Electronic literature production – a case study of Korporacja Ha!art (poster)

It is often said that the field of electronic literature is “author driven”. Many established e-literary artists produce their work on their own, publishing it on their personal website, promoting and often even writing interpretations themselves. This however is not the only model present in the global field of digital born literature. The poster is devoted to the Polish institution Korporacja Ha!art and the model of production of e-literature in Poland. The institution is an NGO that runs a professional publishing house, which has published over 500 traditional books, ebooks and audiobooks. It also runs a sort of laboratory for the production of digital born literature by the leading artists in the field in its area of the world. The producer activities of the institution also involve the publication of translations of classic first generation hypertexts (on CDs, which were distributed conventionally through bookstores) and second generation work accessible online. Apart from production itself, Korporacja Ha!art puts an emphasis on building context around the works: its organizes publicity, meetings, reading lessons and, finally, several conferences and a festival, during which works are premiered, presented and discussed. The aim of our poster is to present an analysis of the work model, financing strategies, distribution channels and creation of context around this kind of producer activity. The output is based on the analysis of documents, interviews with artists and producers and our own working practice. We will share the good production practices the organization has developed, and discuss aspects of the economy of the field in our local context. In doing so, we hope to introduce in to the study of electronic literature a new approach, borrowed from the methodology developed by John T. Caldwell in film studies. It is an approach centered around the study of what is called the production culture. Here, we shall apply it to the analysis of the field of production of works of digital literature.