Chris Funkhouser & Amy Hufnagel
Grammar Girl
Grammar Girl emerges from everyday life. Upon reading her husband’s Flarf poem, Hufnagel is compelled to “intervene, interrupt and alter” the text as a means of reading his writing, and of reading their lives. Thrums, or cut up pieces of thread, make eyelash and eyebrow style markings, and voice, hand, brush, and machines cover and uncover words and meanings. Threads signify bits of a whole story, and fragments as Flarf poetics encourages; the paint brush, blowing air, and vibrating massager move the thrums to show fleeting parts interacting and being manipulated. Here one wonders about the maker’s feelings and meanings without always hearing words spoken. Funkhouser is reading while Hufnagel acts—this merger forms an extended text in traditions of visual and performance poetry.
Chris Funkhouser is a poet, scholar, and multimedia artist. In 2009, the Associated Press commissioned him to prepare digital poems for the occasion of Barack Obama’s inauguration. He is author of the documentary study, Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995 (University of Alabama Press), and an eBook (CD-ROM), Selections 2.0. He teaches at New Jersey Institute of Technology, is a senior editor at PennSound, a member of the scientific review committee of the digital literature journal regards croisés (University of Paris 8), is on the Advisory Board of the Digital Poetry Archive of Canada, and is an External Collaborator with Núcleo de Ciberteatro, Insituto Politécnico do Porto (Portugal). He was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Multimedia University in Cyberjaya, Malaysia (2006), was on the summer writing program faculty of the Naropa University (2007), and is presently Digital Poet-in-Residence at Bowery Poetry Club (New York City).
Amy Hufnagel is a visual artist whose work addresses themes of technology (most often the telephone), human/technological connections, landscape and medical issues, as well as textual studies and cultural history. Her work tends to focus on “things she does not understand.” Her multimedia work has been presented at SUNY Buffalo and at the Drawing Center in NYC. Her most extensive video project, Vista Fuel, has been shown on United Paramount Network WNYS Upstate NY affiliates and on public access in Philadelphia, New York City, and San Francisco. Her writings and photographs have appeared in Technology Review (MIT Press), and Crart, a glossy art magazine published in South Korea, as well as a variety of online, catalogue, and gallery settings. She recently received funding from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for new alterative process photography work, and is currently working in a number of educational venues as a writer and public program designer.
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