The &Now Festival is a biennial festival, celebration, and conference that explores intersections between creative and critical praxis, examines innovative and experimental acts of writing, and their intersections with other fields of inquiry and art. The 2012 &Now Festival of New Writing in Paris: exchanges and cross-fertilizations will be held June 6-10, 2012 at Université de la Sorbonne, Paris, a research institution internationally renowned for its quality in research and creation in the arts, humanities, and sciences.
The event will feature creative and critical panels on contemporary literary art, plus cross-disciplinary performances, keynote presentations, several indoor and outdoor performances as well as gallery exhibitions. Books will be on sale throughout at the Shakespeare & Co bookstore, across the Seine from Notre Dame Cathedral.
&Now's 2012 theme "Exchanges and cross-fertilizations"addresses the idea of innovative literary art in terms of importation from and thriving on different genres, forms, fields and media. When today's art clearly exposes many a traditional literary and more generally artistic category and notion as obsolete, how is art to be described, criticized and reviewed? Should categories be done away with altogether and new modes of speaking about works, representing and promoting them be invented, as well as innovative modes of conveying the aesthetic and artistic experience? This special Paris edition of the &Now Festival will also tackle the issue of exchanges and influences across the Atlantic and throughout time, exploring and continuing a long-lasting tradition of mutual fertilization and respect.
Please note that an international conference on translating electronic literature will take place one week after at Université Paris Saint Denis (Paris 8). More information to come.
&Now has produced four previous festival-conferences from 2004 – 2009. &NOW Books, based at Lake Forest College, produces the biennial anthology, The &Now Awards: The Best Innovative Writing, with its next publication in 2012. &NOW Books also publishes the first book by the winners of The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer's Residency Award, which comes with $10,000 and suite-of-one's-own for a two-month period. &NOW Books are distributed by Northwestern University Press.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
PLEASE SUBMIT Proposals for critical papers, criti-fictional presentations, fiction and poetry readings, staged play readings, rituals, performance pieces (digital, sound, and otherwise), electronic and multimedia projects, and intergenre literary work of all kinds. We particularly encourage pieces that promote linguistic and genre transgressions, along with works that promote interdisciplinary explorations and conversations with past, present, or future literary concerns and movements.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Collaboration, continuity, evolution
The next edition of the &Now festival will take place in Paris, from June 6th 2012 to the 10th. Although all submissions true to the &Now spirit are welcome, here are a few non-compulsory guidelines that hopefully will give a more precise idea of the orientation of this Paris festival.
We encourage contributions on the works of the guest speakers, Robert Coover and Ben Marcus, to be brought together on a panel that will open onto a general discussion with the audience. Those should not exceed ten minutes, and be aimed at raising questions rather than bringing answers.
We also encourage contributions on the works of all other present authors, the list of which will soon be posted.
In the spirit of this transatlantic festival, contributions on the following topics are welcome:
The influence of American artists and thinkers upon French artists and thinkers.
The influence of French artists and thinkers upon American artists and thinkers.
Collaboration, continuity, heritages, evolution.
Collage, dislocation, deviation, recycling, translation, cross-fertilization.
Multimedia works and practices.
We also welcome roundtable topic submissions -where up to 7 authors and critics offer short opening statements on a particular topic- and then respond to questions from a moderator and from the audience.
Creative contributions should not exceed a 15mn-reading; critical contributions other than the interventions on the panels devoted to the guest speakers' works should ideally last twenty minutes and at any rate not exceed twenty-five minutes.
Authors are encouraged to choose a single page in their work and comment upon its genesis; pages sent early enough will be posted online so that they may receive a critical response from other contributors.
Submissions from visual artists, musicians andperformers welcome. There will be exhibition spaces and breaks for the participants and the public to be able to attend and enjoy the performances.
Further, we strongly encourage groups and individuals from populations normally underrepresented at innovative, avant-garde, and experimental literary arts gatherings. Proposals can be for individual readings, critical panels, creative panels, and/or roundtable discussions. Individuals are limited to being a part of TWO separate proposals (panel and/or individual submission), and no individual will participate in more than two panel events, one critical and one creative. Yes, the lines between these may be blurred.
If submitting a group proposal, only one member of the group (the curator/moderator) should submit, but they should include panelist names, plans, and biographical information for all panelists, as detailed below.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Please submit proposals by December 1 in the following format:
*Your name and institutional affiliation, if any
*Contact info for yourself and for all members of your panel, if this is a group proposal
*Title of Proposed Reading/Performance/Presentation
* Names of other participants – Please be sure all participants are confirmed before including them in this proposal
*Brief Description (no more than 500 words, including why this presentation would be good for the 2012 &Now Festival of New Writing; exchanges and cross-fertilizations and, if relevant, very brief description of all panelists' anticipated contribution)
*2-3 Images, if you have them
*Brief Bio (a few sentences/no more than 150 words) of all participants
*Anticipate tech, room, or other performance and accessibility needs (if any). Be as specific as possible. Please indicate which of these items you can furnish, and which ones you need &Now to provide.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Submit all proposals HERE using our online submission process.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: December 1, 2011
Please note: Each session will be approximately 75 minutes. Individual presentations should therefore be limited to 15-20 minutes so that grouped sessions that make thematic/aesthetic sense can be arranged and so there is time for questions and discussion. Please also consider creating new kinds of presentations that are unlike conventional panels or readings and that expand notions of what these types of theatrical-pedagogical encounters might look like.
Send questions, comments concerns to: andnow.paris2012@gmail.com