as American, but the choice to distance one’s reading and not to let the foreign into one’s brain, one’s idea of poetry, that is perhaps even more politically conservative. There is a risk that including the original will quarantine the foreign; create the idea that the translation is a counterfeit, not “the real thing.” Of course it isn’t the real thing, but neither is the “original.”

I want my poems to have a powerful effect on their readers. We have been told that the politics of reading works in translation can be found in distance, and recognizing something as other, but I think there’s a profound politics in having a foreign text enter us—to be put under foreign influence. This is especially true for US readers, who have been brought up in a hegemonic position of power.

The breaking of this division between US (central) and foreign (marginal) is what I call “transgressive circulation” in many of my essays. I took the phrase from John Durham Peters who uses that phrase to talk about Socrates’s fears of writing—how it will take words out of their original context. Peters analyzes how Socrates uses these erotic metaphors to describe his fears of transgressive circulation: if you take a foreign text into your mouth, your body, it is like being fucked by a stranger. I think that’s an important part of poetry: to open oneself up to that transgressive circulation. To put a foreigner’s words in one’s body.

It seems that before you approached Aase Berg’s work as an object of translation, you discovered it as a reader of the Stockholm Surrealist Group. I wonder, as she comes out with new books, and as you translate more of them, do you see your roles as her reader and as her translator separating or growing closer? In other words, do you separate your role as audience/reader and as translator? Or are these things intimately connected for you?

That’s a very interesting question. Our artistic projects are inextricably intertwined in many ways. A lot of her work plays around with translation and the English language—it was always there, but has grown stronger in response to my translation and to traveling in the US. When I read her new work, I do think about issues of translation, but then I think that’s part of her poetics—a kind of translation poetics that asks the reader to think of it in terms of translations and deformations.

As far as my own writing, you can probably most clearly see the result in Pilot, the book of mine that is most overtly multilingual. It came in large part out of translating Aase’s work; it came out of the slag, the wrong turns, the leftovers of translations of those early books. In a sense, Aase’s work asks me to mistranslate it, to not make a translation that replicates a stable original, but to enter into a deformation zone where things happen to my languages. I took the centrifugal energy of translating her poems and applied it to texts associated with home, births, origins. I applied it to the Swedish language and the English language: each deformed the other. I wanted to write in an English that felt like pebbles in my mouth. I wanted to write in a Swedish that sounded like a backwards tape recording. I used each to undo the other. It’s a translation-infected book.

Berg is a friend and a contemporary. There must be challenges specific to translating a living author. Do you two collaborate at all, or has translation always involved a sort of solitariness (even if this solitariness is with the text)? What’s it like to have Aase Berg as your reader (the reader of your translation)?

Having a living author makes for a messy translation relationship! You can have discussions about the work; it’s not stable, complete the way a dead author’s might be viewed. Perhaps this is why US poetry does not like its foreign authors to be alive. You can see this inclination in all the metaphors that refer to the translation as the animation of a corpse (for example, in Pound’s writings). Perhaps the living author is too dangerous: if they cannot be contained in a nice spot of literary history, they may prove too unruly, too threatening: they may speak back (to US poetry, to the translations, etc.). My translations are always collaborative to a high degree. We go back and forth. She is also a great reader of poetry. A few years ago, we worked together on translating the Korean poet Kim Yi-deum into Swedish for a Swedish journal. That was a very inspiring, generative collaboration that taught me much about Kim’s work, and which helped me translate her into English (in the book Cheer Up Femme Fatale). But yes, she’s also a good reader of my translations (and my poems).

Although you do provide notes on a case-by-case basis at the end of the book, there is no translator’s note or preface to Hackers. Was this intentional? What is the role of the translator’s voice/opinion in a book like this? When, if ever, should they speak, and how must they? I’m thinking not just about the language but also about the book’s obsession with Natascha Kampusch, who may not be familiar to many English speakers. Is the translator also translating into/out of a culture’s familiar references (this also makes me think of your piece at HTML Giant early last year about the place of the Swede in the American imaginary)?

I think it’s useful to have a translator talk about their process. That’s why I have written a lot of essays and introductions; and why, at Action Books, we encourage our translators to think about and articulate their views on translation. But—as with the “forgetfulness” question—it’s possible that this can lead to an overt stabilizing of the text. Yes, with Hackers, I included some information that might be helpful in reading the text. But a lot of Aase’s references might not be known by a Swedish reader either.

Translation discussions often fall back on illusory and reductive notions of context: that we must master the “context” a poem was written in before we can properly read it the way a person from that foreign nation would read the book. It’s implied that if you are a member of that culture everything will become “accessible” to you, and if you’re not, you can never understand the text (especially if it is in translation). But obviously cultures are not stable or monolithic, and poets often are members of subcultures, or are simply weirdos, or write with very personal references. Not to mention that cultures are shot through with all kinds of boundary-corrupting foreign cultural material. Some of these “foreign” materials may indeed provide better—or more exciting, generative—contexts for reading a text than some stabilized idea of national context.

Perhaps more importantly, poems do cross boundaries, creating new texts, new experiences, new interpretations, new contexts. One thing that translation does—and what makes it such a threat to gatekeepers and the type who try to maintain hierarchies of taste and decorum—is challenge the idea that there is a single way of writing well, a single way of interpreting a poem, a single canon, a way to “master” the poem. Translation generates excess. This is why it has to be constantly quarantined. Translation reminds us that we cannot master poems even if they are written in English to begin with. Poems aren’t meant to be mastered.

I was struck by how, at the end of your essay, “To Vibrebrate,” we’re left with a strange ancestry of poets (“Jäderlund, Hopkins, Zurita, Lynch, Jefferson”). Writing often engages with or disengages from this sort of constellation or ancestry-making practice. I was wondering how these sorts of ancestries inform your own poetry. Do other writers appear as you work? Do they follow you up to the point of writing and then get lost? To what extent does the writer become an aggregator of other voices, other artists (and can translation be a hyper-example of this)?

