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ELO22 Call for Proposals (May 30-June 1)

ELO22 Call for Proposals

Conference: May 30-June 1, 2022
Deadline: January 7, 2022
#ELOitalia
Submit via EasyChair.

The HStudies Research Group of the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), with the University of Nagoya, Graduate School of Humanities (Japan), the Arab Academic Institute of Education/Arab Union for Internet Writers, the Digital Culture Center of Ciudad de México (Mexico), the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Núcleo de Pesquisas em Informática, Literatura e Linguística and the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazilian Digital Literature Observatory (Brazil), the Pontificio Collegio Gallio (Italy) have collaborated to organize the ELO 2022 International Conference and Media Arts Festival.

The theme for ELO 2022 is E2Lit: Education and Electronic Literature. #ELOitalia

We invite artists, researchers, scholars, PhD candidates, experts and practitioners to submit works, papers, case studies, and media artefacts for presentation at the festival and in the different venues of the in-person conference and online workshops and seminars. 

THEME RATIONALE

Our society lives in a moment of complexity, where the exponential emergence of a web-based culture has triggered a different approach in relation to the spaces of communication, relationship, and learning. During the last years, the advent of new personal and wearable devices has favoured the emergence of a new literacy, based on a convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006).

Forms of fiction and literature underwent a process of disembodiment and cross-fertilization during the revolution from the Gutenberg Galaxy — printed paper, mass distribution — to the McLuhan Galaxy — new media, hypertext, collaborative writing — (Castells, 2003). The dimension of literacy has moved from a semiotically-measured geometry (De Saussure, 1916; Hjelmslev, 1969) to a dislocation and a deconstruction of contents and channels that give expression to new products (Derrida, 1974; Landow, 1994; Bolter & Grusin, 1999). The impact of social media on narratology has redefined the meaning of readership and authorship. The author has not only lost their traditional role, but becomes an icon of themself, a collective-minded producer that is self-perceived through the extra-flexed eye of the amniotic network in which they define their narrative experience (De Kerckhove, 2003). 

Literature takes on different roles within the so-called new media. Particularly, digital literature is central to the humanities and to the culture that emerges from the digital environment (Grigar, 2021) and it may play a central role in education too.

Every generation develops blended competencies under the influence of new tools and communication frameworks (Bardi, Ciastellardi, Di Rosario, 2019). For several years now when it comes to storytelling and literature, we have seen cultural references in a continuous process of transformation and redefinition, both because of digital tools available to the public, and because of different emerging channels of dissemination and distribution that are (self)produced in an increasingly massive way. What appears is a different form of understanding and learning, and a new form of education for people at any level and at all ages (not limited, thus, to a scholarly perspective).

This conference seeks to shed light on digital literature according to the epistemological crisis of authorship and the new dimension of participation and relationship offered by both the Web and new media. The conference will offer keynote speeches and talks to examine specific case studies. Moving from the state of the art, the aim is to investigate the interdisciplinary relations in the field of electronic literature, in order to recognize patterns of theories, technologies, and social dimensions of the phenomena to offer a critical toolkit to understand and map out the emerging knowledge and practices created by this field and the multifaceted dimension of education.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following conference’s tracks:

  • E-lit as Digital Humanities: Digital layers, multifaceted comprehension patterns and critical thought to redefine the e-lit dimension in educative environments.
  • Education beyond the (e)book: The possibilities of participatory culture in educational environments. How can e-lit promote values like democracy, pluralism, participation, diversity and sustainability…
  • Coding education: the use of e-lit to set up essential skills to adapt to the digital age.
  • E-practitioning: Literature and digital practices at crossroads.
  • We are platforms: Rethinking e-lit and its educative role and collaborative practices after the emergence of the pandemic.
  • AIrchive and UXPoetry: E-lit and its preservation between Artificial Intelligence and the need of a new poetic of user experience (UX). 
  • Digital Heterotopies: The possibilities within e-lit to present, criticize and denounce everyday social rhetoric.
  • Education on diversity and sustainability: E-lit as cultural practice to educate about integration, gender respectfulness and global sustainability. 
  • Politics and Policies: Education on e-lit as a framework for civic engagement and civil society.
  • STEAM-punk: The cross-fertilization among STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics) and the different approaches to e-lit culture. 
  • Polysemy and synaesthesia: E-lit forms and works to open a different perspective of meaning and knowledge across multisensorial and plural dimensions of understanding. 
  • Electronic Opificium: The Aesthetics of Tech. Experiments and handcrafted works to revitalize the idea behind literature and its digital possibilities.

