Saturday, May 11, 2024

Mona Lisa Twitch: A Review of the Glitchy Womyn Anthology 2024


Cover of Glitchy Womyn: An anthology of women glitching
 2022-23. Cover image by Amy Rodriguez


Glitchy Womyn: An anthology of women glitching 2022-23

Edited by Kristine Snodgrass and Karla Van Vliet

Bristol, Vermont, USA, Van Vliet Gallery, 2024

114 pages, 8 x 10, full color

 

Review by De Villo Sloan


Kristine Snodgrass and Karla Van Vliet have combined talents again to bring us Glitchy Womyn: An anthology of women glitching 2022-23.

Produced in a beautiful, color edition by Van Vliet Gallery of Bristol, Vermont, this book provides an overview of recent developments in a burgeoning area of digital poetics. The anthology also serves as documentation of a fascinating moment in the evolution of global visual poetry.

Use of the glitch in various forms of digital art composition has been commonplace for years. The use of glitching in postavant textual disruption is newer and more esoteric. Fortunately, Glitchy Womyn includes a note from every contributor explaining her work. These statements are extremely thoughtful and will inform those in the audience who want to know what inspired the art. 



"The Spectacle of Bad Women" by Lova Delis 
from Glitchy Womyn


Kristine Snodgrass has experimented extensively with glitched text. Her selections (along with Karla Van Vliet's) are exceptional. Marco Giovenale, to the best of my knowledge, is the first poet to publish specifically about/within the glitch-text aesthetic in his book GLITCHASEMICS (2020) published by Post-Asemic Press with a forward by Michael Betancourt.




"Trying to resolve the dialectic" by Alexia Catenazzo in Glitchy Womyn


In Glitchy Women, the contemporary visual poetry audience will recognize writers and artists who are publishing actively and widely and also discover emerging talents: Amy Rodriguez, Terri Carrion, Carol Lynne Knight, Dixie Denman Junius, Lova Delis, Laura Kerr, Sue Scavo, Amanda Earl, Jennifer Weigel, Rosalie Gancie, Kristine Snodgrass, Karla Van Vliet, Terri Witek, Shloka Shankar, Alexia Catenazzo, Maria Damon, Sofia Nobre, Eileen Tabios, Alexis Fedorjaczenko, Rhonda Ananda and Kristen Szumyn. (On a personal note, I am thrilled to see some mail art friends were selected for the anthology.)




"Glitch II" by Kristen Szumyn in Glitchy Womyn



The pages of Glitchy Womyn reveal the depth and range of the new poetries: from the glitched Post-Lettrism of the “New Concrete” evidenced in work by Eileen Tabios to a neo-concrete, object poem approach in the highly original compositions by Terri Witek. While endless theoretical vispo battles rage online, factions form and positions harden, Glitchy Womyn opens - literally - a world of possibilities for artist and audience.



"Dismantled" by Terri Carrion in Glitchy Womyn



The WAAVE Global Gallery women’s collective and other related groups are contributing significantly to a new era of visual poetry. The vitality of this extended community is readily apparent in this new anthology. 



X7X by Eileen Tabios in Glitchy Womyn



(De Villo Sloan writes frequently about postavant art and lit

and is director of the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund.)








No comments:

Post a Comment