Stefa Govaart

LURKER MOXIE HEART

Lurker Moxie Heart is a series of drum-backed celebrations of fan fiction writing organized by Slow Reading Club (Bryana Fritz and Henry Andersen). The invited readers read a fanfiction text of their choice from the internet’s vast trove of fan work.

Why fan-fiction now? What permissions does it give us to read the world? Writing from the threshold of reader/writer, fan-fiction is a practice of rerouting and reanimating the flows of desire in existing characters, stories, and plotlines. As a writing practice it untangles the knot of the finished, autonomous text into something more frayed at the edges. It promotes seepage, mutation, and self-insertion. With disregard to the long-stale death of the author, the fanfic writer says, «I want it otherwise». In online archives of fan writing, one finds communities based not on shared space but on shared fandoms. «Lurker Moxie Heart» is a celebration of fan-fiction writing at large, moving an online activity into a meated space: a line up of stories offered voice by friends and acquaintances in the city, underwrit by celebration drumming. In fan-fiction jargon, the word ‹lurker› describes one who does not write or participate but only absorbs and appreciates. By aligning with the lurker, we choose the position of the secret admirer, the understudy, the fans of fandom. 

Lurker Moxie Heart takes place in multiple languages, all welcome.