CRASHTEST



CRASHTEST
CrashTest is a print and digital zine focusing on experimental, oulipian and alternative writings.

It is highly interested in observing or establishing some links between genres, systems, worlds and languages. 

Currently busy defining and creating OUSFIPO (Ouvroir de Sicence-Fiction Potentielle) an invisible or unexplored branch of Oulipo. OUSFIPO is part of a much larger universe that we might call OULIIPO or Ouvoir des littératures de l'imaginaire potentielles.

Most issues are available for free on ISSUU or via PDF (on request). Print versions can also be sent.




ISSUES
 

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#18 L'affaire BP, un plagiat par Anticipation / OUSFIPO
 

[FR] Premier projet intégralement ousfipien (ou ouliipien). Oeuvre d'anticipation où se mêlent voyages temporels, uchronies, dérapages oulipiens, un complot rondement mené et un plagiat par anticipation improbable.

[EN] First project belonging to Ousfipo. Only in French.

 

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#17 SOUVIENS-TOI D'OUBLIER (Tribute to G. PEREC)


This recent CT project is based on G. Perec's "Je me souviens". Is it only a series of "Je me souviens" (I remember)? Not really. This reads (in French) like a story and what a story! With so many wonderful contributors! Read this moving and yet unbelievable fiction: HERE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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#16 LES CHOSES, CATALOGUE (Tribute to G. PEREC)








A catalogue of the objects in Georges Perec's novel: Ebook is available HERE.




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#15 TIME IS ON MY SIDE (inventory)

I have ordered all my favourite songs by duration. This project has to do with self-quantification, memory and classification. At some point it is important to remember the time it takes to experience or enjoy certain things (favourite ones in this case). This piece can be considered as a monomaniac version of Brainard's I remember in which the time factor has become essential. Songs (and movies as well to a certain extent) are the only things you can actually measure in terms of duration even though you may experience some emotions afterwards, by remembering how good IT made you feel for two and a half minutes or three minutes thirty four or six minutes forty five. Constraints: 1/ cover as many time slots as possible; 2/ only one song per time duration; 3/ pick just one song per album (whenever possible); 4/ start at 2:21 with a song called "Inventory". EBOOK is available HERE.


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#14 PHANTOM OF A GESTURE (erasure)



Erasing Mallarmé's Throw of the dice.
Only leaving Phantoms of a gesture: corrections.
EBOOK is available HERE.









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#13 BARTLEBIT (lost and found writing)


Bartlebits is about erased sections in books. Most of these are not just corrections but actual deletions, wanted or unwanted. Throughout the various chapters, you will recognise some famous figures or familiar writings. These words, however, have been for some reason taken out and omitted from the original works. At the end of Bartlebits, sources and links can be found. Why call this Bartlebits? Maybe because we are dealing here with dead letters. Maybe... Note that this is a work in progress, in other words a black hole in expansion.
EBOOK is available HERE.



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#12 WHAT'S NOT by Tulio Herrera and Bustos Domecq (erasure)



"What's missing hurts not" once said Bustos Domecq.
So here is another erasure work or another way of shortening Vladimir Nabokov.
Carving out all foreign bodies contained in Nabokov's shorts stories and turning these into a polyglossic poem.
EBOOK is available HERE.






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#11 VENUS IN FURSONATE (mashup)

Kurt Schwitters meets The Velvet underground
New smashing mash-up
From the eCrashTest series
EBOOK is available HERE.







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#10 A CLOCKWORK BABEL by Jorge Luis Burgess (mashup)

BURGESS / BORGES MASHUP
Borges' Babel recontructed based on the Nadsat language invented by Anthony Burgess. EBOOK is available HERE.












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#9 YOU DIDN'T LET ME FINISH MY SENTENCE (appropriation)

Jack Torrance (the character in Kubrick's movie the Shining) was obsessed with a sentence that he thought was unfinished and that he kept retyping on his typewriter. Following his own tragic experience, hundreds and thousands of anonymous authors borrowed this exact sentence and, one day, decided to repeat this sentence, endlessly.

