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Exile on Mainstream
Mark von Schlegell 

Video

The video is available in English.

Mark von Schlegell has always dealt with system and the systemic in both his theoretical and fictional practices. Of particular interest are his reflections on surviving past the hollowing out and flattening of the literary mainstream in works, like Realometer (2005) and Dreaming the Mainstream (2010). Against this wider cultural backdrop, Schlegell’s fictional-critical method considers a futuristic, textual activism no longer outside, but now upon, the capitalist surface. This bubbling fantasia must leave the barriers of propriety, plagiarism, genre, scholarship, art and criticism far behind. In his lecture von Schlegell reflects on the possibilities of such quasi-literary reality interference, with reference to certain pieces in the exhibition, such as the works of Lee Scratch Perry.

Artists

Participating artists

Mark von Schlegell

*1967 New York

is the author of more than eleven published books of fiction and criticism, and numerous stories, scripts, essays, and experimental short form writings. His first novel Venusia (Semiotext(e), 2005) was honor’s listed for the Otherwise Prize in Science Fiction. He holds a Ph. D. in English and American literature from New York University. He has taught literature and art at NYU, City College, New York, Los Angeles City College, CalArts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Staedelschule, Frankfurt. He has been a founding member of the hybrid writing/​art/​performance group Pure Fiction since 2011.

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