Interdisciplinary contributions are especially welcome.

Accepted abstracts will be presented in the parallel sessions of the Conference and full papers will be published in the proceedings of the Conference. The conference organizing committee will provide a selection of the best papers to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Submit via EasyChair.

Conference Talks in COMO (ITALY) & online

Submissions are welcome across the following formats: 

  • Paper (15 min – a presentation of a single paper by one or more authors – 500 words abstract). Paper submissions should be at most 3500 words long.
  • Poster (1- page poster – format A2). 250-word (max) proposal.
  • Panel (90 min – a proposal for a complete panel including 3 or 4 separate papers on the same general topic – 250 word overview plus 250 word individual abstracts).
  • Lightning Talks  (90 min – a proposal for a complete set of lightning talks, including 4-6 participants – 250 word overview plus 50-100 word descriptions of individual  5-7 minute talks).

Submissions should include the title of the submission, the name(s) and affiliation(s) of contributor(s), biographical notes for contributors, and a 500-word abstract.

The ELO22 conference will feature different synchronous and asynchronous venues. Online pre- and post-conference workshops and seminars will be organized in Japan, Israel, Finland, and Brazil.

For the in-person conference talks can be given in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese.

The deadline for submissions is January 7, 2022. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by the members of the scientific committee.

Submit via EasyChair.

Festival Exhibition in Como (ITALY) & online

We invite proposals of digital artworks and e-lit pieces to be featured as part of the in-person ELO Conference and Art Festival on E2Lit: Education and Electronic Literature.

All forms of electronic literature, multimodal writing, digital art, playful narrative, literary games, hypertext, and screen fiction will be considered. 

Please, be detailed on any special requirements. Submissions should provide the following information: 

Author name(s) and biographical note(s); 500-word artist statement detailing the aesthetic intentions, the structure of the piece, and its relationship to the conference theme. 

If you would like your work to be considered for a performance, please indicate that on the submission with an additional description (250 words max) of the nature of the performance as well as any technical requirements.

Statements should be anonymized for peer review. Technical specification providing exact details of what will be required to facilitate the work’s inclusion in the exhibition. This should include information on the materials, technologies, and spatial requirements necessary, and what the artist will require the gallery to provide. Please, be as detailed as possible regarding physical components and needs, including wireless internet. 

Pieces accepted to either exhibition will need to be delivered (physically or virtually) prior to the exhibit’s opening, and will remain on display after the conference ends before being returned to the artist.  

The deadline for submissions is January 7, 2022.

Please, note, do to time constraints, participants may only appear in the program twice, including combinations of artworks and talks.

Submit via EasyChair.

For more information, contact Giovanna Di Rosario ELO 2022 Chair, e2lit@hstudies.net or giovanna.dirosario@hstudies.net 

Partnerships

Pontificio Collegio Gallio (Italy)

Politecnico di Milano (Italy)

University of Jyväskylä (Finland)

The Arab Academic Institute of Education/Arab Union for Internet Writers

Nagoya University (Japan)

Federal University of São Carlos (Brazil)

Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil)

Digital Culture Center of Ciudad de México (Mexico)

 

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Renew Your Membership TODAY!

Dear members of the ELO community,

The Electronic Literature Organization Board of Directors would like to thank you sincerely for your support of ELO in the past, and we want to invite you to continue that support. The organization and its members have had a tremendously successful year and are working hard to support and foster this momentum throughout 2021 and beyond. We hope that you will take this opportunity to support our ongoing mission by renewing your 2021 membership, and consider donating to our initiatives.

The cost of membership is inexpensive: Student/Unaffiliated Artist membership is $25; Regular/Affiliated, $50; Associate, $100; and Patron $500. To renew, visit http://eliterature.org/membership.

