Flipping the bird at answers

Format’s Academy of Words is about six weeks away, and we’ve started meeting to discuss things like who can drive a manual and how many bean bags we will need. I submitted the program late, but they were cool about it: Sam Rodgers is a machine.

I feel I have joined with a like-minded crew of young people again, the likes of which I haven’t spent time with since I was at Voiceworks. I love working at Wakefield, but I am about the second youngest there, and working on the history of Scotch College, Adelaide was not exactly the most riveting experience I’ve had with words.

There’s going to be a lot of amazing, exciting stuff going on during Format Festival: if I had been more aware and less in the far-north-eastern suburbs when I was a child, and less stoned as a teenager, I might be able to say with conviction that this sort of arts festival hasn’t happened in Adelaide in my lifetime.

(All I can remember about the arts from my childhood is my parents taking me to see Big Jim at a Fringe venue I later grew convinced was Fowlers Live, or is now Fowlers Live, whatever. He put his head in a bucket of water for ages and did things with his hands like play cards and smoke cigarettes by pressing the cigarette to the outside of the bucket.)

But about Format: if I summarised what sort of stuff is going to happen there, you might go to all the main Format stuff and be too tired and over-stimulated to come to the Academy stuff, which is happening on the last day of the festival, February 27. So I’m just going to publish the entire Academy program instead, as supplied to Mr Rodgers (it’s kind of themed ‘literary activism’):

Format’s Academy of Words, 2011

The word ‘activism’ is loaded with all sorts of smelly, unkempt insinuations, but the idea of being active on behalf of literature is an altogether more soothing, reasonable idea. Think literary ‘advocacy’ if it makes you feel better – or ‘lobbying’, or ‘literary agency’ … now it’s just getting confusing.

All of today’s events are focussed on the idea that the publishing industry is changing apace and we are at the coalface. That rhymes! Among the independent, underground, emerging, alternative, innovative writing communities in Australia, there is a lot of dissent being whispered to friends and friends of friends, but not so much in the way of practical ideas about how to guide these rapids of change in the direction of a more democratic, representative, diverse and accessible market for writing, reading and the dissemination of ideas.

That’s what Format Festival’s Academy of Words is all about in 2011. A one-day shit-fight about the things we want to see start to happen in the publishing industry. People will argue. People will cry and laugh. Rigorous discussion: 1. Laughter and silliness and inspiration: 1. Self-congratulatory celebrity fandom: 0.

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10.00–11.00
PANEL
How to Sell Out Without Losing Your Cred, with Lisa Dempster
Moving copies doesn’t mean you’ve caught the mainstream. Emerging publishing technology means it is becoming easier to access niche, subcultural markets beyond your immediate circle of friends – meaning you can have a satisfying body of readers without compromising the integrity of your soul. Meet some people who are doing this with panache.
…
SPEAKERS: Liam Pieper, Ianto Ware and
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11.00–12.00
ROUNDTABLE
I Write, Therefore I am a … , with Ryan Paine and YOU
Roundtable about what it means to be a writer, people’s experiences of realising they were a writer, and how to build that realisation into a practice of actually producing quality content, consistently.
…
12.00–1.00
PANEL
Honk if You’re the Publishing Industry, with Shane Jesse Christmass
Online digital technology is reducing the barriers of access to the market for emerging, niche authors and publishers. Individuals are making livings out of publishing their own eBooks, and selling them online. Discussion is rife about how this democratisation of literature production is a boon for the freedom of expression, but what does it mean for the production of literature itself?
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SPEAKERS: Simon Loffler, Connor Thomas O’Brien, Shalini Kunahlan, Josh Fanning and Elouise Quinlivan
…
1.00–2.00
POETRY WORKSHOP
Trans Anatomy Thesis – To Spit Or Swallow? with Teri Louise Kelly and Jenny Toune
A 40-minute trip into the world of performance (word) art, including movement techniques (image), content and just how far the boundaries of this ‘flavour-of-the-moment’ hybrid genre can be forced in a society where conservatism appears to reign supreme. This is a non-sterile environment, which will more than likely contain expletives and occassional lewd behaviour cunningly disguised as ‘art’.
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2.00–3.00
PANEL
Will Write for Food, with Greg Foyster
The remuneration models of the publishing and media industries are all fucked up. Writers, the primary producers in the sector, are the least well paid. Emerging writers get paid nothing, and innovative writers get even nothinger. Do these low pay rates and declining profits in the publishing industry represent a kind of market failure?
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SPEAKERS: Kami Mcinnes, Liam Pieper, Sophie Langley and Clementine Ford
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3.00–4.00
PANEL
Activism Smells, with Ryan Paine

Mainstream literature is dominated by the middle-aged and the middle-class, and the underground by … well, us. This great divide is bridged by a Wikipedia stub about ‘literary activism’, but that’s about it. A panel about being active on behalf of literature.
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SPEAKERS: Edwin Kemp Attrill, Barbara Wiesner, Ali Edmonds and Aden Rolfe

…
4.00–5.00
ROUNDTABLE
Where Can We Go From Here?, with Matt Smith, Connor Thomas O’Brien and YOU
The future of literature is in your hands – in the magazines, literary gigs and companies you start. Join these emerging industry figures to discuss starting, establishing and sustaining the projects you have been inspired to start throughout the day, or were already cooking up.
…
5.00–forever
LITERARY TREASURE HUNT
A Novelty
Doo do doo do …

Updates, panellist bookings and other organic details will be released through SIB as I know them.