(SPAM Cuts) KICKING THE KAOS PAD - ENTERING INTO THE TECHNO-CHEMICAL DISORDER OF AGF-POEMPRODUCER
This week’s SPAM Cut features Max Parnell, looking at the transhumanist intimacies and techno aesthetics of self-proclaimed bass poetess, AFG Poemproducer’s new printed printed collection, Poemproducer, available now via paranoia publishing.
writing in the electronic age. if emotions have cycles. some salmiakki pattern. i am gathering thoughts from every corner of this electronic planet.
> Antye Greie, stage name AFG Poemproducer, is an e-poetess, writer, curator, musician and performance artist known for her deconstruction of language through digital technology. Off the page, she converts her poetry into electronic music, digital media and sound installations in auditoriums, museums and theatres.
> Her first printed collection Poemproducer, published by paranoia publishing group ltd., includes 30 of her poems selected from her poem-newsletter, each one being randomly translated into one of five languages.
> Throughout these poems, there's a sort of anxiousness that permeates the chopped up, fragmented sentence structure, mirroring the glitchy, jolting style of AGF's music that wavers between rhythmic and arrhythmic. As readers, we're frequently fed assertions that dart at us as if from paranoid eyes;
terrorists can attack / security tends to be reactive
terrorism is gang war / personal war / trapped
> It seems almost necessary to read these poems at a fast tempo, whereby we experience these warning words like flashes of a strobe light. Yet this anxious tone isn't consistently one of paranoia. On the contrary, the texts can be anxiously playful in their examination of what writing actually consists of:
I am enjoying the dance / authorship is not a feeling / it is work / revealing patterns / rhythms of people / the visible and audible / text is live / collected in / real time rooms / the ebb and flow of soundscapes
These examinatory passages crop up throughout the collection, often in the form of existential questions planted amongst the technological stream-of-consciousness flow. There's a sense of falling with each poem, of careering down the page, stumbling on every short burst of words that run into the next assertion. The narrative voice, often wavering between machine-like and personal, frequently addresses the reader, questioning 'what are we doing? / do we mean what we are / and are what we mean?' These unanswered questions work to help us make sense of the chaotic, obfuscating language breakdowns that characterise this collection.
> Perhaps the opening of 18, 'Subject: no harm can fall', most neatly encapsulates what it is like to read this collection:
you are now / entering the body of words / electrical dadada
strict codes cracked by / bending borders --->
It is here we enter this 'fragile state', one in which the borders between human and machine start to cross over, echoing the transhumanist rhetoric of 'human but perfected', articulated in the prosthetic metaphor of 'the body: a space-helicopter'. Poem 22 illustrates this flirtation with the cyborg, asking us 'isn't breathing techno? / are we just recreating heartbeat? / looking for extended battery life?' As transhumanists look to loosen the borders between homo sapiens and technology, Poemproducer's overtly technological style bends the boundaries between automated speech and narrative voice. Throughout the collection, there's a sense of being intimately addressed, of being present in the poems with the author. Yet the playfulness comes in the subtle AI shades that permeate the speaker's tone, presenting AGF's notion of language as coding, as seen in 'Subject:mmmmmmmm', a poem consisting of single letters, symbols and numbers.
> Nowhere does this merging of voice stand out more than in the small personal-yet-not-personal closing remarks that end almost every poem in the collection. These vary from the formal, 'with respect / yours AGF', to the warming 'with love from the woods / yours poetess' and even personal 'my dearest, i wish you an upmost powerful 2010!' The tone of the closing remarks fluctuates between impersonal computer automation and intimate speaker-listener interaction, perhaps an accurate way to describe the collection as a whole.
~
Text: Max Parnell
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Seelenficker/ Soulfucker
Seelenficker
I have always thought to myself,
If I take drugs, then they can fuck my body.
Then they could do with me what they want.
But in those moments,
when the drugs stop working,
I realised that they were also fucking my soul
Somehow, every time I take the drugs,
everything is horrible and heavenly at the same time.
I feel better on drugs than usual.
It would be nice if the world wasn’t the way it is.
It would be nice if you could close your eyes and
wish for something very hard, and it comes true.
I feel better on drugs than usual.
But in those moments,
when the drugs stop working,
I realised that they were also fucking my soul
There, where other people have the idea of love,
In me, there is a black hole. And this hole is getting fucked.
The drugs from above, the life from below.
It would be nice if the world wasn’t the way it is.
It would be nice if you could close your eyes and
wish for something very hard, and it comes true.
Crystals, sharp-edged crystals, press through my veins.
It feels like the drugs are cutting me up inside
And when I stop using.
They’ll shred me to pieces.
I have always thought to myself,
If I take drugs, then they can fuck my body.
Then they could do with me what they want.
