"The allegorical figuration of the traumatic irruption of the Real seems to lie at the heart of Mez's recent work, " >di][e][lation manifesto-:-a sliver of the future f][br][eeder< ." Here the mouse click serves to destabilize the interactor. First of all, the question is where to click? Web navigation usually proceeds from the interactor's recognition of a significant "button," a visual element promising to function as a hyperlink and as such to fulfill the interactor's freedom in interactivity. But the visual clues, made up either of garbled word chunks or opaque code-like punctuation series, are barely clues at all. Once the interactor does click on the right buttons, however, popup windows appear. And here is where the traumatic irruption of History seems to be figured: what we get when we click on a button is either a scrollable mini-window containing more disjointed text OR a popup window containing a Flash movie, each one featuring some new alien creature who comes closer and closer to our faces, all the while giving off or being accompanied by some disturbing sound that somehow resembles the sounds of breathing or of a bodily pulse. "Oh my God! What have I done? What has my innocent interaction here brought into being? This is not what I had intended!" The question of who exactly the future feeder/breeders will be now becomes disturbingly indeterminate and alien. A manifesto normally claims to clarify the issues of the future; this wo/manifesto instead gives birth to some future rough beast."


-“Body Info Web: The Internet Poetry of Mez.” [conference paper by George Hartley @ the Modern Language Association International Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, December 28, 2001.]