Limited Fork Video Anthology

A video poam exploring implications of the lattice in conjunction with the "Pleasurable Complexity" Limited Fork event on 14 September. A variation of the image sequence is also woven (interacting) into "Latticed Shadowbox Suite" which also features work by KC Trommer, a Limited Fork practitioner, and cellist Pablo Casals performing a suite for cello by Bach. Related poams are available in this and other Limited Fork podcasts. These poams are part of a lattice of inquiry considering notions of place value.

This video poam is an unintended collaboration that in the lack of intention becomes a lattice itself, a community of interactions from multiple locations intersecting on a number of levels (or lattices). The compatibility of KC's video, and the spoken language with Ansted's images seems designed rather than incidental, yet it wasn't until I had these separate components for the Gallery exhibit component of "Pleasurable Complexity" Limited Fork poetry event that I realized the benefit of seeing the separate pieces together, allowing them to speak a shared language in addition to the multiple levels of saying in their separate languages. Two themes of the "Pleasurable Complexity" Limited Fork poetry event were "place value" and "implications of the lattice," with "implications of the lattice" contained in notions of "place value," and notions of "place value" contained in "implications of the lattice." More "Pleasurable Complexity" materials are available from the Limited Fork podcast. --Thylias Moss

a poam (product of an act of making) by a practitioner of Limited Fork Poetics. As is typical of constituents (or members) of a complex dynamic system, this poam also attempts to locate the ethics on the many levels (or scales) of a traumatic situation. The silence is significant, of course. Angie hopes that this poam might also be useful to those confronting similar situations.

A video poam exploring scale and the simultaneity of experience in interacting language systems which form and reform poetic structures as a consequence of the ways in which their existences fold and unfold. "Place Value" is also about the location of poetry and the need for people to be receptive to the incredible readiness for poetry exhibited by all that exists. The poam considers how value both is and isn't assigned to instances of this incredible readiness. The soundtrack is available from the Limited Fork Music podcast.

A video poam that explores interactions among sets of embedded interactions and sets of exposed interactions. The suppression of the sonic suggests the holding of breath during a prolonged gasp.

This movie poam from May 2005 explores what led me to write the narrative-in-verse SLAVE MOTH when my son, the composer of the soundtrack for this short piece, was in sixth grade at a grade-six-through-twelve school. During a meeting, some parents wanted to ban a required ninth-grade ancestry assignment that was embarrassing, humiliating, and demeaning for disclosing that their sons could trace their ancestry no further than slavery. Right away, I realized the need for other models of slavery so that the shame being experienced could be attached to a broader, and I felt, likely more accurate context, one more able to embrace the range of possibilities of circumstances during slavery which, even if owners were benevolent, was unacceptable because ownership of human beings was unacceptable. Part of the horror of slavery is that benign gestures might make the peculiar institution seem acceptable, a good indignity. Imagination can make an incredible difference, and in fact made an incredibly negative difference for those mothers unable to imagine a plausible, less obvious layer of the history so embarrassing for their sons that they would prefer not to explore the rich offerings of a past that their ancestors obviously survived no matter what horrors were encountered. How awful that they were so willing to deny the testimony that survival can be. How awful that they could construct for themselves only constricted, generic, and simplified images of slaves. I remain impressed and inspired by survival. There are layers of experience in SLAVE MOTH, and the Perry household is a complex and dynamic system of existence, relationships stabilizing and destabilizing as alliances shift and feelings are poorly suppressed; there are conflicting understandings of responsibilities to self and to others, and power shifts according to what is stabilizing and what is destabilizing at any given moment. The fact that power shifts makes it difficult for any one person to wield it well or consistently. SLAVE MOTH offers access to more of the layers of humanity that some mothers in 2002 were unable to allocate to enslaved persons. I too spoke at the meeting; on my way out I informed the group advocating abolition of the genealogy assignment that my son, only in sixth grade that year, had had no trouble completing his assignment to write an ancestry poem. I commented that Ansted had traced his ancestry all the way back to the big bang, and considered himself a descendant of stardust. The text of his poem is part of "Project Genealogy," and is also offered here:

Ancestry Poem

We all came from a single cell

a vast time ago

specks coming to life in the oceans

of the planets and in space

everyone of us evolved from star dust

into the form we take on now

looking at space through telescopes

at the next generation of star dust

that will breathe.

--Ansted Moss,

22 October 2002.

a poam (product of an act of making) by a practitioner of Limited Fork Poetics.

a poam (product of an act of making) by a practitioner of Limited Fork Poetics.

a poam (product of an act of making) that explores what lies at the fundamental level, at the heart of interaction --understandings of what happens in connections that explore chromatic manifestations of meaning. What Jen's ideas about Limited Fork Poetics look like, sound like.