Issue 1 - July 1995
Publisher: CI Acad. Poet. Aeth.
Editor: J. Lehmus
Stenbocksv. 24, 02860 Esbo, Finland
Tel./Fax. 358 0 86 85 85
Copyright (c) 1995 by J. Lehmus. All individual works Copyright (c) 1995 by their respective authors. All further rights to works belong to the authors and revert to the authors on publication.
GLOSSOLALIA is published electronically on bi-monthly basis.
GLOSSOLALIA is distributed on-diskette by the editor. Copies of the journal on IBM PC 3" diskette can be obtained by sending US$2 to the editorial address.
Reproduction of any complete issue of this publication is permitted. Complete issues of this publication may be downloaded, duplicated and distributed free of charge.
Authors hold a presumptive copyright and they should be contacted directly for permission to reprint individual pieces.
The contributors assume all responsibility for ensuring that the submitted material does not violate copyright conventions.
TWO POEMS by Patrick Mullins
THREE POEMS by Spencer Selby
TYPE WRITER OCCURRING by Geof Huth
CODEX by J. Lehmus
LANGUAGES IN UNSTRUCTURED ENVIRONMENTS by HAIKUS
TWO POEMS by Stephen Thorne
VIRPO: TO THE FUTURE OR BEYOND by John E. Fowler
AMPLIFIED ART by Paolo Barrile
THESES ON THE THEORY OF REPETITION by Miklós Erdély
LATINOAMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL POETRY by Clemente Padín
TRUER THAN NATURE by Pierre Restany
HIROSHIMA SHADOW PROJECT 1988 by Ruggero Maggi
ABOUT MY STUDIO AND AMAZON ARCHIVE by Ruggero Maggi
CHAOTIC ART by Ruggero Maggi
RECEIVED PUBLICATIONS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
THE IRRATIONALIST MANIFESTO
BRIO CELL: VISUAL AND EXPERIMENTAL POETRY PORTFOLIO PROJECT
This is the first issue of GLOSSOLALIA, Electronic Journal for Experimental Arts.
This publication is based on an idea of creative collaboration and communication, exchange of materials and information.
Part of this first issue was initially incorporated in an electronic publication called LINGUA BLANCA, which was produced in October 1994. I left it undistributed due to obstacles with the computer equipment I was using at that time.
GLOSSOLALIA is presently available in three versions:
GLOS_.TXT - Version in plain ASCII text.
GLOS_.WRI - Version readable on Windows Write 3.1.
GLOS_.HTM -- HTMLized version readable on a WWW browser.
Also, a brief summary of each issue will be available on paper.
Submissions are very welcome. Material should be submitted either on paper or as text or graphics files on IBM PC 3" diskette and sent by post to the editorial address. Presently I do not have a scanner, but am intending to buy one, so the future issues will probably include more graphics.
I will continue to publish here in electronic form interesting materials that have accumulated in my archives through my correspondence art projects.
If you can help with electronic distribution of this publication, please contact me.
Editor
Esbo, 3 July 1995
CHAOTIC ART, essays by Ruggero Maggi and Pierre Restany are available as a booklet from the editorial address.
RECEIVED PUBLICATIONS reviewed by J. Lehmus.
Anyone can become a CI member. There is no membership fee, nor do you need to match any special qualifications. If interested in signing as a member, send an inquiry requiring a notification of membership to the editorial address. All members receive annual documentation.
in•for•ma•tion
... n. 6. (in communication theory) an indication of the number of possible choices of messages, expressible as the value of some monotonic function of the number of choices, usually log to the base 2. 7. Computer Technol. any data that can be coded for processing by a computer or similar device {also in a biological sense}. [ME: a forming of the mind < ML, L: idea, conception]
by Patrick Mullins
plot historical
number turns
reduced features
combine mirror
move differential
conclusion static
inches values
*****
representing
the again
simplest
forget then
graphs
by Geof Huth from the work of J. Lehmus
Squatting on the floor of the workroom, he ponders over the reached upon typewriter. A voice offstage appears.
She: He cannot write.
Unable to speak, several moments later he exits.
She: A map of the human soul can be depicted as two open palms, every voyage mapped out beforehand, each a choice between two.
He returns, thinking, his hands pressed against his forehead.
He: The soul can express itself only in fragments, the rewind of time.
She: Language is his habitat and apparel. When visions emanate from him, he reads them. Others see these and run from the closing of the room.
