Announcing issue #4 of nanomajority (www.nanomajority.com):

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Penny Leong Browne
'i' Cyborg 1.1
Experiments in Random Control: "I don't remember"

In 'i' Cyborg 1.1 Experiments in Random Control, fragmented and
repetitive narrative forms are used to explore the legitimacy of
language within cybernetic systems, in this case, the Internet.

The narratives, presented as textual performances of a cyborg self,
are constructed using text fragments generated from entering various
three word search terms beginning with 'I' into blog search engines.
At first, the viewer is compelled to read the narrative as a cohesive
work yet the performative acts of textual repetition of the search
phrase exposes the nonsense of the narrative, subsequently challenging
the legitimacy of the text as meaningful.

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Olivia Cronk
poems

These poems all respond to a comment made by one of my students during
a discussion of Dickinson (informed, in part, by a parallel one of
Kafka). While we examined a line, the student grew visibly frustrated
with the (narrow) focus of our comments. Exasperated, she exclaimed,
"But we have no idea what comes before or after that poem. We don't
know the secret or imaginary poem she cut away." Since then, I have
been making of my poems a blooded attempt at creating the imaginary
poems that precede and follow them. The imaginary ones, like evidence
of wind, can only be observed by the words they ruffle. Kind reader,
it is your job to find said secrets, in the roughness of your own
wonderfully bizarre brainscape.


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Lara Odell
Outlimb: Artist Statements & Stills

1. As a means to heal the phantom pain, the limb is shortened, again
- as if the limb was at fault. What I can't say isn't apparent in the
painting, but for me, the desire to escape genre could be likened to
the desire to transcend gender. How many times do I have to say it?
"It isn't futile; it's about futility." Things that arrive on a
conveyor belt, that you eat, half-dead by the machinery alone. "Run
your potatoes through a metal sieve, for more iron." The sun is
over-exposed, and as a result, so is everything in its way. Light
should be measured by volume, so it can be turned down, to just the
right temperature. Editing, erasure, and the paradox of things coming
into being. The edges were wet from premature decay, weather damaged.
There had been too much handling, you could tell, so we just had to
leave it alone. The miracles of progress, of puberty. Industrial
suits, protective rubber shoes, insulation powder. Camouflage as
therapy. What did you say about contamination? It had a metallic taste
to it. Can we shoot a close-up of that? The border was wide, like
water, but I can't remember how it felt when my ear drum collapsed. To
stand in the middle of a room, everyone else looking in; it was like
being folded into an envelope and never waking up until I arrived. The
stillness of travel, the sleepiness of a letter; sealed within a
pocket of time. Shopping for the right fit, I extended myself. Please,
leave me unattended. An accumulation of earnestness, of vulnerability,
apprehensive of the laughs to come. Granted, my pupils can't
physically get any smaller, though I try.