2021, Electronic Literature (E-lit) and Covid (Theme Funding by DARIAH EU small grant)

I served as a member of a research team.

The team consisted of Scott Rettberg (University of Bergen) and Søren Bro Pold (Aarhus University) who was a project leader.

In the project, we were interested in how the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting measures, and movement of cultural life online were reflected in electronic literature and other online digital narrative practices. To this end, we were working on developing an analytical research study, an open-access research collection, an online exhibition and a critical study of electronic literature and digital art produced during this time of COVID 19. Some of the research outputs so far include:

An online exhibition, Covid E-lit. It was curated and organised by the research team as a part of 2021 Electronic Literature Organisation Conference & Media Art Festival;

A documentary film, Covid Elit: Digital Art during the Pandemic, by Anna Nacher, Søren Pold, Scott Rettberg, and Ashleigh Steele based on interviews with digital authors and artists who produced works reflective of the conditions of life during the 2020-2021 pandemic (44:12 min). It features interviews with Annie Abrahams, Abraham Avnisan, Giselle Beiguelman, xtine burrough, Sharon Daniel, Ben Grosser, Mark Jeffery, Erik Loyer, Mark C. Marino, Bilal Mohamed, Judd Morrissey, Jörg Piringer, Giulia Carla Rossi, Mark Sample, Alex Saum-Pascual, and Jody Zellen.

Pandemic Elit – a research collection documenting the exhibition and research in the ELCMIP Knowledge Base (University of Bergen); 

The outputs of the project so far were presented at: 

• ELO 2021 Conference & Festival: Platform (Post?) Pandemic (May 2021, online);
• Oslo International Poetry Festival, film screening (premiere), June 2021.
• Covid E-lit: Digital Life During the Pandemic, University of Bergen, film screening (September 2021);
• Japanese Association for Digital Humanities JADH2021 “Digital Humanities and COVID-2019” (September 2021, online);
• Media Arts, Data, and Design Center, University of Chicago, film screening (May 2022);
• DARIAH-EU Annual Event 2022: Storytelling, presentation and film screening (May 31-June 3, 2022, Athens).
• MLA2023, Electronic Literature and the Long Pandemic panel session, January 2023 (a paper accepted).

Publications:

Anna Nacher, Søren Bro Pold, Scott Rettberg, A Pandemic Crisis Seen from the Screen: A Reflection on Pandemic Imagination, [in:] Encountering the Plague. Humanities Takes on the Pandemic. eds. Wojciech Sowa, Tony Whyton, Intellect, London 2024. (open access, https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389869_13)

Anna Nacher, Søren Bro Pold, Scott Rettberg, “Pandemic Genres: Processing the COVID-19 Pandemic through Electronic Literature”, Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 26, 2023,  doi:10.20415/hyp/026.e01 (open access)

Anna Nacher, Soren Brø Pold, Scott Rettberg, COVID E-LIT: Digital Art from the Pandemic curatorial statement, EBR electronic book review, 06-06-2021;

Anna Nacher, Soren Brø Pold, Scott Rettberg, Platform In[ter]ventions: an Interview with Ben Grosser, EBR electronic book review, 11-07-2021;

xtine burrough, Anna Nacher, Soren Brø Pold, Scott Rettberg,  All of the spaces collapsing: an interview with tine burrough, EBR electronic book review, 06-05-2022;