He exits again, slowly revolving around his umbrella.
Chorus: Perplex, perplex, perplex. Our little child can't genuflect.
She: Both in fright and personality, he churns forth nothing.
He returns wearing a cloak festooned with letters, Roman, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic. He flutters the cloak about him.
He: I cannot read this that I write, that this you wrote.
Chorus: Bound into this heavy book, one sullen thought beyond thought.
She: He cannot write or speak or read: every thought of him, my thought; every move of him, my plan.
He: I can speak so too. My write is not wronged. My make is but done.
She appears onstage, wrapped in burlap, arms obscured, moving slowly, deliberately.
She: You boast of empty, once occurred. You child of want are broke for ideas.
Chorus: But for the known of it, but for the make of it, how it be done, how it be done.
He crawls to the typewriter, when he begins hitting carefully the keys, trying to open his mind.
He: One little word to the page, two little words. The little word and end little word. There. Done.
Exeunt omnes.
14 June 1993, Rotterdam, NY
by J. Lehmus
THE RUBY ROSE cinnabar celestial inscriptions presented to prevail over the entire belief, the system, to convert the equilibrated angels translustred with new protean germs and shifting countenance of Retronaissance. The large estaten red rubric text still exists here, to be found in this settlement, perhaps the most significant protoellips earth MS., although indescribably distorted due to principled free mediocrity: GEM lustre shred through these meteor eyes, distorted jewels to believe hither unfolding page elementals in transmutation and the traditional lower men one-of-eye to redeem the world, menace of foil. To branch due to these necessities, two-ways in the very roots to respond the most unquestionable/infinitely difficult [problem] to evade. The sons of the Muses penetrate this preserved text with such corrector renewing the original script in its riddle layered, rigidified with the Numbers in limited copies interlocking,
the scribes following the eye scheme, philosophy returning in this vessel spears hand and feet to Codex Argenteus: the history of the world a source text, this was translated into a master Formula. The entire volume of text is painted in silver letters, once more scraped, executed with dim stigma eyes on both sides, dual. The King's son; illustrating the manuscript, the text alterations, stereography, errata, life in the temple, to release the measure of three fourths following to succumb under Poet's Spell. The multitude to wonder under its light, the passages of this story, the Lamb with "minimal changes" (the growing of Tail). Heresy searching weapons. After the storm the son retired outside the narrow portals, enormous walls surrounding these cities. [ ... ] in a humid coffin, decaying fabric, there surrounded by the miscreant prophets, the baptism and the right hand mount. New earth. The oracles living to partake of the glory: the position suggests new methods of lettering, copyright, developed liberally from the tradition and meaning of these oracles. (Was a direct result of or were a direct result of/been a direct result of, broke out/broken out, came about/come about, ensued, followed, happened, resulted) ... is confused upon some other author's notes, fused gruesomely with text from lectionaries and old translations from lower old Earth, the titles of which can't possibly be named in here. "I am coming," order, very strange, deletions in Codex Angelicus, one of a very premature species: quid facerem? Their roles changed, the very fragments of his letters, revelations in miniatures. The Bride Without a Living Spirit, bear with no meaning the ring for this Princess, the clay stories in another meaning, sur-real dependency, Proclivi lectione priestat ardua, the pedestal, Nude woman, genet, the Virgin and the angels around her in semi-uncials, this text was lost in later Centuries; thus the changes are coming back in the circle, destruct gyrans, in pictorial language. Reception in text critique. Cornerstones in Latin with younger notes in high quantities, the maternal text compiled from 23 manuscripts by his finer cavillers. With twenty men to assemble the text, deletion in groups, objects of an uniform essence to extract the clarity, the logical study and craft description were removed in consensus. He lives by the sea. This old red land under the vast sky. The King is sealed with his occupied theory and unsolved problems. He is very industrious in his methods, reading vigorously. My brother's speech [ ... ] is reading the [ ... ] I type, his rapid development [ ... ] of an exploded view [ ... ] is better than mine, but my sister's is still better than his. Connected writing material, I had written a curriculum on a piece of paper, martyrs classified after sex, age, and the place of birth; following two hundred authors, with all things my brother required. I produced the list out on my coming forth this day, sketches very narrowed, mysteries through the motif, placed it upon the table. The exceptions were the first figure, and the third figure. Red, with golden letters ... accustomed with the Greek text, mother's tongue, parallels with the present translation; signs of this union, with palimpsest techniques of the forgery removers of text (in Catherine's way of reading, her cloven tongue like an adder's... She knew no other way. Desperate to "make it" in films, the beautiful Catherine agrees to take part in a blue movie. She has never been with another woman or another man. Soon there are six naked bodies around and the one nearest her has a silver tongue. They regale in an orgy, explore each other using fingers and tongues, leading to a raging climax.), erasing words from the parchment by means of water and metal knives. Rescript codices of the King...