My first poems were actually translations: I would translate the lyrics of the post-punk music I was listening to (both English and Swedish) as a 13-year-old in between languages, while changing the lyrics. I came across Bruno K Öijer’s poetry because the band Imperiet made a song out of his poetry (and in retrospect their lyrics were almost fan-fictions of his work). Last summer I started translating some poems by one of my biggest idols, Eva Kristina Olsson, and it was a very intense experience. Afterwards, my poetry was absolutely changed. Not that it was an imitation of EKO; it was a poem written by a brain that had been shaped by the process of translating Olsson. Discussions about poetry—particularly the kind that emphasize “accessibility"—set up a model of writing in which the poem is an expression of an original, stable interiority of the poet, which is then "translated” with greater or lesser “clarity” into writing; and in this model, the poet has to be the originator of the poem (and the translator becomes by necessity a fake, a counterfeit, a purveyor of kitsch). But I don’t believe in that kind of stable interiority: what we think and what thinks us is more dynamic, multivalent. It’s not just translation but poetry, too, happens in the underworld.

But of course there are poets who influence me, such as the ones I mention in the “Vibrebrate” essay. There are others that I return to—Artaud, García Lorca, Genet. But not just writers. I think I’ve been deeply influenced by artists like Basquiat and Kara Walker, and filmmakers like Tarkovsky, David Lynch, and Godard. And I’m constantly being influenced, not just by canonical artists, but often by younger artists and writers. I recently wrote an essay called “Bad Plath” for Spoon River Review; it’s largely about younger poets who are inspiring me by calling attention to the “bad Plath"—i.e. not the cleaned-up, establishment Plath that Vendler and others are trying to create, but the daring Plath who breaks the rules. So influence and lineage aren’t linear. It, too, is a deformation zone. My wife Joyelle wrote probably the best thing I’ve ever read about the workings of influence.

It seems that part of what you get impatient with Matthew Zapruder for are all the false dichotomies, so I want to be careful about posing “mysterious” as value opposed to “clear.” I was wondering what kind of role the mystery plays in your writing and reading practice. Do you see mystery as primarily a function of the inexplicable, or does mystery in poetry also have something to do with the whodunit: a poem as a murder and the reader as a detective or explicator? How do you think writers end up choosing their values (like clarity or mystery)—is it their teachers? Their inherent sensibilities? Their reading lists?

Yes, I picked the word "mysterious” as an antidote to the model where clarity is opposed to the obscure, and clarity is good, obscurity bad. I might here mention Daniel Tiffany’s work on “lyric obscurity” as fundamental to poetry’s fascinating pull. I don’t like the model of the reader “accessing” some kind of interior of the poem, as if the writing was something to get through to that interior. I am accessed by the poem, not the other way around. I’m not in control.

I am interested in mysteries, but I also don’t believe that “clarity” or “accessibility” is possible. As I noted in my reply, something that being immersed in a foreign language taught me was the way language “vibrebrates"—it is never simple. This is true both in the sense that I experience it, but there’s also a politics to this. There isn’t one English. Not everybody can or wants to (or feels safe!) writing "accessible” poetry. Mostly it feels like a way to control poetry: don’t be too interesting, be restrained, be tasteful.

I like your murder analogy. It’s one I often think about: in murder mysteries, the crime scenes are often so mysterious (a flock of swans set on fire, a group of teenagers in clothing from the 18th century, etc., to draw on a few memorable Wallander crime scenes): they are a montage of disparate, strange clues. The role of the detective in these stories is to create a narrative which makes sense of this mysterious montage. Often an important part of this is getting to know the killer, creating an interiority of the killer (usually based on some childhood trauma). By creating an interiority for the killer, the detective lessens the killer’s power and is able to overtake him or her. But this also ends the mystery. This is why the first 50 pages are always the best pages of any murder mystery. The ending is always disappointing. I think the poem should be more like a detective who is able to dwell in the murderous atmosphere of the crime scene without there being a corpse. Or maybe like a detective in the underworld.

As for how we come to these aesthetic values—as I wrote in my response to Zapruder, I think a key component of my aesthetics has to do with being an immigrant, but that’s just one part of it. There are many more factors. Things we read, things we experience, things we listen to. The key is that what’s accessible to some is not to all; some things cannot be accessed. Right now I’m dealing with intensive grief for my daughter Arachne who died in the fall. I kind of resent all these grief poems I see circulating. Here “accessibility” means that the speaker of the poem overcomes the grief, conquers it. It’s a very US approach to grief. My grief is dense and it both surrounds me and moves through me and tears apart my life, my poems. I’m not going to defeat it, overcome it, and neither will my poem. I won’t have some epiphany and make everything good, in part because I don’t want to. My daughter lives in my grief. She’s my biggest influence.

It seems that since The Sugar Book you’ve been involved more frequently with essaying and translating. And you’re also a teacher. So my question is: are you currently working on any poetry? And do these three kinds of writing and teaching generate each other in your practice, or do they remain pretty separate?

I’m currently writing a poem that happens in the grief I was talking about. I want to make it pretty because Arachne deserves a pretty poem, but it’s a murderous prettiness.

I’m also working on a translation project with the Swedish writer Sara Tuss Efrik. She uses a method she calls “automanias"—it’s a kind of "writing through” other texts, but it’s far messier and more chaotic than we might associate with that term (as in John Cage, etc.). Now Sara has performed an automania on my whole first book, A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (which has been out of print for years), and I’m translating it “back” into English, but my translation process is a bit of an automania as well. We go back and forth; we have even become characters.

I love this project—it unsettles all kinds of ideas about originality, translation, gender, and power, without ever becoming a “thesis” project. It’s a kind of struggle, a kind of comorbid medium-izing.

I’m also teaching, which mostly I love. My students right now are daring, strong, and passionate, and that really helps me.

How did the guest-edited issue of Interim come about? Have you had the idea to collect others’ work for a while?

Derek Pollard, editor of Interim, suggested I edit the issue after he had seen me complain about the state of things on Facebook. I believe I had complained about the fact that AWP had rejected my proposal to bring several Scandinavian poets to read at the conference. So he wanted to bring them for an offsite reading and couple that with an edition of the journal. We were putting together the funding etc. for the reading but then my daughter died and I couldn’t quite deal with that. But I still wanted to keep going with the issue. So I did. Someone told me it was a “grief work” and I guess that is true.

I have thought about it for some time because I do get irritated when US critics, poets, and publishers keep bringing out Tomas Tranströmer as a way of avoiding having to deal with any contemporary Swedish poetry, which challenges a lot of ideals and norms of US poetry. I have nothing against Tranströmer, but to repeatedly bring out new versions of his poems, with hardly any change, and to praise each new edition as a revelation, strikes me as conservative and disingenuous. The truth is that poets like Bruno K Öijer and Ann Jäderlund are far more influential in contemporary Swedish poetry than Tranströmer, but these poets have seldom been translated into English.

