Lee Scrivner
| Lee Scrivner | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Adjunct Professor at American University |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | US |
| Education | University of Utah |
| Alma mater | University of London |
| Period | 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 |
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Lee Scrivner is an American writer and cultural theorist known for his book Becoming Insomniac (2014) and for his satirical avant-garde art manifestos. He writes on the literature, history, and culture of the Victorian and Modernist periods, as well as on contemporary issues.
Scrivner was born in Winnipeg to American parents and was raised in Las Vegas, where he attended Bonanza High School. He received a BA and an MA in English from the University of Utah. He taught English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from 2001 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. He was a Fulbright lecturer in the humanities at Bosphorus University, Istanbul. Since August 2015, he has taught at American University in Washington D.C.
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, and paradox.
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."
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