This book, entitled You didn't let me finish my sentence, is about the sentence, or more precisely the reproduction of this sentence over and over again. The peculiarity of this sentence is that it is structurally finite but conceptually infinite and open to all possible variations, styles, media and interpretations.

This book is about the sentence as part of an endless stream in which the exact same words take different forms and shapes prolonging the nightmare born in Jack Torrance's mind. The sentence does not lend itself (or very rarely) to adaptations: no remix, no alterations, no changes in the words themselves. The sentence remains intact and invariably static. Of course the words may resonate differently from one author to the next but, ultimately, what is it that binds them all and mysteriously links them? Maybe there is a spell contained in this "lullaby". Maybe, re-writing the sentence is somehow uncontrolled, an urge which is virally transmitted everytime someone reads this line. The more you read it, the more it possesses you, crawls your mind and spreads around.

So be careful, "all work and no play" can make a dull life into a writing obsession and turn you into an obsessive, compulsive reproducer of this neverending sentence. If you feel your eyes and mind are ready to give it a try, the book which contains the sentence is HERE.


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#8 CAPTCHAÏKUS

Captcha + Haïku = Captachaïku. Read Ebook HERE.



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#7 POESTRYP (Comics meet Poetry)







The objective is to bring together experimental writing and indie comics, to gather writers and designers in a unique issue.
Request PDF copy.









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#6 ATROXHITY (JG Ballard tribute)


For this project, each participant selected a title taken from one of the 15 chapters in the atrocity exhibition (by JGBallard); the text provided to CrashTest had to be somehow related to the theme or concept of “atrocity_exhibition”; it could be inspired by the book, by the movie or by anything else that was deemed to be connected to the convergence/collision of inner and outer landscapes.  The objective was not to produce a pastiche of the AEx but to use it as a point of entry into this undifferentiated chaos where news bulletins, scientific reports, dialogues, pulsions are amalgamated, decontextualised and often placed at the same level; at the same time we wanted to explore the idea of exposure, exhibition and see how the irrational, the unspeakable can be re-packaged, re-ordered to acquire a different meaning.  The participants are:
1. Special Guest - The Atrocity Exhibition
2. Erik Rzepka - The University of Death
3. Harold Jaffe - The Assassination Weapon
4. Matina Stamatakis - You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe
5. Jérôme Bertin - Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown
6. L. Herrou / JP Paringaux - The Great American Nude
7. Rodolphe Bessey - The Summer Cannibals
8. Rachel Defay-Liautard - Tolerances of the Human Face
9. Andrés Vaccari - You and Me and the Continuum
10. Mario Hinz - Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy
11. Gary Lain - Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A.
12. David-Baptiste Chirot - Crash!
13. MEZ - The Generations of America
14. CT special - Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan
15. Javier Kronauer - The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race
Request PDF copy.

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#5 ICONOCRASHTIC (appropriation)


The list of participants is quite revealing as it includes:
* John Baldessari
* Herman Melville
* Huelsenbeck / Janko / Tzara
*  BP Nichol
* Chris Marker
* Marcel Duchamp
* Chuang Tzu
* Jorge Luis Burgess
* Lewis Carroll
* Vladimir Nabokov
* Kurt Schwitters
* James Joyce
* EE Cummings


If you need more information or are curious to know what this whole damn thing means, please note that 1) the title provides some very good indications and 2) you can contact us via email (we should able to send you some kind of blurb).
Request PDF copy.



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#4 Neo-Crashtestament (spam poetry and drama)


 As the title suggests, the Neo-CrashTestament is about Words, Light, Faith, Hope and their sexual transmission.  Maybe but not only that.  The Neo-KrshTestament is a religeous drama entirely made of spam and junk emails from all around the world.
This project is:
*On paper: now available via email.
*On line: the corpus on which the text of the drama was based is available here (good luck!).
*Live: this spam-drama was first performed on Oct. 4th in front of a mesmerised public.


The participants are ALL anonymous - and for obvious reasons. Neo-CrashTestament is avaolable online: read here or request PDF copy.


