Exile on Mainstream
Mark von Schlegell 

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.