Epistemological sabotage, Dionysius and the theory slam
I had a brain wave last night at the Escapist Bookstore and now I find someone is already on the case.
Escapist hosted a hodgepodge of an event -- some Canadian poster artists, a FAIR documentary about Fox News, some music too loud for the space, and a small road show from the Museum of Ephemerata. Jen and Scott had a few artifacts on display but mostly their part was a spoken-word piece on the origins of the Museum (no doubt true in some alternate universe) and the various theories of museology it encompasses (one of its missions is to be a museum of museums). In order to add an audience-participation component to the talk, at times they held up placards of key terms which we in the audience we supposed to repeat in chorus. They handed out the placards as souvenirs. I took home "Veracity Regimes".
My favorite wasn't on a card, though: "epistemological sabotage". I must start working that into conversations.
So anyway, it occurred to me that some creative bunch of people could do for theory what the poetry slam movement did for poetry. Throw in beer, prize money and the occasional striptease or fistfight and a lot of us theory-phobes might decide we like the stuff after all.
Well, it's not called that, but via Jenny's blog I learn that Salvage Vanguard Theatre has been hosting an event since the beginning of the summer that's not too terribly far off:
Past events are admirably documented in the Dionysium archive. My hat's off to the debaters and declaimers who marked the gravity of the occasion by wearing suits, despite the Texas summer. The debates are perhaps too matter-of-fact to be "theory", but I'm sure it could be worked in there somewhere. The next Dionysium is scheduled for October 6.