Every collection has its logic, be it by the author’s name, the artistic movement, the generation, etc. What do you think is required of us as readers coming to these poets qua Swedish poets?

To return to the discussion about Socratic fears before, I hope readers bring a willingness to take the poems into your mouths, your bodies.

If you become interested in a poet, I hope you seek out more writing by that poet. I hope you might even translate more of their work. Write a review. Participate in the transgressive circulation of these works.

How have you read these artists together? When assembling the issue, did certain aspects of these poets become more salient as they resonated with each other? These categories are all slippery, but did you find that reading as a guest editor put you in a different position than reading as a translator or writer?

These are all poets I think are great writers. It doesn’t include every poet who’s been important to me. (For example, for some reason I couldn’t get myself into gear to translate Eva Kristina Olsson, I just couldn’t do it.). I wanted to include some different styles, ages, and demographics that would challenge general ideas about what constitutes “Swedish culture” or “Swedish poetry.” I also wanted to challenge my own ideas about Swedish poetry (for example, I had never read Iman Mohammed before this project). I didn’t want to replicate some kind of static model of Swedish poetry, even as it exists in my own brain.

Although every artist in this collection is linked to Sweden in some way, one lives in Finland (Eva-Stina Byggmästar), one was born in Baghdad (Iman Mohammed), a couple in Iran (Athena Farrokhzad, Azita Ghahreman), and one is a Syrian-born Palestinian (Ghayath Almadhoun— whose totally uncompromising poetics on the atrocities in Syria are some of my favorite moments here). And these translations are not just from Swedish but from Arabic and Finnish. What was the thinking behind including non-Swedish language poets? This seems especially relevant given the Nordic ideal the American President keeps referring to.

There are a lot of fantasies circulating about Scandinavia and its people: having to do with race, gender, bodies, sexuality. In his racist comments, Trump did mention Norway as a kind of ideal source of immigrants. This is disturbing and foolish in many ways, including the fact that such rhetoric turns Scandinavians into symbols (something I have dealt with my whole adult life; it’s seldom pleasant even when it’s meant in a “complimentary” way like this).

I was a little surprised about this, because over the past few years, it has been far more common among US right-wingers to posit Scandinavia as a deterring example of a feminist country. If you google “Sweden” or “Malmö,” you will soon come up on droves and droves of right-wing propaganda articles that follow the same basic narrative: feminism has made Swedish men weak, which has caused them to allow immigrants into their countries, immigrants who then rape their women. The US right-wing seems to be obsessed with Sweden for reasons related to symbolic narratives about gender and race, and to left-wing politics. At the heart of this rhetoric seems to be the demonization of empathy (portrayed as weak, emasculated) and the valorization of xenophobia (portrayed as masculine, strong).

This propaganda narrative did enter into my mind and it did inspire me to try to make a really great selection of Swedish poetry. I don’t want to instrumentalize the poems in the collection as a defense against US rightwing-ism, but it was part of my inspiration, my thinking.

As part of that inspiration, I was conscious of including immigrants. On one level, I think it’s only correct to include immigrants and refugees—they play an important part in Swedish culture right now. But I did also think about undermining the reductive, widely held US view that not only turns Sweden into a symbol, but flattens out its culture.

Even before the more recent immigration waves, Sweden has dealt with cultural differences. Finnish immigrants and Finland-Swedes have always held a dubious position in Swedish culture. Finland- Swedes don’t write in Finnish—they are part of an ethnic group whose language is Swedish, though they live in Finland. They do have an amazing tradition of modern poetry, including some of the greatest Swedish-language (or any language) modernists: Edith Södergran, Gunnar Björling, Henry Parland, Elmer Diktonius. I wanted to include more Finland-Swedes than I did—for example, Matilda Södergran, whose work is super—but I ran out of space and time, so I ended up only including Byggmästar, who’s someone I have loved for many years.

There are a lot of different immigrant experiences involved in the issue. Farrokhzad was born in Sweden (to Iranian parents) and has a very prominent role in Swedish culture, but Ghahreman is an Iranian poet who came to Sweden in her forties (I met her when I gave a reading with her in Malmö a few years ago). Johannes Anyuru’s dad is from Uganda, but he was born in Sweden. Iman Mohammed was born in Baghdad. Ghayath Almadhoun is the most recent arrival, coming as a refugee from the war in Syria in 2009. I thought it was important to give a more complex representation of Swedishness than is common in the US, but again, I have to admit, ultimately I included them because I like the poetry.

All of these poets are relatively recent, but the last few are especially young. Reading them, I felt a subtle change in tenor and a spin to sense of humor. I’m thinking of great moments in Anna Axfors, like:

I don’t like skincare

“constantly moisturize the skin" I don’t like that advice

Oh God

I can’t do it

I lie on the ground and close my eyes, slowly dying

even though I’m pressing my ear to the ground—I hear nothing, it seems like earth

doesn’t have a heart

ha ha, I’ve always known that

How do you see the youngest poets in this group relating to the older? Are people like Jäderlund still vital precursors? Does this collection draw any lineages?

Jäderlund and Öijer are still hugely influential. You can see Jäderlund’s wide influence even within this issue—Boberg, Mohammed, Berg, Warg, and Farrokhzad are all on varying levels influenced by her, though they are very different poets. So maybe this collection is a very Jäderlund-ish vision of Swedish poetry. Öijer is phenomenally popular (sells out theaters for his reading tours), though his influence might not be as apparent in this issue.

As you mention, Axfors and Burrau are part of a different lineage, a very Internet-generated aesthetic, somewhat like “alt-lit” in the US (in fact, they have given readings with Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez, etc.). That’s definitely correct.

You wrote on Twitter that in translating Aase Berg’s work in LOSS for the collection (something you’ve been doing for 20 years), “we finally went over the edge.” What did you mean by that? What’s involved in translating such radically small units (usually a couple words surrounded by an ocean of white space)? How did you modify your translating practice for these pieces?

