Literary+Artifacts

Literature as a Performing Art
to better understand things, and the playful imagination of reading fiction to see things in new ways. There is no artifact of this art form; no book, no painting, no sculpture; but like all good art, the act of slow reading exercises our imagination to develop interiority, our psychological framework. -- John Miedema, Slow Reading original blog post ||
 * < The reader calls upon creative faculties and is changed in the process of reading. It has both the serious purpose of reading non-fiction

Miedema writes that there "is no artifact of this art form," the art form of reading. But the art inspired by the books that touch us may often appear in more than our "interiority, our psychological framework." When Neil Gaiman wistfully mentioned on his blog that he'd like some banjo music for the macabre scene in The Graveyard Book, even this master of imagination could hardly have imagined that banjo legend Bela Fleck would learn of his wish and perform a piece. Hear a sample of Fleck's music and Gaiman's reading . ..

Perhaps in our evolving participatory culture, there are more and more opportunities for readers to "perform" literature and share their responses with the world. Consider ways we can create the conditions for young adults to perform literature and create artifacts that both serve as cognitive tools for their thinking and works of art to share those experiences of slow reading.