Tripwire 10: A Pestschrift for CA Conrad

An updated and extended version of my essay, “None of us have rules, none of us have scripture”: CA Conrad’s Advanced Elvis Course and the Politics of Spirit, appears in Tripwire 10 along with many other essays, remembrances, and tributes to CA Conrad.

TRIPWIRE 10 * A Pestschrift for CAConrad, with an interview, prose, poems, & a play by CAConrad, plus TC Tolbert, Magdalena Zurawski, Frank Sherlock, Anne Boyer, Marianne Morris, Allison Cobb, Jen Coleman, d/wolach & Elizabeth Williamson, erica kaufman, Thom Donovan, along with work from Danielle LaFrance, Juliana Spahr, Lila Matsumoto & Samantha Walton, Sarah Hayden, Nibia Pastrana Santiago, Frances Kruk, Sheila Mannix,  Jenifer K Wofford, Alicia Cohen, Cesar Moro (trans. Esteban A. Quispe), Heriberto Yépez, ko ko thett, Steven Farmer, Nachoem Wjinberg (trans. David Colmer), Ghayath Almadhoun (trans. Catherine Cobham), Bert Stabler, Julian Francis Park on Claudia Rankine & Fred Moten, Tyrone Williams on Jocelyn Saidenberg, erica kaufman on Frank Sherlock, Eric Sneathen on Chris Nealon, William Rowe on Joshua Clover, Danny Hayward on Lucy Beynon & Lisa Jeschke, David W. Pritchard on Marie Buck, Kristin Palm on Wendy Walters, Linda Russo on Lorine Niedecker, James Sherry on Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Laura Moriarty on Syd Staiti, Nich Malone on Towards. Some. Air. (eds. De’Ath & Wah), & Ryan Gato on P. Inman. Cover by Yuh-Shioh Wong. 340 pages. April 2016. $15.

Interview with David Buuck in The Conversant

Thanks to Caleb Beckwith and The Conversant for publishing this interview I conducted with David Buuck! 

I think also about unlearning as much as deskilling, to let go of mastery as the threshold of the literary and let the materials and questions lead the work. Kaia Sand & Jules Boykoff have written about inexpertise as a method—“inexpert investigation” is one way they phrase it—and I find their line of thinking about research and poetics compelling. At the same time, it’s a delicate balance between forging forms of politically committed work through methodologies of deskilled inexpertise (‘rigorous amateurism’ I’ve called it elsewhere) and simply half-assing a bunch of genres/media one has only half-studied & calling oneself a cross-genre performance artist or whatever. And of course to then try to corral everything into a book, when so much of the work exists off the page, either at/on specific sites or in/as time-based performances, means that failure is inherent in the book form. Could we unlearn the book?--David Buuck