Esbo IX.94 [corrected May 1995]
by HAIKUS
NO REPRESSIVE PRORESEARCH INFOPROGRAMMES COMPUDEATH DESVIRTUAL ASOCIAL SHARE-CONSUMER DEATHRONIK EXTREME ACCESS PROCESSORS ACCESS NATURAL LANGUAGES INVERTED INTEGRATION A UTILIZA-ORGANIZATION JOINT FOR BIOTECHN COMMUNICATION OF SETTINGS IN INFO-ELECTRONIC DIVERSIFICATION CO-SYSTEM METHOD C H O O S E T O D E C O Y THE COOL PORTABLE CHILDREN *CHOOSE TO DECOY* CONTACT IS LIKE TICKET ENJOY EVOLUTION NOT PLACE
H A I K U S i n d i v i d u a l i n f o r m a t i o n
PRUF-A MEANING REPRESENTATION LANGUAGE FOR NATURAL LANGUAGES Zadech, L.A.(1973)
HAIKUS. Early discussion had a dual focus. Firstly, there were the political/social issues these new communications media were bringing to the fore. CleveNode express our concerns: How is a non-hierarchical system of free information exchange to be maintained in the face of profit and politics? Does the net challenge or reinforce first-world cultural dominance? Is an "information ‚lite" developing? Whose rules run the "global village?" How do multiple media translations effect information?
MOBILE BOBOTS. APPLICATIONS TO THE CMU NAVLAB. ROBOTS IN UNSTRUCTURED ENVIRONMENTS.
by Stephen Thorne
Remoteness is in the heart ,chicanery remembering upon a gun that can kill a man from a mile off with pin-point accuracy.
Shelter is all in the mind ,trans
apparent to the carrying on and if that one bullet flicks a piece of brain off
-que sera sera
*****
time cannot afraid sometimes be alonewhen we are can we it's mistakes upon theemptiness hear
by John EZRA Fowler
I hereby declare the creation of VIRPO, chain tape lit aural vis text analog digital mag of initial virtual potential magnitude the form of which is determined by its contributors under the following General Provisos:
I Do not hold up the process.
b. Any contributor may add to, alter, manipulate, or mutilate any or all of the material in whatever for that they receive it in with, hopefully the courtesy of a credit to the fore-contributor(s).
c. Any contributor may provide additional aural, textual or visual material in any format or form.
II Any/everyone is free to do what they want with what they receive, including nothing, except that they MUST pass it on
b. VIRPO will circulate until finished.
c. You may choose to not receive it again by saying so in writing.
III This is Issue #1 beginning here and now with the first contribution which you can do with what you want, except that:
b. Who is the next person?
1. For Issue #1 (at this point) 1) Ezra 2) Ficus 3) John M. Bennett 4) Richard Kostelanetz 5) Bill Paulauskas 6) Ezra (addresses attached)
2. Any contributor may include as much as they *or anyone they designate does* during their 30 day "contribution period," so long as they pass it all on within no more than 30 days.
IV The key constraint is that each contributor must accept the fact that their contribution may/will be (perhaps) changed beyond belief and/or recognizability without their guidance, influence, suggestion or control. If you do not subscribe to this philosophy and that of VIII (below), kindly add a statement to that effect and pass it on.
V Commentary, criticism, and other forms of discussion about works, philosophy, theory etc. may be added as appendices but not as part of the main text. Original contributions, manipulations and interaction please.
VI No collaboration among contributors. No restrictions on how or to what extent or in what way your contribution may be "used." No guidance, "Do this; Do that." No subscriptions.
VII Issue #1 is dedicated to Medea.
VIII Copyright is a concept that lies outside the scope of VIRPO. By making a contribution to VIRPO the contributor acknowledges this fact and gives up any claim to copyright to contributed material and releases any and all future "users" of their material from all liability regarding copyright infringement.