All funds generated go to the many exciting events and initiatives the ELO supports on behalf of e-literature artists and scholars. Here are some of our most prominent projects and events:

  • We had a tremendously successful conference and media art shows online at ELO 2021 in May. You can access the online exhibitions, and conference materials, including videos and papers freely at the conference website: https://conferences.au.dk/elo2021/.

  • The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 4 will be published later this year and will also be available open access.

  • We have relaunched our online archives as The NEXT, which showcases our digital preservation projects, including making Flash works accessible to current and future users.

  • We awarded funding for an initiative titled Emerging Spaces for E-Lit Creations, in which we sponsored the creation of two new publication venues: Filter and (RE)VERB.

  • We supported 8 ELO Fellows, who contributed to many initiatives, such as the Electronic Literature Directory, and including two Amplify Anti Racism Fellows, who helped bring fresh perspectives and artwork to the organization.

  • We also maintain a presence on several social media networks, such as:

You can also make targeted donations to support specific ELO initiatives, and the link to do that is available here: https://eliterature.org/membership/#donate.

Help us invest in our community by renewing your membership today!

And if you have already contributed with your 2021 membership dues, we are grateful for your continued support, and invite you to make a tax deductible donation to support our initiatives. The ELO is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in the United States of America.

Many thanks,

Leo Flores

President

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Call for ELO Research Fellows 2022

Deadline: September 19,  2021

The ELO is continuing its expansion of scholarly activity, creative, and curatorial practices with the appointment of five graduate and early career Research Fellows for 2022, each of whom will be awarded a $500 stipend along with a one year ELO membership. Awards will be announced during the start of the Fall term.  In the coming month, we’ll be welcoming applicants who will be working with established ELO scholars and practitioners on a variety of ELO projects, such as the Electronic Literature Directory (http://directory.eliterature.org), CELL (www.cellproject.net), The Digital Review (http://www.thedigitalreview.com), the electronic book review (https://electronicbookreview.com), and the Next (https://the-next.eliterature.org/). Each of the Fellows will be expected to complete a minimum of two ELD entries during the term of their appointment. Fellows can also work with their supervisors to develop metadata for works in collections, creating content for the works’ exhibition spaces, writing descriptions of works in the collections or the collections themselves.

The ELO expects our Research Fellows to better reflect our members’ interests and backgrounds within the diverse international electronic literature community. We actively encourage individuals who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and come from broad geographic and language backgrounds to apply. Linguistic diversity will be particularly useful as our Fellows translate works in many languages from our growing consortium of e-lit databases.

One page letters of application, and short CV’s can be sent to the ELD project director, Joseph Tabbi  (joseph.tabbi at uib.no).

 

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Hook’s “The Vine and The Fish” Wins the 2021 Coover Award

Winner:
Leise Hook The Vine and the Fish

Shortlisted:
Diego Bonilla & Rodolfo Mata Big Data
Jason Nelson The Wonders of Lost Trajectories
Qianxun Chen and Mariana Roa Oliva Seedlings_:From Humus
Stephanie Dinkins Secret Garden

Jury: Jason E. Lewis, Amira Hanafi, Karen Ann Donnachie

The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to announce that the 2021 Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature  goes to Leise Hook for The Vine and the Fish.

Winner:
Leise Hook The Vine and the Fish

From the judges: A slowly-but-surely unfolding narrative reflection on the power of language to create and dissolve the boxes in which we put—or from which we can free—one another, carried along by an intimate story of movement, migration, and the unstoppable fecundity of life. The jury was struck by how well the writing, visual design, and simple yet exquisitely crafted interactivity work together to pull us ever further into Hook’s world.

Shortlisted:

Diego Bonilla & Rodolfo Mata Big Data

From the judges: This generative video poem looks into a not-so-far-off future in which the new knowledge gained by massive data collection is used to hypnotize consumers. The jury appreciated the tone of the work, which simultaneously mimics and critiques big data’s power to influence, and its activist intent, which hopes to unveil the viewer’s inconspicuous collaboration with those who seek to profit from the degradation of our privacy.

