A Sociopoetic Art: Six Degrees of Davinio

Abstract

Caterina Davinio's Network Poetico: Net-Poetry Performance, at the 53rd Venice Biennale in October 2009 and archived online, is an example of sociopoetics, and what is particularly interesting about the project was the discussions and networking projected at the event. While each poet waited to deliver their work at the opening event at the Venice Biennale, they chatted in IM, and then one by one Caterina would cue a poet, and they would leave the conversation. In those conversations, poets from at least three continents were comparing their work, and talking about the time difference, the weather, and possibilities for future networking projects. They were also promoting their work to a network that they knew little or nothing about. Davinio's work had to do with setting up this networking as an artwork about networked poetry. The conversation was projected to those at the opening of the event in Venice, and the networking became the canvas. Using Roland Barthes's category of the "receivable" (Barthes, RB 118), one could see the projected messages as something that is neither a traditional narrative (readerly), nor a modernist poem (writerly). Instead, as soon as one reads the transcription of the chat, one is inevitably part of it even if silently watching.