IX Any contributor owns no part of any issue or any "state" of any issue, not even of their own part in whatever state or part. Any contributor, or anyone else, may reproduce and distribute copies of any issue in any state at will. Once a contribution is made it belongs to no one and to all contributors or members of the audience to use in whatever way they can.
X Any contributor may start another issue to a different, or to members of the existing list, but hopefully, if at all possible, they will keep all previous list members informed.
XI Because we are consigning our precious work to the will, whim, good or bad taste, skill and talent of others does not mean we do not care what happens of that we do not want to know. Even though we are giving it away, we would like to get it back, wouldn't you?
XI Additional articles may be added to this original List of Provisos by anyone who chooses to but none may be deleted by anyone.
b. Suggestions may or may not be adopted by contributors.
b. When and if an Issue is ever finished, the "original," the "materials," will be disposed of in a manner that will be mutually and equally beneficial to all contributors, i.e., it may be archived, exhibited, published, auctioned, or sold my mutual consent of all contributors. Although it would be unlikely that any of the above would occur because there would never have been a complete "copy" or "authoritative edition" since so many versions would be assumed to exist or have existed. (see Proviso X)
c. Each "state" of VIRPO is unique and therefore of infinite or of no value and may be destroyed, mutilated or enhanced by the next contributor. Unless everyone makes a copy or copies of what they receive as well as of what they pass on, no previous states will exist. But it is not suggested that they do.
Long live VIRPO!
by Paolo Barrile
The new artist is born. It is the artist who expresses himself through the actions, behaviours, participation and works of other artists.
The "new" artist conceives a project, he announces it, he "proposes" it explaining to other artists its meaning and aims. If they are tuned in to the new artist's thought and objectives, the other artists act.
The "new" work of art -- which will be exhibited, criticized and commercialized -- is the whole project, consisting of dozens or hundreds of works and/or actions of dozens or hundreds of artists.
Amplified art is -- or can be -- "global art" because artists from the remotest Countries can participate in any project.
This is made possible by mail art.
Apart from the technical ability and adequate competence of participants, a successful project requires the artists to be deeply involved from the point of view of ideology and of the new artist's pivotal idea. The idea must be valid, it must be able to kindle enthusiasm and to motivate artists to participate.
In the past, the artist expressed himself by means of colours, clay, marble. Today, the "new" artist's media are the other artists.
In conclusion, amplified art enables "new" artist to abandon his traditional working tools and adopt other means of expression. The "new" artist conceives a project and, in order to carry it out, he stimulates and involves hundreds of other artists.
Amplified art is very often global art.
As far as my own work is concerned, I should mention the
project/research "The picture concept"? of 1975, which was
exhibited at the Triade in Turin in 1976, as well as the initial
Message Earth actions, when, using the most diverse means, I
asked people to bring me 1 kg of earth from a Country in the
World. Apart from these activities, I have carried out the
following amplified art actions:
1977 - First "Earth transport" operation. I sent 50 g. of virgin earth collected by 19 artists in 19 different places to 19 other artists in 15 Italian towns. I asked them to scatter it on the asphyctic earth of a garden or a flower-bed in their own town. The action was only partially successful because only one artist did what I had suggested. The others preferred to keep the wax-sealed bag containing a nice red or yellow earth and the envelope with the postal cancellation as a fetish.
1979 - "For a greener and more human future." I sent 200 oak and horse-chestnut acorns (plus the relative instructions) to 37 children and young married couples and to five school-classes, asking them to plant them out in an uncultivated land. This action led to the celebration of a "green week" at the Scuola Media Artiaco in Pozzuoli. The headmaster and the professors talked about the usefulness and importance of trees in front of all classes gathered together. The acorns were then planted out in an open space.
1982 - Second "Earth transport" operation. I sent paleosols from Altavilla Vincentina to 152 artists in 36 different Countries, asking them to scatter them on polluted ground or water. Having learned from the previous experience, this time I sent "two" bags full of earth. 21 artists in Italy, France, East Germany, West Germany, the USA, the USSR, Rumania, Holland and Czechoslovakia followed my advice.
1990 - "Message Earth 90." 92 artists collected earth in 56 Countries all over the world and applied it on a card.
1991 - "Message Earth 92". "The Plastic Age." A proposal by 77 artists from 26 different Countries for the Archaeology of the Future. Exhibitions on this project and the one above are presently taking place.
