Putting the MF in MFA

Instead of, say, complaining about the existence of MFAs in comment-boxes and dreary rants, Rachel Zolf decided to playfully critique the system, in the name of creating art. She’s composing her MFA thesis, for the New School, from writing donated to her by others. The results are posted on her blog, The Tolerance Project, where she also explains the coordinates of project:

Eighty-six writers, artists and thinkers have donated their poetic traces to The Tolerance Project, a collaborative MFA in Creative Writing. Each piece of poetic DNA in The Tolerance Project Archive has been assigned its own barcode. Each poem written for the MFA will employ traces from the donated traces. The MFA poems are restricted to The Tolerance Project Archive for their content.

MFA poems written for class will be posted on this blog. Poetic DNA barcodes for the traces used in each poem appear at the end of each MFA poem post. Click on the barcodes to reveal the donor identities and poetic DNA traces.

By both writing a thesis and distorting what it means to write a thesis, Zolf not only affirms the student's role as an artist, she also reminds us that the MFA, as an institution, is not a monolithic oppressive force, but an experience to be toyed with and re-shaped into new forms by willing students. Onward, apprentices!