Note on "Codework"

[Alan Sondheim]

Note on "Codework"


I think I came up with the name (which surely had been used before) in a
conversation with Ken Wark - we were talking about code - the term at that
point, as far as I remember, was code-poetry - and I borrowed the notion
of 'work' - i.e. labor, production - I think - from Heiner Muller -
running the two words together - as in Hamletmachine - so there was a
political component as well - not wanting the limitation of poetry,
however defined, or poetics for that matter - opening the framework, not
closing it - I'd also felt that code-poetry - however spelled - was too
close to concrete poetry - which didn't interest me at all - at least not
any longer - not even dom sylvester huedard - maybe huedard actually - but
not the usual suspects - anyway - I thought that codepoetry would minimize
the design aspect - emphasize the symbolic or asymbolic or presymbolic -
for that matter the (Kristevan) choratic of language - so the political
and psychoanalytical met on the grounds of mathesis and semiosis - all
this into the naming of the word - pretty commonplace now - at least this
is what was going through my mind at that point - still is - anyway -


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