1992 - "Message Earth 93." "Club of those who defecate in the open." (In order to restore the biological cycle.) Artists are requested to indicate the precise spot where they have defecated in the open on an enclosed world map. When all maps are superimposed, I hope to cover the whole planet (with dots). This action is in progress. The deadline is 31st August 1993. These three actions will be dealt with in the book "EARTH AGE, PLASTIC AGE, ... AGE" which will be published in 1994.
1992 - "Piero Manzoni's infinite line" (with Ruggero Maggi). Artists from all over the world are sending their lines which will then be assembled on the wall one after the other at the Milan Art Center in Milan and then exhibited on 6th February 1993. After this, fragments of these lines will be sent back to the artists along with the stickers representing the logo to be stuck on every means of transport. In this way, the (finite) line assembled by the artists will become infinite in space and time, as Piero Manzoni had imagined.
Milan, March 1992
by Miklós Erdély
1. The unique is devaluated by repetition, with its concrete existence increasing and its essential existence decreasing.
2. Only what is repeated is manifested; only what is repeated is non-existent.
3. The non-existent is sensed by referring to memory.
4. What is born, created or changing, is manifested in repetition, it also dies in repetition.
5. In the turmoil of creation the same can never be achieved twice.
6. Creation accumulates imperceivably, and manifests itself suddenly.
7. The absolute new is unrecognizable, imperceivable, and thus it cannot manifest itself.
8. In the process of representation the thing represented suffers substantial mutilation. This constitutes the fallacy of traditional art, which originally formed the means of magical engagement with the forces of evil and destruction. The representation is partial, since the represented is not reproduced in its own material, thus equally partial is the elimination of the represented. This constitutes the limitation of the magical representation.
9. The perfect copy of the accidental reduces the feeling of the accidental.
10. The existence of human duplicates, twins, is a depressing nonsense and a metaphysical scandal for the individual consciousness, because it increases the feeling of the accidental. (1)
11. The psychological duplicate (déjà-vu) enhances self-awareness by emphasizing the uniqueness of the Self in complete repetition.
12. By moulding matter, which otherwise would be formed accidentally or according to its own structural properties, into identical forms, serial production protects the consciousness from a feeling of alienation with respect to the natural environment, at the same time ushering it towards the general through the avoidance of the "common."
13. Since man can stand neither the catalepsy of total identification nor the dizziness of continuous change and diversity, he regards the sphere of resemblances and analogies, rhytmical changes and dialectial periods as his own. He looks for the same in the different, and the different in the identical. The man of intellect, however, can only recognize himself in total change.
_____
(1) In the words of Ms. X. Y.: "I do not represent my twin
sister."
1973. Translated by Zsuzsa Gábor
by Clemente Padín
Visual poetry, a synthesis of centuries of poetic experimentation (recall the poems of Simias of Rhodes and Theocritus of Syracuse, around 300 A.D.), reaches an unusual point of development in the beginning of the 1950's. At that point we see its "expressionist" bent, which derives directly from French Lettrism and, prior, from the "words of liberty" of the futurist Marinetti; as well, there is the "concretist" bent, derived from the visual concretism of the School of Ulm (Max Bill) and, earlier, from the abstract-geometric movement De Stijl, above all, Mondrian.
Much freer and less preoccupied with structure, the first tendency in many cases downplays the very semanticity of language, arriving at a sole privileging of the plasticity of the minimal units, that is to say, letters. The second tendency is much more rigorous, above all in its first stage; it causes space and verbality to coincide in a unique structure of semantic interrelation. Only with the appearance of the semiotic poem could words be substituted by forms, but mediated by lexical keys. Then the Process/poem movement (1968) totally liquidated this dependency. In this formal aspect, visual poetry, stemming from Lettrism, had already freed itself of signification, although in general the forms it utilized were letters next to other visual elements.
In Latin America these currents are consolidated around 1968 with the first exhibitions of "New Poetry" (thus was named visual poetry at that time) organized by Edgardo Antonio Vigo in Argentina and by Clemente Padín in Uruguay, and above all by the network of alternative magazines of the time: Diagonal Cero and Hexàgono 71 published by Vigo in Argentina; Signos by Samuel Feijóo in Cuba; La Pata de Palo published by D maso Ogaz in Venezuela; Ediciones Mimbre in Chile by the graphic artist Guillermo Deisler; Ponto, Totem, and Processo published by Joaquim Branco and Wlademir Dias-Pino in Brazil; and Los Huevos del Plata and OVUM 10 published by Clemente Pad¡n in Uruguay. Today, at the beginning of the 1990's, the theme has been reborn, above all furthered by the Mexican poets of the Núcleo Post-Arte group, coordinated by César Espinosa, who have already sponsored two International Biennals of Visual and Experimental Poetry (1985/86 and 1987/88), and by the movement that is being pushed forward by the poet Philadelpho Menezes in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who has organized the first International Show of Visual Poetry in 1988, together with a significant symposium which brought together the most important creators and critics in this medium from all over the world.
