Tan Lin

Lin was born April 24, 1957, in Seattle, Washington, to Chinese-American immigrants born in Shanghai, China, and Beijing, China. His parents migrated to the United States from China, his father in 1948 and his mother in 1949.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/nyregion/thecity/05maya.html|author=Paul Berger|title=Ancient Echoes in a Modern Space|work=The New York Times|date=November 5, 2006|accessdate=January 2, 2009}}Finding Your Roots, February 2, 2016, PBS His father, Henry Huan Lin, was a ceramist and former dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts. His mother, Julia Chang Lin, born in Shanghai, was a poet and taught literature at Ohio University.{{cite news|url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/maya_lin/index.html|title=Maya Lin|work=The New York Times|accessdate=January 2, 2009|first=Edward|last=Rothstein}} Tan Lin is the nephew of Lin Huiyin, who is said to be the first female architect in China.{{cite book|author=Peter G. Rowe|author2=Seng Kuan|name-list-style=amp|title=Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China|publisher=MIT Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0-262-68151-3|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9irZf11s4NkC}} Lin Juemin and Lin Yin Ming, both among the 72 martyrs of the Second Guangzhou Uprising, were cousins of his grandfather.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S0qHNt3ZU4wC&pg=PA5|title=Maya Lin: A Biography|author=Donald Langmead|year=2011|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-0-313-37854-6|page=5}} Lin Chang-min, a Hanlin of Qing dynasty, the emperor's teacher, was the father of Lin Hui-yin and grandfather of Tan.

The Lin family moved to Athens, Ohio, where in 1959, Tan's sister, Maya Ying Lin, was born.{{Cite news|title = Ancient Echoes in a Modern Space|url = https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/nyregion/thecity/05maya.html|newspaper = The New York Times|date = 2006-11-05|access-date = 2015-10-05|issn = 0362-4331|first = Paul|last = Berger}} She is an American designer and artist who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.{{Cite news|url = http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/maya_lin/index.html|title = Maya Lin|date = |accessdate = 2015-10-04|work = The New York Times|last = Rothstein|first = Edward}}

Lin received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He received M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in English Literature from Columbia University in New York City; his dissertation, completed in 1995, was titled "Garbage, Truth, and the Recycling of Modern Life."{{cite web |last=Lin |first=Tan |title=Tan Anthony Lin CV |url=https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/lin/Lin-Tan_CV.pdf |access-date=19 July 2023}} In addition to writing essays, poems, and books, Lin currently teaches creative writing at Columbia University and New Jersey City University. He has previously taught at the University of Virginia, the California Institute of the Arts, and Brooklyn College.{{Cite web|title = Tan Lin : The Poetry Foundation|url = http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/tan-lin|website = www.poetryfoundation.org|accessdate = 2015-10-05}}

Lin's style as an artist comes from the principle of "ambient" literature. A commentary by Katherine Elaine Sanders described the style by saying, "Lin leads his audiences in exploring the temporary ephemera that fills our daily interactions: emails, Twitter feeds, Facebook messages, blogs, movies, magazines, and advertisements, indexes, photographs, and recipes."{{Cite web|title = BOMB Magazine — Tan Lin by Katherine Elaine Sanders|url = http://bombmagazine.org/article/3467/|website = bombmagazine.org|accessdate = 2015-10-05}}

The first published work by Lin was Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe in 1996, a "meditation backwards", where he invented new poetry structures through the manipulation of the mechanics of language.{{Cite web|title = Poet's Sampler: Tan Lin {{!}} Boston Review|url = http://bostonreview.net/poetry/tan-lin-poets-sampler-tan-lin|website = bostonreview.net|accessdate = 2015-10-07}} In 2003, Lin published his second work, Blipsoak01, where he again used inventive poetry structures, this time through the abstract visual placement of words.

From January 10 to October 16, 2006, Lin maintained a blog, titled [http://ambientreading.blogspot.com/ AMBIENT FICTION READING SYSTEM 01], of everything he read, the time it took him to read it, and the place where he read it. In the project's preface, Lin described it as "a stopwatch of various off-hand, inefficient, and fragmentary reading practices, really the dated, after-effects of reading."{{cite web |last1=Lin |first1=Tan |title=January 10, 2006 |url=http://ambientreading.blogspot.com/2006_01_12_archive.html |website=AMBIENT FICTION READING SYSTEM 01 |access-date=20 July 2023}} A first expanded edition of the project was published online by UbuWeb as BIB. (2007), and a second edition was published in 2011 as Bib., Rev. Ed.{{cite web |title=Bib., Rev. Ed. |url=http://www.mottodistribution.com/shop/publishers/westphalie-verlag/bib-rev-ed.html |website=Motto Books |access-date=20 July 2023}}

