Abstract
A characteristic feature of contemporary poetry is the interaction with other, non-literary discourses. In conceptual works, material is adopted from external sources and the artwork is extended to include the surroundings in what Nicolas Bourriaud has termed “relational aesthetics.” Christian Bök’s writing can be seen as a continuation of avant-garde practices concerned with the medium and materiality of the literary text. In Crystallography (1994), elements from scientific discourse such as tables, graphs and fractal geometry are incorporated into concrete poems and in his most recent project The Xenotext (Book 1) (2015) the interaction with other forms is taken a step further as Bök moves the text away from the literary medium and into the field of biotechnological research. A matrix sonnet is encoded into the DNA of a bacterium, and the protein of the bacterium produces a new text in the form of a sequence of amino acids. This process makes the resulting text inaccessible to the general reader who is left with the description of the work in the accompanying book and the project thus radically challenges the status of the literary artwork.
Subject
General Medicine,General Medicine,General Medicine,General Earth and Planetary Sciences,General Environmental Science,Management Science and Operations Research,Mechanical Engineering,Energy Engineering and Power Technology,Computer Networks and Communications,Hardware and Architecture,Software,Immunology and Allergy,Applied Mathematics,General Mathematics,General Medicine,General Medicine,General Chemistry
Reference13 articles.
1. Bök, Christian. Crystallography. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2003. Print.
2. Bök, Christian. Eunoia. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2001. Print.
3. Bök, Christian. The Xenotext: Book 1. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2015. Print.
4. Bök, Christian. “When Cyborgs Versify.” The Sound of Poetry / The Poetry of Sound. Ed. Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. 129-141. Print.
5. Bök, Christian. “The Xenotext works.” Harriet the Blog. The Poetry Foundation. 2 Apr 2011. Web. 2 Feb 2017. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/04/the-xenotext-works/