The nEARness/t of [IrOny] U's
An Interview with Talan Memmott on the occasion of the publication of
Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)] by Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink

This month, The Iowa Review Web premieres a new work by Talan Memmott. Readers, critics, and writing contemporaries have "learned" to read Memmott's creations—prepared a mental place to sort through the multilinear threads, kept the mouse-hand free to coax out the infinite regress of a screen, and trained the eye to process text, symbol, syntax, coding, and structure as a part of the manifest voice.

We approach each new piece with our valuable skill-set of reading behaviors and a fresh curiosity.

Museum-goers often welcome the "guided audio tour" of an exhibit—and I have attempted to construct this print interview to approximate a walking tour of Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)] It features a survey of both the materiality and construction of the work itself and includes the comments of Talan Memmott regarding each aspect as we go along.

Our W/Readers assemble; they have the usual sus[ex]pectations. But, now, here is something entirely different!

Q. The W/Readers Arrive: What is this?

M.D. Coverley: Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)] is a work of randomized montage and text/narrative that queries practices of art history and criticism.
Kind of.
The enigma of entry for electronic works unsettles us in a familiar way. We are not sure if we can best discover the nature of a piece by storming the subject matter at the front door, going around to the back door for a look at coding and structure, sneaking in an unlocked 'window' somewhere, or just surveying the neighborhood.

Since, though, the ostensible subject matter seems to be uncommonly accommodating (but perhaps deceptively so), we decide to start with the direct approach. At the most evident content level, we have a work that draws on two notable traditions: the artist self-portrait and the Giorgio Vasari-style "Lives of the Artists." The paired visual elements of the work reflect this, as well—the "portrait" panel on the left and the "biography" panel on the right. Can you comment on the use of these two elements?

Talan Memmott: I think pairing the visual 'self' portrait with the textual portrait doubles the resistance for both. Neither portrait nor biography offers an accurate representation of any specific artist. I do think there is a Vasarian quality to the biographies. But, rather than the Lives of the Artists, we have here a life of artists. I like this idea of presenting the multiple as singular. This works in two directions simultaneously. First, there is the compression of artists into an artist, and then there is the making of variable specifics into generalities. Both of these seem to be modes of making fiction out of fact, and commentary out of fiction. >>

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