Aase’s language is very inter-lingual. This inter-lingualism helps create a sense that the language makes sense in a different way. I would say on a sonic level, but that makes it sound like sound poetry, and too simple. If language is traditionally seen as a vessel for meaning, this poetry breaks the vessel open but does not disregard it. It’s just that it’s hard to tell what is sound and what is sense. I got the word “vibrebrate” from translating Aase, and it’s also the best description for how her language moves (it “vibrebrates”!).

This vibrebration is what makes the translation so hard and also so much fun. I have to invent/deform the English language the same way she does with the Swedish language. Translation becomes more like doing something to the language—an act that troubles or even destroys the illusory idea of stable languages—rather than bringing across “meanings.” A killer whale becomes a “blubber biter.”

LOSS is arguably Aase’s most “American” book. The title itself is a bilingual pun (it can mean both the English word and the Swedish word for “release;” it’s what you yell at a dog to let go of something). She wrote it after my first translations started appearing and after she’d given readings here. The book includes a lot of references to the US, such as when a woman in Alabama drowned her kids. And one poem (“Limbido”) was written for a US soldier who had served in Iraq and there somehow become obsessed with her poetry. You can read that here.

The poems contain a lot of straight-up English language. Translating Swedish poems that are “in English” is a strange task. It’s both a liberating and a horrifying moment for the translator. A kind of Duchamp moment: it’s already a fountain, it’s already a translation.

I also felt like the English texts détourned the Swedish texts—really asked us to read the Swedish at least in part, as if we were “English speakers"—and, maybe, English speakers who couldn’t speak Swedish. It really foregrounded her use of the sonic qualities of Swedish. Therefore, I not only included English "in English” but I also included Swedish “in Swedish” (like “dön” which is an archaic word used for its sound but also suggests “death”). Suddenly I was translating English into English and Swedish into Swedish in the very same poem.

In the underworld of translation, we may channel different tongues and that’s poetry.

Musik

Max Richter THREE WORLDS Music from WOOLF Works;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVLFh0tPTlQ&t=1753s

Philip Glass Piano Works Vikingur Olafsson;

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Billeder fra Hald

Anne Carson; 3 svar

Uddrag fra interview i Guardian; 

Your work extends our idea of poetry. Do you have a personal definition of what poetry is?
If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it.

I’ve read that you have always been fascinated by volcanoes. How did that begin?
It was a time when I was painting. Volcanoes are dead easy to paint.

I like your poem Short Talk on Mona Lisa and wonder if she continues to be a riddle?
I never liked Mona Lisa. This continues.

tillykke til Kirsten Thorup!

Med Nordisk Råds litteraturpris. Hurrah!

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LAND: GREKLAND | YRKESROLL: FÖRFATTARE

PUBLICERAD:22 september 2017, kl 11:17| SÖK JOBBET SENAST:28 oktober 2017 | ANSTÄLLNINGSFORM:Deltid, Arbete utomlands, max 10 dagar | LÖN:Fast och rörlig lön |ANTAL PLATSER:15| ANNONS-ID:0017-528308

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Arbetsförmedlingen Kultur Media arrangerar pitch för unga poeter! På uppdrag av en arbetsgivare/bokförlag hemmahörande i Aten, Grekland arrangerar Arbetsförmedlingen Kultur Media en Presentation av unga poeter. Bokförlaget har för avsikt att ge ut an antologi med 10 unga poeters arbete som en del av en svit antologier med unga poeter från olika länder i Europa (en antologi/land). Pitchen/presentationen kommer att äga rum Datum: 24 januari 2018 Tid: 18.00-22.00 (du kommer även att få en individuell tid för din presentation) Plats: Aten (information om plats kommer att ges till dig som blir uttagen att delta). Utifrån Arbetsgivaren/bokförlagets önskemål och direktiv skall du som ansöker om att delta vara - Upp till 40 år. - Ha blivit publicerat med högst 2 samlingar. Ansökan Du som är verksam poet är välkommen att ansöka om att delta i denna pitch/rekryteringsmöte senast den 28 oktober 2017. Din ansökan ska bestå av 1. Dina kontaktuppgifter; namn, adress, telefon, epost-adress och ev. webb. 2. Foto 3. Meritförteckning/CV över utbildning och projekt/arbete OBS på engelska 4. Ev. en bibliografi (som inkluderar: Boktitel, Förlag, Årtal) 5. En PDF med högst 10 dikter (i originalspråk, dvs. på svenska, ej översatta) samt information om NÄR och VAR de eventuellt tidigare publicerats. Urval och besked Vi kommer att välja ut ca 15 deltagare i samarbete med Örnen och Kråkan - poesi och kritik. Senast 30 november 2017 den kommer urvalet att vara klart och besked kommer att lämnas till alla som ansökt. Förberedande möte Den 7 december 2017 kommer vi att anordna ett möte för information och förberedelse inför pitchen, i Stockholm (praktikaliteter samt diskussion kring presentationsteknik). Vi ber dig som ansöker att hålla denna dag fri i din kalender. Intervjuresa genom Arbetsförmedlingen Du som är registrerad som arbetssökande på Arbetsförmedlingen, kan ansöka om resestöd för att delta på detta rekryteringsmöte i Aten. Intervjuresa är ett arbetsmarknadspolitiskt program och arbetsförmedlingen fattar beslut efter att ha gjort en arbetsmarknadspolitisk bedömning. Läs mer www.arbetsformedlingen.se (sök Resebidrag). Välkommen med din ansökan senast 28 oktober 2017 till
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Sök jobbet senast 28 oktober 2017

Lectures; Craig Dworkin

LinK

- THE IMPOSSIBLE ARCHIVE OF THE AVANT GARDE

- THE VIRAL JETTY SMITHSON BETWEEN MEDIA

- AND NOTHING BUT

- TEXT ENGINES

          - AFFECTIVE IMBALANCE IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

Pomo kejser-caligula-prosa!

The Guardians livedækning af Donald Trumps besøg i Puerto Rico, der blev ødelagt af orkanen Maria, nærmer sig en slags 80'er-meta pomo (post-modernistisk) kejser-caligula-prosa;

'19:20

On Puerto Rico, the president is continuing to meet with residents and local officials and relief workers.

At one location, toured the Cavalry Chapel, in south-east San Juan, he started tossing some supply items into the crowd, according to the White House pool report.

Shaking hands with people in the crowd, the report reads, “picked up a can of tinned chicken breast and held it aloft for the crowd to see.”