Perhaps the major characterization of visual poetry we owe to the Uruguayan critic and poet Nicteroi Arga~az, who, in his book Uruguayan Visual Poetry (Montevideo: 1986), says, "... visual poetry is poetry to be seen ... This type of poetry incorporates a series of elements (visual) external to those canons of traditional poetry and proper to other expressive forms. It is not limited only to the verbal, and, in this sense, it represents an extension of the possibilities of traditional poetry ... Visual poetry experiments in diverse levels with the relations among words and images and bases its results on an unique context. For this reason, its grammar (in the structural sense) is not exclusively verbal nor exclusively visual, but is inter-semiotic." It is precisely this "inter-semioticity" which relates visual poetry to proposals of the Conceptualist movement that created a multiple space in which languages give up being privileged one over the others (the "intermedia" of Fluxus art or the "multimedia" defined by the North American critic and poet Dick Higgins). This de-hierarchization of the languages reflects the clearly democratic and participatory sense of the new poetic tendencies. Art (in this case "literary" or "experimental-poetic") stops being a passive mirror in which are reflected the social relations privileging the old primacies of one language over others or the concepts of "good/bad" or their derivative "beautiful/ugly," which reproduce the relations of the social sphere by allowing someone or some institution to exercise the cultural "dictate" in one more manifestation of ideological repression.
Thus, the spectator or "reader" of visual poetry is in a situation of genuine relationship with the work through his knowledge and through the elements that this contributes, making real his option to decide whether or not it has living value for him, without preestablished judgements or impositions of any kind. This attitude of poetic experimentalism has generated new languages, valuable and genuine in themselves, which are related to the rest of the creative processes that Conceptualism ushered in: performance, video, installations, mail art, street actions, etc. (expressions in which it is not unusual to find visual poems). At the same time, on encouraging the spectator to discover the information for himself, participation was offered, which did away with the paternalism of the "unique genius" creator, expression of the domination of some by others.
For the Process/Poem artists, the visual poem is "an (anti-) literary product that avails itself of the graphic (typographic) and/or purely visual resources of calligrammatic, ideogrammatic, geometric, or abstract tendencies ... [the visual poem is] one of the most fruitful forms of artistic experimentation whose graphic-visual possibilities do not exclude other literary possibilities (verbal, sound, etc.) in the specific field of avant-garde." (Moacy Cirne). The visual poem is a critical, productive consequence of the development of the literary (or anti-literary) avant-garde in the heart of the social practice of art and of language in general; that is, it is not an entity floating in space, nor an entelechy, but a product founded in the real and in the social-historic. The same dynamism of the diverse currents already indicated -- as much those emerging from the historical avant-gardes of the beginnings of the century as those closer to Conceptualism -- has generated a great variety of forms that take advantage of the most obscure channels. For the last tendency, that is, for those artists preoccupied with making precise the concept of a total (or almost total) disconnection of the work in relation to the object, directed more towards privileging the "situation" (we recall the "Theory of the non-object" of Ferreira Gullar) over the "material," of a Duchampian origin -- the desacralization of art via the ready-made -- visual poetry is an ideal means for the pursuit of its postulates, above all of its signifiers, that is, the graphic, sonorous, or situational element that (whether free or not from the social-semantic convention) is erected in response to the artistic fact. This of course implies "facts" or "events" developed in time, and of course therefore they are fallible, neither definitive nor eternal, modified by reality's dynamic changes.
The artistic avant-garde is necessarily experimental with respect to language. That is, such works would not be avant-garde if they did not establish radical writing or discourse projects impelled by the search for and production of new information. The theme of the avant-garde is based on laying out problems, not their solution. This has nothing to do with manipulating the signs of the repertory itself of each language in what would amount to a redundancy of already known solutions -- the pointless exercise of imitative virtuosity. Rather, it has to do with generating information that problematizes other languages, putting them in question, obliging them to remake their structures in the light of the process that information brings forth. These reaccomodations of the distinct repertories -- not only artistic but social -- in turn will generate new projects and questioning that will modify that information, leading to new advances in knowledge.
