A Curious Body.

I just finished a three-day sprint at the &Now Festival 2011, where we were immersed in electronic and new media, excess and overflow, the feminine, the queer, the transgressive and the mad. All this was in San Diego, so I was able to slip out for some escape to the sea and the shore.

Today I was able to present on my first conference panel, "Women on Women and Bodies," where I had the pleasure of sitting next to Cristina Milletti, Christine Hume and Niina Pollari as they read from their work. I presented from my critifictional piece "A Curious Body," which is a response to Shelley Jackson's surreal and visceral autobiographical hypertext, My Body. My piece was built on the Tumblr platform to be better able to create a digital cabinet of curiosities— nested drawers, loops and recurrences, and dead ends.

This one is always a joy to read because it requires audience participation. As I read from the text, I ask the audience to dictate when I click on a link. They have to talk during a panel— sometimes I think that is the most miraculous thing of all. They lead me blindly, and sometimes this creates beautiful fragments, other times still air, but I get to watch the text transform as different hands touch it.

Check it out here.