speak: a hypertext essay

Author: Linda Carroli

Web URL or medium: ensemble.va.com.au/speak

Description: This modest work is an essay which engages non-linear narrative and includes multimedia elements such as sound and image. The title is taken from Gayatri Spivak's essay, "Can the subaltern speak?." Variously, postcolonialism and feminism as discourses of 'otherness' have addressed the notion of 'speaking' and 'speaking position', asking questions such as 'who speaks for whom?', 'who is authorised to speak'. Such questions displace the idea that the 'other' is absent or silent, or that the 'other' is indeed 'other'. It was produced with State Government funding and has been included in INK.ubation Salon curated by Mark Amerika for trAce's Incubation conference in 2000, MAAP99 and MAAP01 (as part of the cd anthology ensemble logic.) A review of "speak" by Dean Kiley in Real Time [#47 Feb - Mar 02] notes that "Carroli plays more traditionally, intimating a simple book-ness with 'contents', which turns out to be a word-cluster, each activating a pop-up with text-chunks from a digressive Montaignesque 'essay'. They seem self-evidently closed but are networked by hotlinked words and cross-indexed footnoting, and by the ruminative voices that thread in and out of narrative, quotation, allusion and modulating rhythms of imagery (poetic and graphic)."

Technical requirements: Current web browser. Best viewed on Netscape 3 or above because of the stylesheet and at 800 x 600.

Start/Restart instructions: Load URL to start. Reload URL to restart.

Gallery: ELO Gallery home | Contributing artists | Titles