Archive | Electronic Literature Directory

The idea of the archive has seen a substantial amount of critical inquiry, including viewpoints from scholars like Jacques Derrida, Stuart Hall, and Katherine Hayles, amongst others. Derrida (1995) deliberates on the relation of power and truth that lies within the concept and the word ‘archive’ itself (from an ontological and nomological perspective). Hall (2001) reminds us about the literal labour (often in under-funded circumstances) of the stakeholders that go into the act of sustaining an archive of and from the margins. Hayles (2015) points out the paradox of ever-expanding information where access becomes harder. In all of these instances, the notions of privilege and its intermittent connection to knowledge become apparent.

In connection to Electronic Literature (e-lit), the idea of the archive coincides with that of the exhibits where e-lit is not only stored but also displayed or performed/exhibited. Therefore, the questions of: a) what is being shown? b) how is it being shown? c) who is showing it? become equally important. Electronic Literature Collections (ELC 1-4: flagship collections of e-lit published by Electronic Literature Organization since 2006 in four volumes), Electronic Literature Directory (ELD 2.0: a collection of literary works, their descriptions and further elaborations about their keywords), Electronic Literature Knowledge Base (an extensive database that documents everything from works, authors, publishers, organisations, events to teaching material and other related resources thereby creating a rich network of metadata), or the Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL: a network of organisations, labs and centres for making e-lit works searchable across databases) have proven to be important databases, archives, or storehouses that contain information in and about the field. They are mostly multi-institutional, community-based projects that have taken shape across decades of research and funding.

During the 2021 ELO conference, one of the conference partners, dra.ft presented their project titled freeFall future.text, which is essentially an Excel sheet. It contains information about different experiments they conducted and how they briefly tried to excavate and understand the field of Electronic Literature in India and, broadly, Asia. It is clear from the project that freeFall future.text is not the finished product and is something that is done on a much smaller scale. However, the commentary it provides on the state of e-lit is something to be noticed, especially with the idea of archiving e-lit in emergent contexts.

As the site reads, it is “An exhibition focused on Indian and Asian E-Lit, emerging out of a month-long Collaborative Text Lab engaging platforms and creators of the region in collective study and experimentation to explore e-lit when moving beyond the flatness and boundaries of platforms” (website). The creators hail from all over the country while some have settled abroad as well. It’s a diverse mix of researchers, authors, artists, performers, designers and engineers.

Explication

freeFall future.text has two main nodes: Collaborative Lab Projects/Collaborative Text Lab (CLP/CTL) and Excavating E-Lit (EEL). One of the crucial factors that each e-lit node tried to explore was multilingualism, as platforms only allow certain languages. The priority was more towards learning and experimentation. The curatorial direction suggests that the idea of a platform imposes flatness and reduction, and this venture was intended to point towards a departure.

The CTL is a collection of projects done by the dra.ft team that they have showcased. The creations echo the curatorial statement that endorses experimenting with edges. The name dra.ft also goes well with the fact that they wanted to celebrate works in progress. They have showcased different projects here that include various kinetic poetry, crawling the web for poetry, data visualisations, AR projects, and also twine narratives. Artists, writers, and programmers have used electronic literature to vocalise different issues. From radio archives and poetry to highlighting arrests of protestors or caring about birds! They show how e-lit can be used to raise awareness about different issues.

The EEL was envisioned as a database for exploring Indian Electronic Literature. The curators tried searching the works of e-lit and how people were writing on the web. It has about 60 entries. It categorises various things from papers, conversations, games, blogs, flash fiction (not the platform ‘Flash’, but here it means very short fiction), short stories, and regional wikis to interactive artefacts as well. They found it challenging to find resources and how to target them. The exploration started with reading papers and connecting links to find people mentioned in them. Further, old WordPress websites, the writers, and all the links found were explored. As they said, it was indeed a difficult process. During the launch, Soren Pold asked if there was something unique about Indian Electronic Literature, like how Kinetic poetry was dominant in various Scandinavian regions like Denmark. The response was very much along the lines of how the field was being conceived. The search was, and to borrow a pun, there was nothing yet concrete about it. However, there were things like Pankhuri’s game, which spoke directly to the protests in India, so yes, some things were definitely context-specific, the influence of which found its way into the digital realm. However, it is also true that there cannot be one idea of India, as it is a huge country that cannot be flattened by the idea of the dra.ft website in itself.

The dra.ft exercise has no qualms about it being an exploration in itself. There is a certain humour in its presentation as an Excel sheet which is elaborately designed. It is almost a tongue-in-cheek denial of not making a website. Given the team of technologists and designers, they could have easily made a website which would have had a much glossier cover. The choice here seems deliberate and political. It’s a Meta Commentary towards a state of the discipline as it was then: brutalistic and bare bones but with a beauty and great potential of its own.

Therefore, can a database or an exhibit exist as an Excel sheet? dra.ft shows it definitely can.
As Larkin (2013) points out, infrastructures also exist away from their technical function as a poetic and aesthetic form. Attaining the same can become acts of desire and fetishes. Here we see a subversion by the use of the Excel sheet, the form of which is not expected in the context of an exhibition or the display of a project online.

Note: As of 2024, we have seen the release of the first Indian Anthology Of Electronic Literature from KSHIP at the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore. Nirmala Menon and Shanmugapriya T. were in charge of the project. While both dot the emergent scene for e-lit in India
(Ensslin and Roy 2023), there remains an apparent connection to the same. The anthology was an academic product that had the support of a higher education institution, whereas dra.ft was a community of primarily creative technologists and literature enthusiasts exploring a new domain together. They are not connected. This entry is focused on dra.ft.