Jason Nelson The Wonders of Lost Trajectories

From the judges: This collection of work highlights Nelson’s playful mastery of metaphors. Of special note was the striking interactive card-catalogue-cum-cabinet-of-curiosities navigation controller which activates thoughtful visualisations of the locally embedded cultural narratives and archive from which it derives.

Qianxun Chen and Mariana Roa Oliva Seedlings_:From Humus

From the judges: The jury wants to acknowledge this work’s elegant intervention into natural language processing technology. Seedlings is a winsome digital manifestation of an extended agricultural metaphor, in which stages the browser as a fertile site for human and non-human collaboration.

Stephanie Dinkins Secret Garden

From the judges: “Our stories are algorithms.” Dinkins’ powerful work immerses the viewer in the stories of generations of African American women in a vibrant visual environment that invites whimsy & sorrow, regret & celebration. The women gaze directly at the viewer, looking to both connect and bear witness, and challenge us to think deeply about how computational technologies are shaping the stories we tell and who tells them.

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New Maverick Award goes to Talan Memmott

The ELO is proud to announce the recipient of a brand new prize: The Maverick Award.  This first ever award goes to Talan Memmott.

The Maverick is awarded  to an independent spirit: a writer, artist, researcher, programmer, designer, performer, or hybrid creator who does not adhere to a conventional path but creates their own and in so doing makes a singular contribution to the field of electronic literature.

As founder of an alternative learning institution, creator of one of the first online journals of e-lit, author of celebrated works of e-lit, scholar of digital media, and an artist who challenged every medium he worked in, Memmott is a singular figure in the world of electronic literature.

Throughout his career, Talan Memmott has blazed a path in digital literature.   He is the author of over 40 electronic literary works, and the novel My Molly De parted (Free Dogma Press). His works, perhaps epitomized by Lexia to Perplexia, have been the subject of acclaim and extensive critical analysis.

Memmott is also the Founder and President of UnderAcademy College, an unaccredited undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate anti-degree institution.  UnderAcademy College situates itself as a shadow-academic environment offering alternative courses and anti-degree programs in a variety of subjects. This alternative site of education has offered one-of-a-kind courses, such as How to Read and Write Fake News: Journullism in the Age of Trump, which Memmott co-taught.

Memmott holds an MFA in Literary Arts/Electronic Writing from Brown University and a PhD in Interaction Design/Digital Rhetoric and Poetics from Malmö University.

Memmott has taught and been a researcher in digital art, digital design, electronic writing, new media studies, and digital culture at University of California Santa Cruz; University of Bergen; Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden; California State University Monterey Bay; the Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Colorado Boulder; and the Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently Associate Professor of Creative Digital Media at Winona State University.

He has collaborated on many digital projects, including netprovs, such as, “I Work or the Web,” and the 2018 Congress of Fakes at ELO in Montreal.  He has served up computationally generated gastropoetic marvels with Scott Rettberg as part of ELO Cork and ELOrlando.

Memmott has  also given extensive service to ELO, having held a position on the Board, including Vice President.  He was a co-editor for the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 (ELO). He was also a co-editor of the ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature.

During the award ceremony ELO Vice President Caitlin Fisher offered an origin story for the award: The idea came up at the wake for Damon Loren Baker for an award recognizing, the artists and scholars, like Damon, “amazing people, as part of the ELO Community, who are not likely to win the other awards because they are on a crazy, brilliant, genius path all their own.”

In the future, the Maverick Award is to be nominated and elected by the Literary Advisory Board. The award: $500 and a bottle of St. Germain.  Rettberg explained that the new award would go to someone “who took an unconventional path and who really colored outside of the lines, and of course, Damon is part of this prize, which is a bottle of Saint Germain, Damon’s favorite liqueur.”

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Pressman’s Bookishness wins the 2021 N. Katherine Hayles Prize

Bookishness cover image

Winner:
Bookishness, by Jessica Pressman

Honorable Mention:
Antología Lit(e)Lat. Vol 1. by Leonardo Flores, Claudia Kozak, and Rodolfo Mata (eds)
.break.dance by Marisa Parham

ELO is proud to announce that The 2021 N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature goes to Jessica Pressman for Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age (Columbia 2020).