In ambience is a novel with a logo, Lin used a subtitle system consisting of citations in the format of Google search entries.{{Cite web|title = (2007) Tan Lin {{!}} HEATH, prelude to tracing the actor as network {{!}} Danny Snelson (2010-2014)|url = http://aphasic-letters.com/heath/|website = aphasic-letters.com|accessdate = 2015-10-12}} Less than a year later, he published HEATH, which utilized the same subtitle system presented in ambience, but also focused on language and graphics from various online sources. In 2010, Lin published 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004: The Joy of Cooking, in which he continued his use of inventive poetry structures, this time in the style of "a field guide to the arts."{{Cite web|title = UPNEBookPartners - Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking: Tan Lin|url = http://www.upne.com/0819569288.html|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120117172350/http://www.upne.com/0819569288.html|url-status = usurped|archive-date = January 17, 2012|website = www.upne.com|accessdate = 2015-10-12}} In 2011, he published Insomnia and the Aunt, in which he mourned the death of his aunt, who owned a motel. Lin's most recent published work, "The Fern Rose Bibliography" (2022), is an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, Our Feelings Were Made by Hand.{{cite web |title=About |url=https://cookiejar.artswriters.org/#about |website=Cookie Jar: Home is a Foreign Place |access-date=21 July 2023}}

{{main|HEATH}}

In the project HEATH (Plagiarism/Outsource), Lin presented a collection of language and graphics compiled from a variety of online sources, ranging from advertisements to Facebook to scholarly articles. For Lin, the work touched on "who is more generally responsible for certain texts", rather than "who physically authors a text".{{Cite web|url = http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2009/06/thomas-fink-tan-lin-plagiarismoutsource.html|title = Tan Lin, plagiarism/outsource|date = |accessdate = 2015-10-04|website = |publisher = otoliths|last = Fink|first = Thomas}} He explored the idea of an ambient novel by highlighting how a book works and how a reader reacts to a printed object when the content itself is arguably meaningless. The content skips from subject to subject in a seemingly random way through plagiarisms, outsourced material, and meta-content.{{Cite web|title = HEATH COURSE PAK by Tan Lin {{!}} HTMLGIANT|url = http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/heath-course-pak-by-tan-lin/|website = htmlgiant.com|accessdate = 2015-10-12}}

In 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004: The Joy of Cooking, Lin wrote prose poems that are disrupted by themselves, alluding to the idea of art being "relaxingly meaningless." He distorted the line between various aesthetic disciplines and took avant-garde notions to a new level by diffusing them into ambient formats such as yoga and meditation. The seven sections of the book each address a different art form, including photography, painting, the novel, architecture, music, theory, and film, using both text and photographs.

The critical response to 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004: The Joy of Cooking was generally positive. The poet Kenneth Goldsmith wrote, "Lin proposes a radical idea for reading: not reading. Words, so prevalent today, are merely elements that constitute fleeting engagements."

The work was the winner of a Book Award for poetry in 2012 from the Association for Asian American Studies.

• [https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/goldsmith/lin.html Information Archives, the De-Materialization of Language, and Kenneth Goldsmith's Fidget and No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96]
• [https://www.jstor.org/stable/24516535 Ambient Stylistics]. Conjunctions, no. 35 (2000): 127–145.
• [https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/1/lin.php Anachronistic Modernism: Numbers Stations, Static, and the Cold War of Poetry]. Cabinet, no. 1 (Winter 2000/2001).
• [https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/4/lin.php Warhol's Aura and the Language of Writing: A World of Likenesses]. Cabinet, no. 4 (Fall 2001).
• [https://www.jstor.org/stable/24518134 Mary Mary Ellen Ellen]. Conjunctions, no. 38 (2002): 99–122.
• Introduction: Boredom and Nonsense in Wonderland. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, xi–xxxiii. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.
• [https://www.jstor.org/stable/24516238 My Wife Looks Like Greta Garbo]. Conjunctions, no. 42 (2004): 224–241.
• [https://issuu.com/aucklandartgallery/docs/readingroom_02_2008_v2 Eric Baudelaire's Sugar Water, the Deleuzean Event, and the Dispersion of Spectatorial Labour]. Reading Room: A Journal of Art and Culture, no. 2 (February 2008): 8–27.
• [https://www.aphasic-letters.com/heath/Lin-Tan_Disco-as-Operating-System_Criticism_2008.pdf Disco as Operating System, Part One]. Criticism 50, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 83–100.
• [https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2009/06/tan-lin-plagiarism-response-to-thomas.html PLAGIARISM: A response to Thomas Fink]. Otoliths (June 2009).{{Cite web|title = Electronic Poetry Center|url = http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/lin/|website = epc.buffalo.edu|accessdate = 2015-10-05}}
• [https://aphasic-letters.com/heath/Lin_Soft-Index_Boundary-2_2009.pdf SOFT INDEX (OF repeating PLACES, PEOPLE, AND WORKS)]. boundary 2 36, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 235–240.
• Architecture Is Tomorrow Morning. Harvard Design Magazine, no. 38 (Spring/Summer 2014).
• [https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/criticism.56.3.0481 Disco, Cybernetics, and the Migration of Warhol’s Shadows into Computation]. Criticism 56, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 481–524.
• [https://brooklynrail.org/2016/04/fiction/a-false-accounting A False Accounting]. Brooklyn Rail (April 2016).
• [https://www.artswriters.org/downloads/AWG-COOKIE-JAR-1_LIN-TAN.pdf The Fern Rose Bibliography]. New York: The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, 2022.

• Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe (Sun and Moon Press, 1996)
• BlipSoak01 (Atelos Press, 2003)
• ambience is a novel with logo, (Katalance Press, 2007)
• Kruder & Dorfmeister (with M. E. Carroll) (Centro Cultural Montehermoso, 2007)
• HEATH (Plagiarism/Outsource) (Zaesterle Press, 2007)
• [https://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_018_Lin_BIB.pdf BIB.] (ubu editions, 2007)
• 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004: The Joy of Cooking (Wesleyan University Press, 2010)
• Blurb (Edit Publications, 2010)
• Purple/Pink Appendix, (Edit Publications, 2010)
• Bib., Rev. Ed. (Westphalie Verlag, 2011)
• Insomnia and the Aunt (Kenning Editions, 2011)
• [https://canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/the_patio_and_the_index the patio and the index] (Triple Canopy, 2011)
• Heath Course Pak (Counterpath Press, 2012)
• An Annotated Index to the Photographic Work of Diana Kingsley with Anecdotes and Emendations by M. Moore and E. Dickinson (Convolution No. 2, 2013)

• Automasters, 1999
• Poetry Plastique, 2001
• Between Language and Form, 2002
• 27 Merging Artists, 2002
• One Place and the Other, 2002
• Code Residue, 2005
• The Baghdad Batteries, 2010
• The Evryali Score, 2010

• Itinerant Gastronomy, 1996
• The Echo Variations, The Edge of Summer Cleans Autumn, 1998
• Cleveland Public Library Project, 1998
• "Flatness", 2001
• Input, 2004
• Chinese Chalk in a Parking Lot, 2009
• TwitterChalk, 2009

• Calendar the Siamese, 1996
• Poetry in Uniforms, 1996
• Dub Version, 2002
• Eleven Minute Painting, Reading Module v. 01, 2002
• Poni Hoax, 2005
• Disco Eats Itself, 2007

• Danforth Foundation Nominee, 1979
• Mademoiselle Poetry Prize, 1979
• Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Poetry, 1984 and 1986
• Bennett Cerf Award, Columbia University, 1985
• Van Rensselaer Award for Poetry, 1986
• Academy of American Poets Honorable Mention, Columbia University, 1987
• President's Fellow, Columbia University, 1990
• The Pushcart Prizes, Honorable Mention for Fiction, 2004
• J. Paul Getty Visiting Scholar Fellowship, The Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2004
• Asian American Arts Alliance Urban Artist/Initiative/NYC Grant, 2006–2007
• Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writing Grant, 2006–2007{{Cite web |last=Lin |first=Tan |date= |title=Tan Anthony Lin CV |url=http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/lin/Lin-Tan_CV.pdf |accessdate=2015-10-12 |website= |publisher=}}
• Association for American Studies Award for Poetry/Literature, 2010
• Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant for Poetry, 2012
• Creative Capital Award, 2022{{cite web | url=https://creative-capital.org/award/awardees/2022/ | title=Award Year 2022 }}

{{Reflist}}

• Aarhus, Mathies G. "Relaxing the Avant-Garde: Tan Lin and the Language-Oriented Tradition." symplokē 24, no. 1–2 (2016): 293–307.
• Golding, Alan. "Reading, the Academy, and the 'Soft' Avant-Garde: Tan Lin's HEATH and HEATH COURSE PAK." Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics 44 (2017): 47–55.
• Kim, Irene. "On Ambience, Tan Lin, and American Minimalism." Post45, April 27, 2023. https://post45.org/2023/04/on-ambience-tan-lin-and-american-minimalism/.
• Scappettone, Jennifer. "Versus Seamlessness: Architectonics of Pseudocomplicity in Tan Lin’s Ambient Poetics." boundary 2 36, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 63–76.
• Soong, Jennifer. Ed. Post 45 Cluster on Tan Lin. https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/tan-lin/

• [https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/lin/ Tan Lin's Electronic Poetry Center author profile]

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Category:1954 births

Category:Living people

Category:Writers from Seattle

Category:Carleton College alumni

Category:Brooklyn College faculty