“He handed one man in the crowd a pack of batteries.”

Then, as his wife followed him: “he held up a flashlight and showed it to the crowd, shaking hands the whole time.”

“Trump kept picking up items from tables laden with supplies, showing them to the crowd and handing them to people with outstretched hands. ‘There’s a lot of love in this room,’ the president said. ‘Great people.’”

The president “moved to a pile of yellow bags containing rice and handed them to whoever was nearest. He tossed rolls of paper towels into the crowd. Two were caught but one fell onto the carpet. The first lady was handing out small boxed solar panels.”

According to the pooler, chief of staff John Kelly “conferred in quiet tones” with the director of FEMA, Brock Long.'

'En kritik af kritikken', Af Mikkel Thykier

Mikkel Thykier FYRAFTENSTALE

Politikens Foredragssal 25. 9. 2017

Debatmøde om litteraturkritik med:

Kamilla Löfström

Lars Bukdahl

Tue A. Nexø

Kizaja Ulrikke Routhe Mogensen Jeppe Brixvold

Mikkel Thykier

Ordstyrer:

Jes Stein Pedersen

Transskription: Simone Thorfinn Larsen

Afsnit i parentes er tilføjelser fra Thykiers talepapir som han efterlod i porten da han gik fra arrangementet. Gentagelser og tøven er udeladt.

Anmeldere og forfatterskolerektor, fra venstre til højre: Kamilla Löfström, Lars Bukdahl, Tue A. Nexø, Kizaja U.R. Mogensen og Jeppe Brixvold. Thykier er meget sigende placeret yderst til højre, modsat de andre uden egen mikrofon, hvilket skaber visse lydproblemer i starten. Jes Stein Pedersen (JSP) bevæger sig frit på gulvet. I sin korte intro priser han Politiken for at holde fast i de gamle dyder om at litteraturen skal sætte sin tid under debat. Dernæst får de fire anmeldere og Brixvold kort ordet for at forklare hvad de ser som litteraturkritikerens opgave. Ingen af anmelderne har et klart svar. Brixvold mener at litteraturen har en virkning i verden og at det er kritikkens opgave at finde ud hvilken. Thykier (MT) får ordet. Han har aftalt med JSP at han kan komme med et længere indlæg.

MT     Hvad skal vi bruge litteraturkritikken til?

           I sommer brugte jeg et eksemplar af Weekendavisen til at tørre et par våde
støvler med. Det synes jeg egentlig var en meget fornuftig brug af den avis ... Lyder det morsomt? Det er nu ikke en joke.

Tre eksempler fra det ex. af Weekendavisen:

På en af de første sider var der en anmeldelse der kan kortes ned til: Forfatteren LH skriver fine noveller, men er de gale nok?

Længere inde var der en anmeldelse af en tysk-kinesisk filosof der skriver og tænker imod digitaliseringens hastighed og indflydelse på den sociale verden. Om ham lyder det at han selv er offer for den, den hastige udvikling.

Endelig var der en anmeldelse af en roman, tror jeg det var, og dens “udsøgte prosa”. Anmeldelsen var skrevet med en beundring der grænsede til det misundelige.

Nå ja, der var også en anmeldelse af endnu en tilføjelse til Klaus Rifbjergs forfatterskab hvor anmelderen forgæves forsøgte at oparbejde interesse for bogen og overbevise sig selv og sine læsere om, at den fortjente en anmeldelse selv om den på ingen måde kunne ændre eller tilføje noget til indtrykket og forståelsen af Rifbjergs forfatterskab og altså var helt overflødig at bruge tid og plads på.

For at tage de tre eksempler bagfra var der tale om en fetichering af det udsøgte og en typisk ophøjelse af forfatteren af en forfinet skrift til noget særligt beundringsværdigt, efterstræbelsesværdigt af den grund.

Med anmeldelsen af filosoffen var der tale om den ældste retoriske manøvre i verden: Det du kritiserer er du selv et eksempel på. Som om avisen og anmelderen ikke selv var det, offer for hastige samfundsforandringer; som om det var muligt at stille sig uden for den verden man er en del af; og som om den kritik berørte den filosofiske og samfundskritiske kerne i bogen: monotont at afsøge og opstøve den nuværende verdens manglende evne til at håndtere negativitet.

Anmeldelsen eller kritikken af novelleforfatteren var heller ikke meget andet end et retorisk spørgsmål, tilmed fremsagt af én der aldrig er gal, knap nok vred, og aldrig har vist at han kender til galskabens alvor, de uhyggeligt porøse grænser der påvirker alle som kommer tæt på galskab, klinisk galskab. Uden selv at være tosset forveksler han Storm P’ske tosserier med galskab. Desuden kan man undre sig over hvorfor den slags galskab skulle være en afgørende æstetisk kategori i dette tilfælde,

det specifikke forfatterskab: Hvordan forholder den sig til forfatterskabets anliggender? Nok om det.

Det var som det typisk er: Der var ingen overraskelser, ingen mulighed for at blive overrasket, fordi anmeldelseskunsten er reduceret til den slags retoriske manøvrer. Tilmed forholder den sig sjældent til andet end det den kan genkende og forstå ud fra Ulla Albecks lærebog i dansk stilistik.

Min egen kritik, en kritik af kritikken. Jeg ved ikke om den var overraskende. Det er også lige meget. Jeg ved ikke ... Jeg er ikke helt klar over, kan ikke helt huske, hvor tydeligt de stod i artiklen i avisen men – bare så vi ved, hvad vi snakker om – hovedpunkterne, min egen overordnede vinkel, i hvert fald i aften, skulle gerne være, at vi befinder os i et landskab af forkastelser:

En politisk forkastelse af eksisterende institutioner som går dybere end Trump, Brexit og M. Le Pen og som medierne har været så utrolig dårlige til at håndtere. [Mumler et eller andet.] Modsætninger mødes på midten, ikke fordi de er enige, men fordi uenighederne er nogenlunde ligeligt fordelt.

En kunstnerisk forkastelse: kunstnere og forfattere, der både forkaster de allermest fortærskede traditionelle kunstformer og den eksisterende kritik og institutioner for formidling; de forventer ikke noget af dem.

Og en indirekte kritisk forkastelse (af ovenstående), som kommer til udtryk i den begrænsede interesse for at beskæftige sig med dem (med litteratur og kunst, som forsøger at skabe nye alliancer, både æstetiske og mht. de ydre rammer, alliancer inden for hele litteraturens og kunstens infrastruktur, kan man måske sige).