Winner:
Bookishness, Jessica Pressman

From the publisher’s page:

Twenty-first-century culture is obsessed with books. In a time when many voices have joined to predict the death of print, books continue to resurface in new and unexpected ways. From the proliferation of “shelfies” to Jane Austen–themed leggings and from decorative pillows printed with beloved book covers to bookwork sculptures exhibited in prestigious collections, books are everywhere and are not just for reading. Writers have caught up with this trend: many contemporary novels depict books as central characters or fetishize paper and print thematically and formally.

In Bookishness, Jessica Pressman examines the new status of the book as object and symbol. She explores the rise of “bookishness” as an identity and an aesthetic strategy that proliferates from store-window décor to experimental writing. Ranging from literature to kitsch objects, stop-motion animation films to book design, Pressman considers the multivalent meanings of books in contemporary culture. Books can represent shelter from—or a weapon against—the dangers of the digital; they can act as memorials and express a sense of loss. Examining the works of writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Jennifer Egan, Mark Z. Danielewski, and Leanne Shapton, Pressman illuminates the status of the book as a fetish object and its significance for understanding contemporary fakery. Bringing together media studies, book history, and literary criticism, Bookishness explains how books still give meaning to our lives in a digital age.

According to the prize jury:

“Bookishness provides a provocative look at the status of the book in the post-digital age. Pressman’s formulation of “bookishness” offers a compelling heuristic for considering the role of the overdetermining power of the book amidst the media shifts of the 21st century. Rather than sequestering electronic literature, Bookishness integrates a discussion of the digital with print-based texts, ushering in a new moment in e-lit scholarship in expertly crafted prose.”

Jessica Pressman is associate professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University, where she cofounded the Digital Humanities Initiative.  Pressman previously won the N. Katherine Hayles award forcoauthor of Reading “Project”: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone’s “Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}” (2015), which she co-authored.  She is the author of Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media (2014) and coeditor of Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era (2013) and Book Presence in a Digital Age (2018).

Honorable Mentions:

Leonardo Flores, Claudia Kozak, and Rodolfo Mata (eds). Antología Lit(e)Lat. Vol 1.

Front page of LiteLat

https://litelat.net/

The Latin American Electronic Literature Network (litElat) aims to bring together academics, researchers and artists who are interested in topics / works of electronic literature in the Latin American context. According to the jury,

“Lit(e)Lat is an overdue and powerful anthology that brings to the forefront the crucial contributions of Latin American and Caribbean writers to electronic literature since the 1960s. Collecting and curating this body of work, Lit(e)Lat expands the canon of electronic literature and demands attention to and promotes discovery of the remarkable work of these writers.”

.break.dance by Marisa Parham

breakdance cover image

http://smallaxe.net/sxarchipelagos/issue03/parham/parham.html#about

.break .dance is a time-based web experience opened in response to a prompt for a Small Axe Archipelagos issue, launched by Alex Gil and Kaiama Glover, and guest-edited by Jessica Marie Johnson. In thinking through and against the machineries of commercial interface efficacy, this pocket intentionally shows its material and discursive seams. Rooted in a sense of anarchival play, it is designed for multiple engagements, changes over time, and assumes no one will take the same path through. In its interface and experimental performances, .break .dance begs temporal patience and playful engagement with digital space. Here, touching and playing and looking are important to thinking. You can also read the process piece that goes with this project here. Acccording to the jury:

“.break.dance offers a compelling model of criticism that is itself a masterful piece of electronic literature. The piece prompts electronic literature scholars to look beyond the genres of monograph, anthology, and journal article to consider how the innovative and experimental methodologies of electronic literature can rewrite the rules of scholarship as we know it, using digital systems to dismantle larger systems of oppression.”

