From 11 to 13 June 2026, the workshop “spawn.agency(): Spielarten und Praktiken digitaler Literatur” (“spawn.agency(): Forms and Practices of Digital Literature”) is taking place. The workshop is a meeting of the DFG network “Wissen der digitalen Literatur” (“Knowledge of Digital Literature”) and is organised in cooperation with “Burg Hülshoff – Center for Literature” and the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”.

Scientific organisation: Annette Gilbert

Organisation team: Hannes Bajohr, Jenifer Becker, Jenni Bohn, Andreas Bülhoff, Jan Distelmeyer, Astrid Ensslin, Moritz Hiller

Venue: Münster und Havixbeck

Registration: Prof. Dr. Annette Gilbert (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Dept. Germanistik & Komparatistik), annette.gilbert@fau.de. The programme on Thursday and Friday morning is open to the public. We will be happy to send you the login details for the digital keynote on request. Places on the workshop on Saturday morning are strictly limited. If you are interested in attending, please get in touch with us.

Further information on the DFG network “Wissen der digitalen Literatur” can be found here (in German).

Digital literature does not merely emerge ‘within’ technical environments, but ‘alongside’ them: through scripts and interfaces, through machine learning processes, or through generative modelling techniques. Within these frameworks, texts, codes, models, authors, interfaces and infrastructures interact as heterogeneous actors, whose contributions can rarely be clearly distinguished from one another. Agency appears to be distributed, situational and relational: It emerges from the interplay of aesthetic decisions, technical tools, data-driven processes and social practices. This also includes the specific problem constellations of today’s model and platform ecologies – such as algorithmic selection mechanisms, pre-embedded data regimes, bias and opacity – which help shape the conditions of literary production without fully determining them. Digital literature is thus not merely a field in which a wide variety of technical operational chains exert an aesthetic influence, but a space in which epistemic forms coalesce: in collaborative negotiations as well as in the respective affordances and historical conditions of its software.

The second meeting of the DFG network “The Knowledge of Digital Literature”, entitled “spawn.agency(): Spielarten und Praktiken digitaler Literatur” (“spawn.agency(): Forms and Practices of Digital Literature”), explores how knowledge is formed, distributed and made visible within these practices. The focus is on curated constellations of authors and researchers. In joint presentations, three tandems will explore what digital literature “knows” – be it in the form of poetic experiments, analytical interventions or performative engagements with code, so-called generative AI and interfaces. Building on these encounters, we will examine how aesthetic and technical processes intertwine, how digital literature responds to media-historical conditions, and how it itself generates new epistemic constellations.

A keynote by N. Katherine Hayles will expand the discussion on “agency” within the tension between technology, culture and politics.

The meeting will adopt open, dialogical and workshop-oriented formats. It thus ties in with the network’s objective of understanding digital literature not merely as a subject of research, but as an epistemic practice whose aesthetic, technical and social dynamics can only be unravelled in collaboration with those who shape them.

Thursday, 11 June 2026

Venue: Haus Rüschhaus, Am Rüschhaus 81, 48161 Münster

4 pm (not public)
Greeting & reports from the working groups

5 pm
Short break

5:30 pm (digital, in English)
Keynote: Literary Theory of Mind and LLM Fictions: Implications for Awareness
N. Katherine Hayles (Chair: Hannes Bajohr)

6:30
Break with snacks

7:30 Uhr (German, free tickets hier)
Lecture Performance & Gespräch: ​Schreiben zwischen Interfaces, Code & KI
With Josefine Soppa + Jenifer Becker, Dîlan Canan Çakir + Katharina Nejdl, Qianxun Chen + Andreas Bülhoff (Chair: Hannes Bajohr)

Friday, 12 June 2026

Venue: Burg Hülshoff, Schonebeck 6, 48329 Havixbeck

10 am
Arrival

10:15 am
Diskussion der Pairings von Schreiben zwischen Interfaces, Code & KI
With Jennifer Becker, Andreas Bülhoff, Dîlan Canan Çakir, Qianxun Chen and Katharina Nejdl (Chair: Jan Distelmeyer)

12 am
Canon Surf Sessions with discussion (German)
Bookish play und literarisches Spiel in digitalen Medien
Astrid Ensslin
Counterfactual Agents: Inszenierung von KI als Autor:innen
Hannes Bajohr

1 pm
Lunch & walk in the park

2:30 pm (not public)
Workshop: Kollaborative Workflows
Brendan Howell (Chair: Jenni Bohn and Moritz Hiller)

4:00 pm
Coffee break

4:30 pm (not public)
Workshop: Kollaborative Workflows
Brendan Howell (Chair: Jenni Bohn and Moritz Hiller)

5:30
End

8 pm
Joint dinner in Münster (self-pay)

Saturday, 13 June 2026

Venue: University of Münster, Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”, Philosophikum, room 201, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster

10 am (only after registration)
Workshop: Conditions for Emotions
Ting-Chun Liu (Moderation: Mattis Kuhn)

1 pm
lunch

1:45 pm (not public)
Discussion and planning of future steps of the network

3:30 pm
End