Touched by an Academic Angel: Post Moot version

It’s not everyday that you read a downright moving account of someone’s enthusiasm over an academic conference. But Nick Demske has written just that: a report on the Post Moot conference that serves as a reminder of the potential conferences have, not just to bring people together for career networking, but to inspire thinking and start conversations. For Demske, the variety of genres and ideas present didn’t simply represent a “marketplace of ideas” (blegh), but a collective endeavor in the name of imagining what art and poetry can be:

For me, these two elements really facilitated thinking outside of my usual conventions in terms of artistic creation. The contrasts between each presentation provided a breadth that almost seemed counterintuitive to the idea of conferences as a whole. Since conferences are get togethers of people who like the same things—whether it’s comic books, Civil War reenactments or experimental poetry—they’re usually pretty limited by their very nature. This conference featured poetry readings—with a breadth of different styles—performance art, dance, visual art, video art, sound collages, book making and other craftsmanship for which I don’t know names. But that’s the point…the names stopped mattering. And I’m tempted to say it’s because the presentations were so often hybridized. But that feels inaccurate because, as the conference proceeded, they began feeling less and less like separate entities. Post Moot emphasized the unity of all these expressions I’ve come to think of as separate.