The Buoy

Total run time: 10:39
Performative powerpoint presentation
2019

The Buoy is a work of poetic auto-fiction that functions as a performative powerpoint presentation. Drawing inspiration from long tradition of concrete poetry, The Buoy is structured by a series of diagrams that strive to create a new form of language for dealing with topical political issues involving marginalized identities. The formal progression of related diagrams serves to simultaneously defamiliarize our current perceptions about language as a communications medium and to allow for new meanings and associations about language and identity to emerge. The content of the piece asks the following questions: How do we talk about things that are hard to understand? How do we talk about ourselves? How do we talk to others? How do we talk to others about ourselves? And, ultimately, how do we communicate across existing societal and political barriers?

Upcoming publication in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4. Performed at the 2019 Interrupt V Festival and screened at the 2019 Electronic Literature Organization Conference + Media Arts Festival. Recipient of 2019 Mark Baumer Prize for Language Art.