1990. Translated by Harry Polkinhorn
by Pierre Restany
Ruggero Maggi is defined as an outsider and, maybe this word can give the most correct meaning to this operational marginality.
Since the beginning of the Seventies, Ruggero Maggi has begun a research, apparently eclectic, but as a fact, wholly supported by an inner logic and by a vision of perfect and total continuity.
Ruggero Maggi's work is of linguistic nature. His works come from a research on language based on an elementary and primary dialectic. His language combines high technology elements with primary and elementary materials, primitiveness with sophistication. Cement, wood, pictures, holograms, neon lamps, paintings, sculptures, installations, performances.
Ruggero Maggi's work is tied to an ethical approach to language. His universe is the morality universe. The working ground of his linguistic activity is the world of the philosophy of action.
Certainly, speaking about the artist as a moral being does not mean to consider him as a moralist. Ruggero's morality is the morality of human action, i.e. the morality of the human being in action. The linguistic approach to the artistic world of morality implies a generous vision of Man. We could even speak of Humanism.
Speaking about the artist as a humanist, nowadays, in a wholly industrial society and through the analytic paradigm of the post-modern condition, gets a meaning wholly different from that one of scholastic tradition. Maggi's humanism is directed to the image and measure of his own humanity. It is not by chance that, from Hiroshima to the Amazon, the artist has coped with the innermost destiny of Man, his role and his function on our planet.
Maggi's work is an everlasting struggle against human injustice. His structural dimension is represented by the truth. The artist, at the beginning of his commitment, accepts a fundamental challenge: the revolution of the Truth!
Truth is the fundamental criterion of Maggi's aesthetics. Truth substitutes beauty, the concept of beauty of the traditional canons of art. Substituting truth for beauty implies a revolutionary conception of truth, and the artist's truth certainly is not the product of the inescapable observations of evidence. Maggi's truth is a system of appearances. If truth is formed by appearances, this true reality cannot be represented. In fact the whole of Maggi's work is a display of truth and not a representation.
The passage from representation to display of truth informs the rhythm and essential structure of language. The display of truth in reality is not perceived by the Man if this truth is limited to its own being. In order to get the aesthetic truth, to get the fundamental criterion of the artistic language it is necessary to present it as truer than Nature. And it is exactly in this expressive addition where lies the key for reading Maggi's art.
To express truth as truer than Nature means to engage oneself to give to human action its intrinsic dynamics of moral motivation. The more truth is perceived as such, the more we are in the universe of an active aesthetics, an operational aesthetics, capable of creating the elements of an harmonic sensibility.
Right this sense of truth finds its basis in the great question of the moment, in the great challenge to taste and sensibility. We are in a post-industrial society, and therefore in a society which has not gone beyond the industrial stage, but is wholly saturated with machines. In this society it becomes necessary to re-create the relationship between Man and machine, and today this machine is the computer. To re-define this relationship implies the creation of right and true conditions of a dialogue between two types of intelligence: artificial and human. And it's in the core of this dialogue where Maggi's linguistic research is inserted.
This is the reason why his research is true, and truer than Nature. Without this supplement of soul, truth itself would be no longer credible.
by Ruggero Maggi
Almost one year was spent from when I spoke with some Japanese friends and artists: Fukushi Ito and Masataka Kubota of the Group SOU about my idea to realize the Shadow project in the same town of Hiroshima.
Finally I received the first of a series of letters of various Japanese artistic pacifist organizations. In these letters we began to determine the necessary arrangements for the project. Shozo Shimamoto, Japanese artist, director of Group AU, but, more important thing, great friend of mine, put me in contact with the Group Art Week of Hiroshima. I met the director of this Group, Ishimaru Toshimichi in Hiroshima at the 1st of August for an International Mail Art Symposium, to which I participated and with him I discussed the last details.
The Hiroshima Authorities were informed about the Project by articles published on Japanese newspapers before the realization of the initiative. They called Ishimaru and began to raise objections to concede the necessary permission: one of the motivations for the eventual denial was the fact that, for them, the Hiroshima people wanted to forget what had happened 43 years ago.
