Cantos and fragments — cantos in fragments — constitute the on-going multilingual scriptural epic that intertwines contemporary life, the American cultural landscape, and the writing of one year (1978-1979) of the Iranian Revolution. Open Epic, as rendered by the Elastic Circus of the Revolution unfolds over time on multiple platforms, in multiple arenas and spaces (private and public), and through various scriptural strategies – from the traditional (handwritten sheets and books) to the new (electronic, web). Narrative conventions are challenged, and poetic, stylistic and performative operations exploit possibilities unique to different languages, mediums and sites. The overall experience is orchestrated through the creation of lasting artifacts as well as ephemeral events and monumental constructs.
A theoretical apparatus and a critical enterprise engaged with the history and forms of literature and the reading phenomenon, the work also challenges traditional modalities of publication, exhibition, commodification, dissemination and interaction. Ultimately, Open Epic functions as a collection of stories and chronicles, an almanac of poetic prose fragments, a treatise on writing and a theory of literature in motion, and a universe of ruptures and metamorphoses that intertwines various forms, objects and materials in order to usher in a new species of literary creation (an open epic).
Various cantos and fragments have been published in journals and online and have taken place at different galleries and spaces and in multiple scriptural formats, including the Queens Museum of Art, the Janos Gat Gallery, Rio Gallery, Bowery Poetry Club, Riverside Church, at the Engendered Festival 09 and the Uncomun Festival 08 in NY, and the Baroquissimo Festival in Puebla, Mexico, and in Paris within the Paris en toutes lettres festival in June 2010.
in 2010.
(A litclip)