kagablog

BOOK SA’s Ben Williams chaired a panel of what he termed “web artists”, writers who use the web in wierd interesting, and sometimes just brilliant ways, at the FLF today. Out of the session, Williams drew three words, one from each writer which can be used to describe the effect of the internet on writers and writing: violation, communication, and introspection.

Aryan Kaganof, whose blog Kagablog is packed with material from all over identified the ability of the internet to create writers out of readers. Lauren Beukes, whose book Moxyland has been “translated” into Ebook format by Electric Book Works, furthered this with a description of the kind of reciprocity/mutual feedback that the internet is able to facilitate.

Finally, the audience was wowed by a presentation by the writer and artist Stacy Hardy. Hardy, who is involved in the production of the literary magazine Chimurenga, has “translated” JM Coetzee’s Disgrace into images word-for-word using Google Image Search. Does Google not then allow us to be more clever?

BOOK SA will follow-up with Hardy to bring you a more in-depth treatment of her conceptually brilliant work.

this article by sophy first appeared on book.co.za

Alert! I’m pleased to announce that Natalia Molebatsi has taken up the reins at Muse, BOOK SA’s platform for poetry and spoken word.

Natalia compiled and edited the recently-launched We Are… A poetry anthology. A poet, performer and writer, she has her finger on the pulse of South Africa’s incredibly vibrant spoken word scene.

Look out for her first post as Muse editor on Monday: an interview with Myesha Jenkins.

Here’s a brief clip of Natalia performing:

And you can read more about her here:

Natalia Molebatsi is a performing artist and writer who has performed at among others: the Grahamstown Arts Festival, the Urban Voices International Spoken Word Festival, the First Encounter between South African and Philippine Poets (hosted by the University of South Africa - UNISA), the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, the Udine Solidale and Sunsplash Music Festivals in Udine (Italy) the Anam Cara, The Goddess Awakened international conferences hosted by the University of Udine and the ISOLA international conference in Lecce (Italy), the International Poetry festivals of Florence and Genoa. She has also lectured at the Universities of Milan, Venice, and Rome.

this announcement by ben williams first appeared here

check out ben williams’ wonderful site www.book.co.za

In fact, no one in the photo is miserable - or so I sincerely hope - it’s just that I suddenly channeled the voice of the head goblin in the cartoon version of The Hobbit, hissing out the phrase with a hearty sense of Schadenfreude, and thought, well, I should try to get it out of my system.

A handful of BOOK SA’s Johannesburg bloggers met at the Full Stop Cafe in Parkhurst for a suip earlier this week. It was great fun - very nice to meet everyone in the flesh at last - and possibly the start of something that resembles a BOOK SA social calendar.

Pictured here are (back row) Charl-Pierre Naudé, Sarah Britten, Liesl Jobson (a BOOK SA Joburg correspondent), Aryan Kaganof and (front row) Louis Greenberg, Ben Williams (el Editoro) and Stephen Simm. I’m holding a copy of Kaganof’s SMS Sanctuary, which you can find out a bit more about here.

ben williams
this article first appeared on book.co.za