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1) Why do you write?
First and foremost, I see myself as someone who reads; reading being an encounter, so ‘a relation prior to any attempt at assimilating what is being read to the one who reads’ (with infinite thanks here to Werner Hamacher for this particular formulation). Which means that not only can I never quite claim to know what I’ve read, but that in opening myself to what I am reading can never quite ascertain how it has changed me, perhaps even after it has done so (as it inevitably does).
perchance to dream
Writing is my primary mode of not just expressing thought but of thinking itself. And I try to maintain the possibility of conceiving writing as scribere, scratching — onto, into, out of — tearing, opening; as an attempt, perhaps even a quest, at maintaining the question in what is inscribed. And this relationship — between what is posited and the question which remains — is something that I attempt to explore intensely, to intensely explore.
At the heart of Fernando’s approach is the exaltation of citation and annotation: each one constitutes in itself a longing to remember and to relate, manifesting as an act of translation, for it gathers something from ‘there’ and carries it over ‘here,’ where it quickens, as much as it’s quickened by, a new fit and form.
~ Adibah Mustafa
Or, perhaps, it explores me and I writhe.
Do not hesitate to read the scars
that crater the textual body!
~ Avital Ronell
For, being open to possibilities means that I have to concede I am never fully in control of my thoughts, my writing. Sometimes whatever is written is strange, unfamiliar, other, to me … a fragment of me, sometimes it also fragments me.
Nor can I ever quite control how it will be read: I can only write, read, and leave it to be read.
All whilst bearing in mind
— even as it may well remain a burden on one —
that one can only know of writing
only have a sense that it has happened
through first reading.
So, always traces ..
to be read.
If you want to read, jump,
Do don’t set yourself so much as a comma.
~ Hélène Cixous
And translate … transform … it into a form that is proper to the encounter.
For, it is my belief that form and thinking are intertwined, perhaps even indivorceable, that each medium brings forth possibilities in and of thought which are proper to itself — such that, over the years, I have been led into different media, including film, music, performance-readings, and the visual arts; all of which are nothing but attempts to pay homage to what is appropriate to the thought itself, to the thoughts themselves.
Language is essentially discreet:
what it expresses can always also
be an instrument of encryption, a
means of dissembling, disfiguring,
or lying. Since, however, it
constitutes all oppositions in the
first place, it can belong to none of
them, neither to concealment nor
disclosure, neither publicity nor
privacy and its idiosyncrasies.
~ Werner Hamacher
To be read …
and here I am not sure, have never been sure,
perhaps will never be sure, if I am even writing
to be read.
Sometimes, I dream of being able to just read and write; and to not have to bother about quotidian concerns like rent, sustenance, being able to sustain myself. Least of all employment, or perhaps even worse book sales: it’s somehow a worse feeling to be more concerned about whether people are buying one’s works than if they are of interest to anyone as works; that is the moment you turn a work into a mere product, when writing becomes that most hated of contemporary terms, content.
Sometimes, I dream of having a patron.
But then, at the same time, one can’t help but wonder if it is possible to separate the patronage of your work from you being patronised: there is certainly no possibility of a free hand, of emancipation, when it is daddy who is holding your manus.
And your manuscript will always bear inscriptions of their signature: whether anyone one else can see this signing-off, underwriting, be a different, somewhat irrelevant, question.
For, it has taken me years to admit — perhaps only to myself — that I don’t care about writing something important, something significant.
That my only hope,
wish — dream even — is
to write something beautiful.
It’s incredible how easy it is
to believe your own stories
even when you know how arbitrary
they are.
~ Sophie Calle
perchance
to
dream
2) How do you think your writing will change in the age of artificial intelligence?
I would have liked to say not at all but that would be too glib, too easy, and also completely uninteresting.
Especially since we are, as my old teacher Wolfgang Schirmacher would say, artificial beings. For, it is not so much that we ‘use’ tools, but that technology is always also the tekhnẽ which shapes, forms, our very logos.
And perhaps what is potentially interesting is the manner in which we are shaped, formed, informed, reformed, deformed.
Which in terms of what we have come to call AI is much much too early to tell: we barely even have begun to understand how the gramophone, film, and typewriter have been shaping us (with a nod to the late, great, Friedrich Kittler).
Though, being completely irresponsible[ Literature depends not just on the right to say anything but also on the right not to be held responsible for what one says. (J. Hillis Miller)], I might here wager that the term AI is tautological: intelligences (in all of their multitudes, multiplicities, differences) have always entailed craft, skill, artem, and is thus always already artifice, artificial.
Writing is an inhuman and unintelligible activity —
one must always do it with a certain disdain, without illusions,
and leave it to others to believe in one’s own work
~ Jean Baudrillard
So perhaps the challenge for us is to become ever more artificial.
(Jeremy Fernando reads, writes, and makes things.)
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【 About the piece above 👆 】
This is a conversation we recently started, built around two simple questions:
1. Why do you write?
2. How do you think your writing will change in the age of artificial intelligence?
If you’re someone who writes — fiction, poetry, journals, scripts, research, essays, anything — you’re warmly invited to join in.
We’ll be gathering everyone’s answers and sharing them in English, Spanish, and Chinese across different platforms, so more people can see how writers from different cultures and backgrounds are pondering about writing right now.
You can reply directly in the comments section below, or send us your thoughts by email: xifish.studio@gmail.com
Feel free to share this message! And we’d really love to hear your voice! :-)
— Xi Nan & Fish Lu