Lee Scrivner

Lee Scrivner
Occupation	Professor, writer, musician
Language	English
Nationality	US
Education	University of Utah
Alma mater	University of London
Period	1999 (1999)–present
Genre	Humanities, English literature
Notable works	Becoming Insomniac (2014) The Sound Moneyfesto (2008) How to Write an Avant-Garde Manifesto (2008)
Website
leescrivner.com

Lee Scrivner is an American cultural historian and artist known for his book Becoming Insomniac (2014) and for his satirical avant-garde art manifestos. He writes on the psychosomatic effects of life in technological modernity, particularly on the history of insomnia.

Early life

Lee Scrivner was born in Winnipeg, Canada to American parents and was raised in Las Vegas, where he attended Bonanza High School.

Academics

Scrivner received a BA in English (1997) and an MA in British and American literature (1998) from the University of Utah. He taught English at the College of Southern Nevada and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from 1999 to 2005, after which he pursued doctoral research under Steven Connor at the University of London. From 2007 to 2008, he lectured in the English department at Birkbeck College. Since receiving his PhD, he has been a Fulbright lecturer in the humanities at Bosphorus University, Istanbul.

Creative work

Manifestos

Scrivner's creative work includes writing art manifestos and theatrical performances that incorporate live music and pre-recorded video. His work often deploys satire, anachronism, mock solemnity, metafiction and paradox.

Lord Garden's Masque (an anti-masque) (2009)

This took the form of a short play launched at the Weak Signals & Wild Cards exhibition at De Appel Arts Centre. Commentators have suggested that the name of the masque's main character Ascian might be a reference "to the people of Gene Wolfe's novel The Book of the New Sun in which the only permitted communication is the quoting of lines from the state's constitution." The pompous commissioner Lord Garden and his aides overhear the simple tune Ascian plays on a rustic reed pipe, prompting them to build an elaborate and expensive institution for the study of music. In the play, "cultural activity is frequently spoken of as a state building-block." Thus "Scrivner distills a reductive and absurdest scenario and exposes the self-defeating central ironies of over-regulated commissioning processes."

The Memory of Futurism and the Rise of the Insomnauts (2009)

This manifesto was performed in an underground bunker in Bloomsbury on the centenary of the publication in Le Figaro of F.T. Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism. The performance was an homage to Marinetti as well as a response to (and attended by) Tom McCarthy, the general secretary of the International Necronautical Society.

The Sound Moneyfesto (2008)

The Sound Moneyfesto was launched at the Manifesto Marathon 2008 at the Serpentine Gallery in London. It incorporated word play, anachronism, and mock solemnity to comment on the 2008 Banking Crisis, especially the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and on the idea of sound money. The Sound Moneyfesto was launched in concert with manifestos from performance artist Marina Abramović, musician and producer Brian Eno, artists Gilbert & George, artist and musician Yoko Ono, and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.

How to Write an Avant-Garde Manifesto (2008)

How to Write an Avant-Garde Manifesto was an art manifesto originally written in 2006 and taped to the front door of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. It was subsequently presented at the British Library's 2008 exhibition Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900–1937 with Auto Destructive and Fluxus artist Gustav Metzger and British Library curator Stephen Bury.

'With Usura' With Bells and Manifesto (2008)

This was written and performed in October 2012 at Tate Britain. Accompanied by a small chamber orchestra, Scrivner banged on a reverberating metal salad bowl with mock solemnity as he recited excerpts from The Cantos of Ezra Pound interspersed with his original commentary and occasional headlines from the Financial Times.

Music

Scrivner has written several albums of music, both as a solo artist and in bands. He founded the Las Vegas-based band Inviolet Row in 2001, along with musicians Casey Johnson, Kevin Brewer, and Abe Millet. The band has released two studio albums, Consolation Prizes (2002) and Nevertheless (2005), and is currentlyrecording a third. Scrivner also composes in a more modernist classical vein, as evinced by his involvement in Voiceworks (a collaboration between Wigmore Hall, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the Birkbeck Contemporary Poetics Research Centre) and related projects.

Select publications

Books

Becoming Insomniac: How Sleeplessness Alarmed Modernity (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).

Chapters in books

“That Sweet Secession: Sleep and Insomnia in Western Literature” in Sleep: Multi-Professional Perspectives, Andrew Green, Alex Westcombe, Ved Varma eds., (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2012). ISBN 978-1849050623

""Manifest-o-Meter," in Manifesto Marathon, Serpentine Gallery (Köln: Walther König, 2010). ISBN 978-3865606945

“The Echo of Narcissism in Interactive Art” in Literatures in the Digital Era: Theory and Praxis, Amelia Sanz, Dolores Romero eds., (2007) ISBN 978-1847182913

Shorter works

Scrivner's poetry, short fiction, and academic writing have been published in Poet Lore, The Wolf, Teller (a magazine of stories distributed by Trolley Books), Otis Nebula, History Workshop Journal, and Modern Language Review.

External links

• Official website