Ud fra det fremsatte jeg et bud på et værkbegreb, på en forståelse af hvad der indgår i et værk og har betydning for det, som adskiller sig både fra den typiske socialkritiske litteraturlæsning og den formalistiske som nok er de mest udbredte kritiske indstillinger i Danmark, samt gav nogle få eksempler på folk der udtrykkeligt arbejder på den måde, arbejder med en sådan forståelse ved at arbejde på tværs af kunstneriske og litterære grænser samt de fysiske materialer, de rum litteratur og kunst befinder sig i og den måde de finder vej ud i verden, forbinder sig med andre. Nogle eksempler:

Det mest simple eksempel, den traditionelle romanfortælling, forbinder punkter i tid. Her er der en dimension.

Poesien, i det mindste som vi har læst den i 100-150 år, forbinder ord på siden, altså på en flade, i en sigende komposition. Her er der to dimensioner.

De hybridværker jeg nævnte i artiklen forbinder punkter i tid og rum og mellem forskellige materielle, sociale niveauer og på tværs af kunstarterne. 3D altså.

Det tænker jeg både som en ny genre og en ny standard fordi mere almindelige bøger allerede er begyndt at efterligne dem: En nedskæring af traditionelle (æstetiske) alliancer, en opjustering af nye alliancer.

De folk jeg nævnte (Forlaget Gestus og Korridor) er forholdsvis perifere eksempler. De sætter situationen og den kunstneriske og kritiske forkastelse på spidsen: (De forventer ikke noget af kulturredaktionerne og andre institutioner, deres hybridværker vækker enten ingen kritisk interesse eller bliver ikke læst ud fra deres egne interesse, og) de arbejder generelt med at skabe usikkerhed om de kunstneriske kategorier (hvad er litteratur, hvad er billedkunst, hvad er forfatterens rolle, hvad er

forlagets rolle, etc.), men er stadig rimeligt genkendelige som litteratur, kunst. Alligevel optager de næsten ingen plads. Der skal så lidt til for at glide ud af interessefeltet.

I artiklen talte jeg om at de arbejder med materielle netværk, hvor vi ellers har en tilbøjelighed til at forstå netværk immaterielt (vi taler om “sociale” netværk som om det sociale var en eller anden æter vi svæver rundt i). Mere enkelt, mere teknisk kan man bare sige at det er værker der kræver en litteratur- og kunstkritik som er villig til også at blive en mediekritik.

Men den bedste, den mest oplysende model for en forståelse af væsentligheden af at forholde sig til det sammensatte, til en komposition ud fra væsensforskellige elementer der påvirker hinanden, er faktisk madanmeldelser.

Litteraturanmeldelsens tre banale komponenter er fortolkning, kunstneriske mangler og en vurdering.

I madanmeldelserne derimod tæller alt med, alle komponenter, ikke bare hvad der ligger på tallerkenen, men både retternes ingredienser og konteksten for måltidet: tjenere, stemning, belysning, lydniveau, etc. Hvis komponenterne står i et godt forhold til hinanden vurderes restauranten som et godt sted. Det er madanmeldelsens diskrete udfordring af litteraturanmeldelsen. Er der virkelig så få muligheder for at se på hvordan en bog er sat sammen, komponeret og opfører sig? spørger mandanmelderen indirekte, og her menes ikke bare den enkelte bog men også bogens forhold til andre bøger og tekster, i forfatterskabet og uden for forfatterskabet: Hvad skal der til for at en bog udgør et godt måltid?

(Det er på en måde også det der er tilfældet med 3D hybridlitteraturen.)
I dag har jeg en tilføjelse til det, et retorisk spørgsmål: Har kritikken hidtil kun skrevet om hvordan andre har gennemgået modernismens erfaringen uden selv at gennemgå den?

Med det, med modernismens erfaring, mener jeg kunstens og litteraturens gradvis erkendelse af deres egen skrøbelige status og opdagelsen af det ansvar de så har over for sig selv (efter at de har mistet deres traditionelle, historiske forbindelse til verden).

I dag synes journalistikken, heriblandt kulturjournalistikken, at befinde sig på tærsklen til samme erfaring: altså opdagelsen af en kreativ impotens, en manglende evne til at udnytte sine evner som må blive en værdifuld mulighed i sig selv. Den hidtidige kontrakt med verden er ophævet, så at sige (der er kun den “frisatte evne” til fortsat at analysere, beskrive, sammenfatte og forestille sig begivenheder). Der er ikke længere en fast grund for ens faglige identitet (kun en afgrund, der omgiver en). Det betyder, at der sker et uskyldstab. Naivitet er ikke længere en mulighed. (I stedet er der en uafvendelig indsigt i den skrevne, afbildede eller på anden måde formidlede verdens autonomi, uanset om denne autonomi forbindes med falskhed, forvrængning eller bare et tab af dybde). Det er med andre ord en erfaring af et omfattende autoritetstab som ender med at gøre selve tabet til en autoritet. Som det sidste følger en opgivelse eller radikal forandring af forholdet til samfundets institutioner og fællesskaber (fremskyndet af en ændret teknologisk og økonomisk organisering af verden).

Så jeg så selvfølgelig gerne en kritik der formåede at håndtere de tre forkastelser samt forholde sig til sit eget autoritetstab for at øge sin selvkritik og selvbevidsthed ligesom kunsten og litteraturen har gjort det i 150 år, mindst.

JSP Nå, Mikkel, nu skal du også til at runde af.

MT Nej, det skal jeg ikke.

En kritik der forholder sig til de ting kræver noget, selvfølgelig. Jeppe har allerede nævnt et internationalt udsyn, så det behøver jeg ikke gøre mere ud af. (Et internationalt udsyn der ikke nøjes med at referere de største engelsksprogede medier og trykke de samme lister over amerikanske romanforfattere, som fortjener nobelprisen, som alle andre trykker. Et udsyn der også indbefatter de mest obskure hjørner af internettet hvor det teoretiske grundlag for den politik S. Bannon forsøgte at få ind i amerikansk politik med Trump florerer. Et udsyn der også indbefatter poesi helt uden for de danske referencer for det relevante: xenopoetik fx, en poesi der eliminerer både forfatteren og læseren, en selvgenerende viruslignende digital poesi der har udviklet sin egen agenda og ikke længere vil skjule sin glæde over at se menneskeheden uddø. Skal vi stå i vejen for den glæde? Et internationalt intellektuelt, filosofisk, teoretisk, politisk og litterært udsyn, hele vejen rundt. Vi beskæftiger os med dansk litteratur, ja, men litteraturens udsyn er selv ikke længere nationalt. Det kan kritikkens udsyn heller ikke være.)