But in those moments,
when the drugs stop working,
I realise that they are also fucking my soul
Seelenficker
Seelenficker
This is a modified translation of the lyrics from the song Seelenficker by Klatschkind
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Whirling
Whirling is a more proper form of time
Spiral is more suitable to our movement
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When I started this project #technopoems last year, I didn't expect the enormous support I received from the poets I contacted to submit their #poems for the poetry album. I have since been composing and arranging music to their poems and some of mine too. It is an ongoing process and I have decided to release the work in bits. Wendy was the first person to say yes. I'm eternally grateful. Download links will follow soon. Watch this space. #poetry #musicforpoetry #musiccomposition #iTunes #spotify #soundcloud
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#Repost @ida_jj with @repostapp ・・・ Teaser for the newly released #technopoem 'Big' which I did with the talented @kafayatquadri. Listen and download it here, it's free!: (https://soundcloud.com/kafayatquadri/big-feat-ida-johan) and let us know what you think! #notyourusuallecturer #musicandpoetry #poetrydigestionhouse #poetry #poems #Malaysia #Nigeria
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Out
This is not only an expression of love
but also an expansion
Our guide for the future
Love is an exposure
unveiling us
You cannot resume your kiss
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No-
Beat is always an anticipation
It is to put forward
Our mind claims
Faster, Further, Beyond
But it is not quite like that
It remains
It sustains
so that we move
rather than go
Beat is to come back
It is returning
again and again
It temporarily leaves and
holds on to our bodies
Beat is to note
It is telling us
that we are not known to each other
yet we are related
With its looping
it ties us
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Red/Gold and Black
Sounds of conflict
disturbance and fatigue
Reminders of the
rough and superficial noise
you would hear from a kitchen in the southeast
Being packed in vehicles
our lives are streamlined
As our minds reiterate
characters on billboards lose meanings
becoming pure imagery
Liquid sense
Daydreams are accumulated and
categorized with multicolour tape
eventually dispatched to individual houses of atomic nuclei
Red in the indigenous tapestry colours the moon
TV screen emits sporadic halts
Our movement is machinic
The roar stops short of music
Entities soon to be at the table
Chopsticks of boss-women
beat the already trembling wooden floor
We cite a lengthy complaint of neighbours
having been thrown in our post box
Our Time for supper
Voices rise in resonance
hovering and tuning with a rotating fan
Police-women knock on our door
without keys
The life of glasshouse
There is no break-in
No exodus
The time turns to inner Space
Our food becomes the component for another body
Synchronising.
The moon sends a golden ring
The after effects slash the flat or the Real
Partially external
Our Time for bed
Incognito.
The women were the first
to jump on the ground
The magnetic field
Hollowed horizon
Expansion.
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Just one of those days. They are not many. Have you listened to #takeitslow by #kafayatquadri on #soundcloud? That's what's up now. Don't be left behind. It's my new single. #Lagos #Nigeria #poetry #spokensoul #lovepoem #technopoem
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The final
The feeling the end is coming
Expecting dissolution
Cut of time
Fall
Afterglow
All supposed to be unknown
Outside of this sphere
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Pre
I want to enter her brain,
capturing a pre-emerging rhythm,
an un-formed aggregate,
an embryo of pleasure,
the sense untranslated
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Mono-Multi
Knocking down the wall
Cracking the eggs
It’s possible to
Get out of the shell
While being embraced
Civilization meets extraterrestrial beings
The alert, laughter, roar are from One with many facets
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Raw Vision
Let our vision melt
As trains go through the Centre
Texts on billboards become a single flow
The crack in the street will be paved by Gold
So let Green grows
As it covers the entire ground
Seamlessly
Let our mouth shut up
Let our Void unfilled
And let our body sink
Into this nameless liquid
Which is made out of
Our colours
Undividable contour
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Neuter
Purpose is forgotten, or completely blank
We take off, before anything begins
rushed by this assertive voice
Where are we directed to?
There is an orientation and a place
but neither can we name it
nor call it an end
because there is no such thing as distance
Only one thing is certain
There is a flow, a pure movement
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Vessel
I wish I had dropped the power of articulation
Even of murmurs
Not many of poetic forms are effective either
I rather find myself in the sparse of language, the disconnection
That is to reserve the abundance
And even to pour the liquid into the reservoir of the possible
Is the time preserved?
Are you filled with something else or nothing?
Darkness is being an ultimate comfort
Nothing is foreseen
Nothing is forgotten
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#takeitslow it’s #february The month of my birth. I celebrate through out this month. It is my birthday everyday in February so no excuses. Meanwhile, this track is also scheduled to be released on the #technopoem #poetryalbum. Listen to the full track on my #YouTube channel and also on #Spotify and #applemusic #kafayatquadri #technopoetry
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