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#3 Ubertrashung (installation)


A 3D concept: Magazine / installation / performance
The next issue of CT is also presented as an installation that we call “ÜberTrashung”. This actually is a “trash test”, a 3-dimensional version of our magazine displayed as a heap of junk. Far from remaining static and closed, this installation will hopefully travel and expand. To start with, the only contrainst for submitting was to provide (throw in) examples of art based on (the concept of) rejection, dumping, recycling etc and this includes objects, text-objects and all kinds of poetry (visual, concrete, spatial, spam-po, etc). All contributions were blended with refuse in an attempt to recycle, down-grade poetry and alter its perception, its message, its interpretation. At the same time, our objective is to challenge the notion of ” Magazine ” (nice paper, nice design, beautiful artists with a beautiful inspiration), to make it more lively, chaotic, transitory and disgusting in a sense (why not). We can call it in French “Revue/rebut”.

This is an installation that the readers have to explore by themselves and the key drivers of their search is chance, curiosity and surprise (=überraschung in German). A chance is also given to visitors/readers to alter the place, to move objects around, to add in their own work or to alter existing works in a constructive manner or, on the contrary, by crushing, tearing or adding more junk. This has to become a continuous recycling machinery. Other processes taking place here will be the confusion of languages (language of the media, advertising, consumer industry but also those from various countries) and the confusion of media (object Vs paper; objectivied text Vs poetified object). The reader is free to deny any meaning in this experiment and is very welcome to hate it. Having said that, we would be very happy to observe how they interact with it and what influences their interpretations, feelings, etc (the pieces, the theme, the place, etc)?

For this project, different strategies were put in place:
-To textualise / contextualise / recontextualise: all pieces of junk were systematically altered through the insertion of cut-up phrases and slogans, stories, images, etc
-To package: some of the contributions from various authors were packaged in order to fit their new environment
-To downgrade: some pieces were torn or slashed and thrown into the trash, thus being abandonned or rejected;
-To divert: the whole installation is actually a magazine and should be seen, read, discovered as such
-To compose: the reader will do the job of composing

The participants are: David-Baptiste Chirot (RubBEINGS), Heike Fiedler (I refuse), Marco Giovenale (CD-K=see decay), Laurent Herrou (Litter Letters), Clemente Padin (Trash Spamer), Carmen Racovitza (Junk Mail Art), Kriz Rzepka (Basura, precio), Xavier Stern (Litter rature)
Request PDF copy.


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#2 NoLOG (guerilla writing)



For this project, CrashTest initially wanted to focus on the art of absorbing, modifying, undermining, recycling, faking, negating, dismantling Communication.  CrashTest also wanted to cover the entire spectrum of Communication: brand image, logo, advertising, promotional messages and slogans, packaging, brand art and spam.  The artists (poets, photographers, designers, etc) were invited to exploit, expand or excite the tools, techniques and gimmicks of communication, to promote new objects of desire, to communicate on the meaningless, to re-package our lives and environments, etc… 

Based on the above stimulus, we invited a number of artists to explore or react to our initial brief. The participants are  Mark Amerika, Paolo Albani, Mario Hinz, MEZ, Rick McGrath, Clemente Padin, Rob Read, Xavier Sabater, Kenji Siratori, The Cut-Up Conspiracy, Danijel Zezelj

The experimental works presented in CrashTest encompass a wide range of styles and writing processes. The types of works that you will find in this issue include : Visual poetry, Spam poetry, Cyberpunk, Free association and cut up, Code writing, Subvertising, Billboard fiction... all of this is wonderfully packaged within the visionary landscapes of Danijel Zezelj
Request PDF copy.


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#1 TLAONGUE (Polyglossia)



The first Crash Test publication, known as TlaOngue, was about multilingual writing. We focused on a wide range of activities and practises which can be labelled as plurilingualism, heteroglossia, cross lingual writing, homophonic translation, mixed speech, hybridisation, linguistic “mestizaje”, frontier-words, etc. This is what we called a Meltlingual-Pot. Participants include: Alfred Arteaga, Jerry Cornelius, El&La, Raymond Federman, Heike Fiedler, Franz Kino, Hugh Tribbey, Alain-Marc (photographs) and some “uninvited” guests

As part of this project, CrashTest and some of our participants undertook some linguistic experiments using automatic generation tools such as Lost in translation, Diastic reading, Permutation software.
Request PDF copy.