About the Award

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of criticism, of any length, on the topic of electronic literature. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from N. Katherine Hayles and others, this annual prize recognizes excellence in the field. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award, with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. One prize for Honorable Mention is awarded and consists of a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

Jury: Elika Ortega-Guzman, Roopika Risam, and Mark Marino

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Kate Pullinger Wins Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award

ELO is proud to announce the winner of this year’s Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award Kate Pullinger:

Kate Pullinger

Ben Langdon Photography

Kate Pullinger: https://www.katepullinger.com/about-kate-pullinger/

As a print, film, stage, and new media writer, Kate Pullinger has brought these worlds of literature together for over three decades. Early on, she taught online at trAce, and for years she has supported many critical initiatives to introduce digital fiction and digital literacy in schools in the UK and internationally. As a celebrated print author, including winning the 2009 Governor General’s Award, Kate has done much to extend awareness of electronic literature, while creating some of its most innovative projects.

She developed “Lifelines,” accompanied with teacher’s book and successfully used in many schools. She is also one of the creators of “Inanimate Alice,” a pedagogical blockbuster that has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Portuguese. Inanimate Alice: Episode Six – The Last Gas Station was the 2016 Honorable Mention for the Robert Coover Prize. She has been the driving force behind a variety of workshops, programs, initiatives, and more to support developing the future of e-lit. Pullinger developed Ambient Literature Project. She also co-wrote the 2020 scholarly book: Ambient Literature Towards a New Poetics of Situated Writing and Reading Practices. Pullinger has brought the concept of electronic literature to tens of thousands of people, including the UK Prime Minister, through the “Letters to an Unknown Soldier” Project.

Kate Pullinger has supported ELO conferences and has advised ELO throughout the decades. She is also an editorial director of “The Writing Platform” that since 2013 is a wonderful digital resource of knowledge about digital storytelling for writers.

Her most recent digital fiction, “Breathe,” a ghost story that knows where you are, is available for free on your phone. It was shortlisted for the New Media Writing Prize in 2019. She also wrote “Jellybone,” a novel for smartphones in 10 episodes.

According to the judges,

“Kate Pullinger’s fictional explorations of digital media for expressive purposes challenges the rhetoric of transparency in favor of a storytelling practice that brings together enjoyment and reflection. Her continued combination of poetic imagination and digital media education has achieved a broad public engagement with the constraints and affordances of electronic literature.”

She is Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media at Bath Spa University as well as Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI).

ELO is grateful to Kate for elevating and extending the art of digital writing, bringing it to new communities of readers and writers!

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Announcing: ELO 2021 Keynotes

ELO 2021 Conference and Festival: Platform (Post?) Pandemic
Conference Keynotes | May 26th – 28th • Aarhus University and the University of Bergen, Norway
#eloppp | https://eliterature.org/elo2021/

Lai-Tze Fan | Assistant Professor

University of Waterloo, Canada

Lai-Tze Fan Lai-Tze Fan [pronounced: ligh (“light” without the t) + chee] is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and a Faculty Researcher of the Critical Media Lab and Games Institute. Her federally funded research explores digital storytelling, media theory and infrastructure, research-creation and critical making, and systemic inequalities in technological design and labour. Fan is an Editor and the Director of Communications of electronic book review and a Co-Editor of the digital review. She is Co-Editor of the 2020 collection Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from electronic book review (Bloomsbury), Co-Editor of the ebr special gathering “Canadian Digital Poetics,” and Editor of the forthcoming special double issue “Critical Making, Critical Design.”

Archana Prasad | Founder & COO

Dara.network and BeFantastic

Archana PrasadArchana Prasad has been actively engaged with technology enabled participatory art practices for more than two decades. As Founder & CCO of Dara.network, she looks at taking her interest to foster creative cross-border collaborations further by helping change-makers and institutions build social capital. She engages public awareness of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals through BeFantastic, an international Tech-Art platform founded by her in 2017.

Olga Goriunov | Professor

Royal Holloway University, London, UK

Olga GoriunoOlga Goriunova is Professor at Royal Holloway University of London and author of Art Platforms (Routledge, 2012) and Bleak Joys (with M.Fuller, University of Minnesota Press, 2019). An editor of Fun and Software (Bloomsbury, 2014), she was a co-curator of software art platform Runme.org (2003) before the age of social platforms. She also wrote on new media idiocy, memes and lurkers. Her continuing interest in the intersection of aesthetics, computation and subjectivation has led to her current work on machine learning and subject-construction.

