&Now 2019 Conference

What can be learned from imaginative, innovative, and speculative study? Three panelists discuss aesthetics and sensorial concepts and convergences.

Ryan Bell’s "Synecdoches and Synesthesia: Gertrud Grunow, the Bauhaus, and Graphic Scores" will discuss the need for a pedagogy of synesthetic aesthetics. Beginning with a discussion of interdisciplinary concepts in Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus manifesto, followed by the scholarship of Gertrud Grunow, a musician and pedagogue. Bell aims to imagine and reconstruct an incomplete history while embarking on another challenge; virtually erased from the Bauhaus’ history, Grunow’s work can be mobilized and positioned within less obvious lineages––such as the adoption of graphic scores within experimental music. In doing so, Bell argues that it will not only rightly resituate Grunow within the history of the Bauhaus, but also reflect the interdisciplinary boundlessness that is central to her work.

Deven Philbrick’s "The Point as Limit: Convergent Readings of Marianne Moore and Robert Duncan" asks, what happens when we examine the limits of structure, for both aesthetics and politics? Philbrick proposes a convergent reading practice that examines the aesthetic and political consequences of how we read innovative works. He contends that reconsidering Philippe Sollers’ concept as a point of convergence between aesthetics and politics, and by extension, between text and reader, is fecund territory for innovative, politically salient reading practices. Philbrick will discuss these speculations about limits as a theoretical apparatus through analyzed poems by Marianne Moore and Robert Duncan.

Jason Zuzga will close read several of Barbara Guest's prose poems from her 1999 collection, The Confetti Trees and discuss how they rub against the shimmering linguistic surfaces of her other poetic works. What Guest means by the word "imagination" in her critical writings will also be considered; is she playing with the materiality of film or are the works a call to arms against them? Video interpretations of some of the poems will be crafted and shown. Zuzga will argue that Guest's work demands much more attention.