&Now 2012: New Writing in Paris: Exchanges and Cross-Fertilizations

&NOW is a festival of fiction, poetry, and staged play readings; literary rituals, performance pieces (digital, sound, and otherwise), electronic and multimedia projects; and intergenre literary work of all kinds, including criti-fictional presentations and creatively critical papers. We particularly encourage pieces that promote linguistic and genre transgressions, along with literary artworks that promote interdisciplinary explorations and conversations with past, present, or future literary concerns and movements.

&Now's 2012 theme "Exchanges and cross-fertilizations" addresses the idea of innovative literary art in terms of importation from and thriving on different genres, forms, fields and media. When today's art clearly exposes many a traditional literary and more generally artistic category and notion as obsolete, how is art to be described, criticized and reviewed? Should categories be done away with altogether and new modes of speaking about works, representing and promoting them be invented, as well as innovative modes of conveying the aesthetic and artistic experience? This special Paris edition of the &Now Festival will also tackle the issue of exchanges and influences across the Atlantic and throughout time, exploring and continuing a long-lasting tradition of mutual fertilization and respect.

(Source: Conference website)