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Addressing EDI in ELO

Please read this important letter from the ELO Board of Directors. You can download a pdf here.

Dear Members of the ELO Community,

As the recent letters addressed to our community and the open forum hosted by the ELO Board of Directors have both highlighted, members of our community have questioned the ability of the ELO organization to effectively address issues of equality. We acknowledge an urgent need for our organization to foreground inclusivity by extending support of marginalized colleagues and by amplifying their roles within ELO governance and activities. As members of the Board of Directors, we pledge to center this work and to respond to the community discussions with action.

This year, the ELO Conference is being organized by a three-part international collective for the first time. The goal of this effort is greater inclusivity and accessibility across time zones, as well as increased visibility for the global work of the field. However, we recognize that this new organizational structure has brought with it communication challenges, and the work that has been most visible at this first stage has centered white and male curatorial contributions. While the overall exhibitions themselves showcase the art and energy of diverse creators, and we do not wish to render that significant art and labour invisible, we take responsibility for not making this diversity more visible to the community.

The conference organizers have taken proactive steps in recommending ways for the Board to improve the inclusivity and transparency of the 2021 conference. To support the distributed teams in their efforts, the Board has asked ELO Vice President Caitlin Fisher to serve in a new role as Global Conference Coordinator. In this role, she will work to facilitate clearer communication and transparency in the Conference moving forward. Additionally, the Board is assisting efforts to diversify Conference review committees: Claudia Kozak and Erik Loyer are joining the Platforming Utopias curation team, and Caitlin Fisher and Anastasia Salter have joined the program committee. We recognize that the circumstances of the pandemic have created unequally distributed consequences for participation and submission in the conference processes this year. The Board will work to assist the Conference team in reaching and centering diverse voices in Conference keynotes and events.

Institutionally, we note that the organization has outgrown its current models for governing structures. To that end, the Board will be conducting a review of the bylaws and working towards a new process for governance that will involve the full ELO community in the process of selecting its leadership body. Rather than asking a dedicated group to work on these challenges, we view it as a central challenge that the Board can and will address to ensure accountability and transparency to the community on all future decisions. We hope to continue to build on the progress we’ve made in initiatives such as the Electronic Literature Collections, the ELO Fellows program, and the ELO Awards in order to craft inclusive collectives and transparency in editorial and award processes.

We also note that the inclusivity and accessibility of our 2020 conference was greatly increased by reliance on digital platforms. The challenges of the pandemic presented an opportunity to address this long-standing community concern, and we commit to continue building on this success. The call for conference hosting in 2022 will ask for proposals for a hybrid conference, to enable both a return to in-person community (with significant attention to accommodating disability of any sort) and continued access for those seeking to participate virtually. We hope these efforts will enable the community to grow not just in scale, but in inclusivity. We will strive as a Board to lead conscious reflection and institutional change by committing our resources to this work.

For the sake of transparency and accountability, the ELO Board commits to dedicating time during its First Fridays and Town Hall meetings to ongoing discussion and updates for the community on our work in progress concerning equity, diversity, and inclusivity in our community. Our goal is to have a sustained, constructive dialogue with our community that leads to positive change. We will also publish and enforce a code of conduct based on the one we used in our 2020 conference (https://elo.cah.ucf.edu/conference-behavior/) to all our social media platforms, conferences, and events. We hope our community will engage in collegial, good faith, even generous discussions with the Board, with Conference organizers, and with other members of the community to help us achieve that goal.

We conclude by expressing our gratitude for the people who have volunteered their time, money, and talent to building this organization and community over the last 20 years. We thank the team for the 2021 ELO Conference for their hard work to make this virtual, global meeting a gathering place for all of our community. And we thank our community members, who by expressing their concerns have placed their trust in our ability to listen and do better.

And we will.

Sincerely,

The ELO Board of Directors

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E-lit as DH Book Launch Feb 9

Book Launch at Electronic Literature Organization Salon Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, and Practices by Dene Grigar and James O’Sullivan

Join us as we celebrate the exciting launch on Feb 9 at 11am EST (1600 GMT) with special guests from the ELO and Electronic Book Review editorial boards.

Join us via Zoom!