Det kræver en kritik, der er skrevet fra en håbløs position, en kritik der har opgivet håbet om at nå nogen med de sædvanlige journalistiske klicheer og skabeloner:

Den oversete, misforståede forfatter fx. Glem det, ingen forfatter vil nogensinde hævde at være velforstået. Så det er en helt intetsigende skabelon.

Generationsforfatteren. Well, tidsopfattelsen i dag, den direkte adgang til hele historiens arkiv vi har i dag, bryder med den tidsforståelse der ligger i Poul Borums generationsmodel.

Alle de stereotyper Yahya Hassan blev indfanget af (fordi der allerede er så mange der har investeret i dem); han er nok det mest ekstreme eksempel på dem: Forfatteren der endelig kommer med samfund-kritiske udmeldinger (den socialrealistiske forfatter med meninger).

Digteren som kriminel (the poet as outlaw).

Forfatteren som rockstjerne.

Teenagerebellen.

Den guddommelige og dæmoniske yngling.

Alt det der har været med til at forvandle ham til den eksotiske anden vi er så glade for i Danmark fordi vi så kan varme os ved vores egen tolerance over at have lukket den fremmede ind og samtidig fryse, eller gyse, over at vi heldigvis selv ikke er så slemme.

(Et oprigtigt spørgsmål: Blev Y. Hassans bog så populær netop fordi den kunne aflæses ud fra skabeloner og stereotyper og ikke fordi den brød med dem? Har de skabeloner i virkeligheden stået i vejen for en forståelse af de miljøer bogen skulle give et indblik i? Har vi en bedre forståelse af hvad det vil sige at være – etnisk? hvorfor bruger vi overhovedet det ord? – fremmed i dagens Danmark, hvor mange forskellige erfaringer der kan være af det? Min mistanke er, at det ville kræve en helt anden kunstnerisk indsats, én som er langt sværere at aflæse ud fra nogle skabeloner, et værk helt uden genkendelige markører, et værk hvis kunstneriske udformning i sig selv stiller sig i vejen for at opfatte digteren som repræsentant for noget eller nogen.)

Der er den moralske kritik som forbløffende nok er begyndt at dukke op i Politiken igen. Moralsk kritik er altid (den letteste kritik at fremføre, det er) en helt omkostningsfri kritik. Ingen er parat til at kræve deres moralske kritik omsat i lovgivning. Så det er en kritik helt uden konsekvenser. Historisk set kan man også se at den altid er helt misforstået, den rører ikke ved noget af betydning i værkerne.

Der er tendensen til at tale om tendenser: Nogle skriver om kroppen, andre skriver om naturen, atter andre skriver om samfundet, og så er der dem, der beskæftiger sig med identitet og sociologi uden nogensinde at rykke sig ud over dårlig metafysik, dårlig eksistentialisme.

Noget der til gengæld kan være grund til at genoverveje – til at forny – er erfaringsbegrebet, livet i det, det livsformende i kunsten, det som musikere er så gode til at tale om og danske litterater håbløse til: både det tekniske og det der flytter én, ændrer ens indstillinger, måder at håndtere livet på. Her kunne galskaben komme ind igen. For erfaring er altid at krydse en grænse og få gør det i så omfattende grad som den gale. (Her er der ikke længere væren som en identitet, der skal beskyttes, men som bevægelse, både mod og væk fra andre.)

(Det ville måske gøre det muligt at fremprovokere et kritisk nybrud, nye ting at orientere sig efter, nye måder at vurdere på. Det er noget vi ser alt for sjældent i Danmark. Bukdahl har som den eneste af de tilstedeværende i dag givet et helt selvstændigt bud på hvad der er værd at beskæftige sig med i dansk litteratur(historie). Det er ikke til at tænke på hvordan det ville have set ud uden ham. Der er mange ting at kritisere ham for: overfladiske læsninger, forsimplet værdsættelse af stilistiske nydelser, hastværk, indstillingen: skyd først, tænk bagefter – eller tænk slet ikke. Men lige præcis det at satse alt på, at ens egne præferencer også kan være en opdagelse for andre og at de kan slå enhver stivnet enhed i stykker – hvornår vil vi se det igen? Dengang, i 1990’erne, var der om ikke andet et fantastisk engagement i det han skrev. Det er mange år siden. Ingen andre har siden påtaget at stå for en lige så gennemført revision. I dag er alle igen i hovedtræk rørende enige. Det paradoksale er så, at da Bukdahl iværksatte sit opgør, så alle kunne opleve friheden ved, at der ikke længere var enighed om, hvilke forfattere der var værd at læse, var dansk film og musik for første gang for alvor begyndt at opfatte sig som europæisk, international ligefrem. Bukdahls orientering derimod var altovervejende lukket inden for de nationale grænser. Selv da han var allermest engageret og måtte kæmpe for at løfte litteraturen ud af sine fastlåste stillinger. Det er den stadig, lukket i den nationale historie. En stor mangel.)

Der er to andre store skabeloner at skille sig af med: Offentligheden. Med stort O og i bestemt form. Der findes selvfølgelig ikke nogen offentlighed (som noget på forhånd givet). Offentlighed skabes, må skabes, fra øjeblik til øjeblik.

Der er heller ikke længere noget samfund som Margaret Thatcher meget rigtigt gjorde opmærksom på for længe, længe siden. Men der er heller ikke nogen individer. (Der tog hun fejl.) Der er en lovgivning som vi alle i større eller mindre grad føler os begrænset, berørt eller beskyttet af. Og så er der dem vi er i forskellige forbindelser med andre, forbindelser der er så stærke at vi har svært ved at skelne os fra dem. Vi finder sammen med andre og skjuler visse sider af os selv, deler andre sider. Så vi er aldrig helt os selv, aldrig helt nogen andet. Der er ingen anden form for “samfund”, kun et utal af større og mindre miljøer i berøring med hinanden og de hybridvæsener der trives der (i deres økosystemer).

