Nick Thurston: Of the Subcontract, or Principles of Poetic Right (2013) [EN, ES]

8 December 2020, dusan

Of the Subcontract is a collection of poems about computational capitalism, each of which was written by an underpaid worker subcontracted through Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk service. The collection is ordered according to cost-of-production and repurposes metadata about the efficiency of each writer to generate informatic typographic embellishments. Those one hundred poems are braced between two newly commissioned essays; the whole book is threaded with references to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Wolfgang von Kempelen, and the emerging iconography of cloud living.

Of the Subcontract reverses out of the database-driven digital world of new labour pools into poetry’s black box: the book. It reduces the poetic imagination to exploited labour and, equally, elevates artificial artificial intelligence to the status of the poetic. In doing so, it explores the all-too-real changes that are reforming every kind of work, each day more quickly, under the surface of life.”

Foreword by McKenzie Wark
Afterword by Darren Wershler
Publisher information as material, York, 2013
Creative Commons BY 3.0 Unported License
ISBN 1907468188, 9781907468186
144 pages

Interview with author: Stephen Voyce (Iowa Review, 2014).
Review: Rita Raley (American Book Review, 2014).

Author
Publisher
Publisher (ES)
WorldCat
Wikipedia

Of the Subcontract (English, 2013)
De la subcontractar (Spanish, 2019)

Eric A. Havelock, Jackson P. Hershbell (eds.): Communication Arts in the Ancient World (1978)

2 June 2020, dusan

A collection of ancient studies “devoted to exploring the beginnings of literacy in ancient Greece and Rome, and the effects of writing on these cultures.”

Publisher Hastings House, New York, 1978
ISBN 0803812523, 9780803812529
xiv+162 pages

Review: H. Curtis Wright (Journal of Library History, 1980).

WorldCat

PDF (19 MB)

FESTAC ’77 (1977)

14 December 2019, dusan

“Festac ’77, also known as the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (the first was in Dakar, 1966), was a major international festival held in Lagos, Nigeria, from 15 January 1977 to 12 February 1977. The month-long event celebrated African culture and showcased to the world African music, fine art, literature, drama, dance and religion. About 16,000 participants, representing 56 African nations and countries of the African Diaspora, performed at the event.

Artists who performed at the festival included Stevie Wonder from United States, Gilberto Gil from Brazil, Bembeya Jazz National from Guinea, Mighty Sparrow from Trinidad and Tobago, Les Ballets Africains, South African Miriam Makeba, and Franco Luambo Makiadi. At the time it was held, it was the largest pan-African gathering to ever take place.” (Wikipedia)

Publisher Africa Journal Limited, London, and International Festival Committee, Lagos, 1977
152 pages
via Abdul Alkalimat

Film documentary (UNESCO, 1977, 26 MB)
Commentary: Arthur Monroe (Black Scholar, 1977), Iris Kay (African Arts, 1977), J. Southern (Black Perspective in Music, 1977), Moyibi Amoda (book-length evaluation, 1978, 80 MB).

WorldCat

PDF (134 MB)

Related documents:
General Programme (25 MB)
General Colloquium Programme (7 MB)
Visitors Guide to the Festival (2 MB)
Spotlight (2 MB)
Additional documentation (ed. Abdul Alkalimat)