Work in Progress

<i>Work in Progress: Curatorial Labor in Twenty-First Century American Fiction</i>interrogates contemporary texts that showcase forms of reading practices that feel anachronistic and laborious in times of instantaneity and short buffering times. Objects of analysis include the graphic narrative <i>Building Stories</i>by Chris Ware the music album <i>Song Reader</i> by the indie rock artist Beck Hansen and the computer game <i>Kentucky Route Zero</i> by the programming team Cardboard Computer. These texts stage their fragmentary nature and alleged unfinishedness as a quintessential part of both their narrative and material modus operandi. <br/><br/>These works in and of progress feel both contemporary and retro in the 21st century. They draw upon and work against our expectations of interactive art in the digital age incorporating and likewise rejecting digital forms and practices. This underlines the material and narrative flexibilities of the objects for no outcome or reading experience is the same or can be replicated. It becomes apparent that the texts presuppose a reader who invests her spare time in figuring these texts out diagnosing a contorted work-leisure dichotomy: working these stories out is a significant part of the reading experience for the reader-curatorial labor. This conjures up a reader who as the author argues is turned into a curator and creative entity of and in these texts for she implements and reassembles the options made available.