Og det troede jeg egentlig, at mødet i dag skulle være et eksempel på: et forsøg på at bryde med skabeloner. Hovedideen med at tale om en kunstnerisk forkastelse der også er en kritisk forkastelse var jo at de udøvende også har en kritisk indsigt, en kritisk sans der fortjener at komme til orde og er afgørende for kunstnerisk og kritisk udvikling og ja – selvbevidsthed. Jeg troede at det her arrangement skulle være et eksempel på det. For mig var det aldrig meningen (med artiklen og samarbejdet med Politiken) at jeg i dag skulle have endnu en lejlighed til at fremsige en eller anden kritik. Meningen var at åbne for andre stemmer.

I stedet sidder jeg her med en flok som faktisk ikke har anden mulighed end at forsvare deres egen position og berettigelsen af deres respektive arbejdsplader. Men jeg er her ikke for at forsvare mine egne synspunkter. Jeg nægter faktisk at forsvare mine synspunkter. Og jeg er heller ikke for at høre andre forsvare deres synspunkter. Spørgsmål, problemstillinger er til for at løfte os ud af positioner. At forsvare er at låse fast, kontrollere.

Jeg er her fordi det skulle være en lejlighed til at give stemme til andre som altså så er fraværende. Jeg anerkender fuldstændig Politikens indsats, jeg værdsætter hvad de har gjort; men jeg er ikke sikker på at det her er det arrangement jeg for længe siden sagde ja til at deltage i. Jeg har sikkert misforstået noget.

Ja, der har helt klart været en eller anden misforståelse. Og det er måske også årsagen til at jeg tre måneder efter stadig kan glæde mig over at vente på et bekymrende lille honorar for den trykte tekst og intet for de seks måneder der gik forud med møder, samtaler, ideudvikling, konsulentbidrag og aftaler.

Det er ikke for være ufin at jeg begynder at tale om økonomi (og oplevelsen af ikke at være en ligeværdig partner). Jeppe nævnte også vigtigheden af økonomi. Det er fordi det er uholdbart at lade være. Alle ved, at der for de fleste ikke er særlig mange penge i det her. Så er det idealistisk at efterlyse flere penge end der er? Nej, det idealistiske er at lade som om det ikke har betydning. Arbejdsforholdene, produktionsforholdene kan ikke ignoreres. De har betydning for den tid, der kan lægges i et arbejde. (En litteraturkritik der er værd at betale for – en litteraturkritik der er værd at læse.) Modsætningen til eksistentialistisk alvor er jo ikke humoristisk galskab, sådan som Bukdahl mener, men sløseri – sløseri med tid.

Så jeg siger ikke det her for at pege på min egen økonomi, men for at efterlyse en litteraturkritik der også påtager sig at være en udførlig og altomfattende kulturkritik, en kulturjournalistik helt uden berøringsangst. Der er jo ingen af os, der er her (i den her branche) for at blive hyldet. Så lad os få en kritik af alle niveauer af de litterære og kunstneriske institutioner: Hvordan er undervisningsmiljøet på Forfatterskolen; hvordan er forholdene på værkstederne på Kunstakademiet og på gallerierne; hvor fedt er det, at Gyldendal aktivt shanghajer forfattere fra andre forlag før de har skrevet deres næste bog færdig; hvem vil seriøst gå ind i en diskussion af hvordan Kunstfonden fungerer som en institution der udfører et kritisk arbejde og ikke bare giver nogle folk en vis økonomisk frihed? Hvilke litterære priser og uddelinger bortset fra Nobelprisen fører stadig til kritiske diskussioner og omvurderinger? Ingen, stort set. De betyder intet. (Et eksempel på at der ikke er nogen offentlighed, kun den der af og til skabes.)

Kun sådan, med en altomfattende kritik helt uden berøringsangst, kan vi undgå den typiske opsplitning (dikotomi), der i årtier har låst alt fast: I Danmark er man enten for eller imod – man er for Forfatterskolen, Det Danske Akademi, Kunstfonden, socialrealisme, konceptuel avantgarde, etc. Eller man er imod. Tværtimod: Netop fordi man er for, netop fordi man er for noget, indser man også at det er nødvendigt at forholde sig kritisk til det. Ellers tager man det ikke alvorligt. Man tager ikke Forfatterskolen alvorligt uden at forholde sig til undervisningsmiljøet, fyringen af lærere, (de manglende?) udmeldinger om hvilken opførsel der anses for pædagogisk forsvarlig. Man tager ikke Det Danske Akademi, Kunstfonden, socialrealisme, konceptuel avantgarde, etc. alvorligt hvis man ikke er parat til at gå ind i en kritik af hvordan de egentlig fungerer. (Er Akademiets fester og fejring af sig selv virkelig højdepunktet af dansk forfatterkritik? Er Kunstfondens tildelinger ikke noget der er værd at diskutere eller i det mindste udtrykkeligt tage til efterretning i stedet for blot at referere i en lille rubrik? Etc.)

Alt andet end en sådan altomfattende kulturkritik er at sigte for lavt. Nu skal jeg nok slutte af ...

JSP Ja, det skal du så det også bliver lidt mere som det arrangement jeg havde forestillet mig. Kamilla ...

MT Jeg har fem linjer til.

JSP [stiller sig helt op af MT og kommer med noget der lyder som en længere belæring om at give plads til andre og opdele en kritik i flere punkter.]

MT Fem linjer til. Er det overhovedet muligt med en så omfattende kulturkritik. Ja, det skulle jeg mene. For der er intet af det jeg har sagt i aften som jeg selv har fundet på. Det kommer alt sammen fra folk der kunne have siddet her i dag men åbenlyst ikke er blevet inviteret. Men jeg kan ikke påtage mig at tale på andres vegne. Det vil jeg ikke. Så – og det er sagt helt uden bitterhed – jeg kan faktisk slet ikke se en grund til at jeg skal være her. Så nu vil jeg gå (– på pension, faktisk – og overlade fremtidig snak om litteratur, kunst og kritik til de andre fraværende). Tak for i aften.

[Mens Thykier samler sine ting ...]

JSP Kamilla, du var den første der markerede. 

KL Ja, det var det med misundelse ...

[... Thykier er ude af døren.]