Sometimes to sink into oblivion, especially if they are dramatic memories, is almost necessary, but unfortunately it can become also dangerous.
In each town where I have realized before the Shadow Project the people has been impressed by the dramatic situations which were created from time to time.
Imagine for a moment the effect and the particular, unic pathos which was created in Hiroshima. I should be completely insensible to not understand how these visions can have troubled many persons but, how I have told before, could this deep wish to forget become also dangerous? Would it be perhaps better to remember especially to the youth that similar visions have been and could be yet possible and that it's necessary to fight because this does not happen more?
However, at the end, the Hiroshima Authorities conceded the permission giving some time limits (we could work from 8:30 to 11:30 only 3 hours which, however, were enough!) and fixing the place of the actions in a place near the Atomic Dome, dramatic symbol of the nuclear holocaust of the town.
by Ruggero Maggi
At 1979 I went for the first time to the Peruvian Amazon and there, by the direct contact with the immensity and the magnificence of that world and unfortunately with all the ecological problems which, already at those times, were borning, I decided to found an international archive dedicated to artistic projects and works about Nature in a general way and about Amazon in a specific one.
Following upon, after a visit in Milan of the Colombian artist Jonier Marin where we discussed about the thing, I developed the project and I began to spread the message.
Today, after 12 years of activity, the archive Amazon reckons upon the participation of hundreds of artists with their works coming from various countries and it has arranged dozens of international art exhibitions in all the world.
The vastness of the fantastic Amazonic world is such that the Man feels really a little thing in comparison... and may be He is it indeed!!! Only after a week of life at Iquitos, capital town of the ex department of Loreto, and in the surrounding Jungle (in the places where it was realized the movie "Fitzcarraldo" by Herzog), I began to understand and to feel that pulsating and giant vegetable organism.
Infact, at those first seven days of life there, the sensations which I perceived were so many and so strong that I felt myself really "satured" by all what I saw and I heard.
The message of that incredible macrocosm was "transmitted" by the conceptual simplicity of an apparently banal object like a simple scholastic book with a false (...in Amazon!) wood cover which I found on a street stall!
Already at that time, walking into the darkness of the forest, only sometimes rent by the dazzling and unexpected solar light, incredulous people reached immense and waste sores into the territory devastated by the criminal and uncivilized human destruction owing to a miserable spirit of ..."civilization"!!!
by Ruggero Maggi
All that exists is the
fruit of change
and necessity
DEMOCRITUS.
From my childhood I have loved monsters. The so-called irregularity -- synonym for "ugliness" -- pertaining to some forms has always fascinated me. On the contrary, the aesthetic regularity of some lines, the pathetic attempt to perfection has very often bored me to death.
At a certain age, I also have sincerely tried to deepen the contact, to probe into the knowledge with a possible geometric "beauty," but, to my great surprise, the squares never were perfectly square, the circles never were perfectly circular, and so on. And yet I realised my work in that period scrupulously following "the ancient rules" taught at school. But nothing could be done: in spite of my efforts. The geometric figures, executed in different materials, did not fit together in an exact way or at least in a way satisfactory to me.
There almost was a repulsion of the forms in fitting together... Strangely enough, a repulsion of the forms and not of the materials, which, on the contrary, modelled themselves together joining in their greater or lesser roughness.
The fault, as I discovered some years later only, though I had already noticed some signs, was in Euclid and in his deceptive geometry. Yes; it was really the fault of mathematics, which has been administered to us at school and which is introduced as a decoder of Nature, but is itself very little natural!
She is in fact a pure and simple abstraction, so abstract and deceptively regular to forget entirely that Nature is instead set up by forms, diverse ones: perforated, twisted, fragmented... Forms, that are, however, easily fitted in.
This world which only portrays herself as chaotic, needed a new type of geometry allowing a more realistic measuring of Nature: the geometry of the fractals (from Latin fractus: broken, split).
In contrast with the Euclidean forms, the fractals are geometrically irregular forms in every part and present the same degree of irregularity on all scales.
The irregular aspect of Nature and her discontinuous side, which have been real monstrosities to science for a number of years at the mathematical level, come at last visible and are studied through the geometry of fractals. Now that it's been looked for, chaos seems to be everywhere, from the spirals of cigarette smoke which break into irregular spires to the dripping faucet passing from a regular rhythm to a chaotic one. These and other aperiodic and now linear movements are clear examples of turbulence, which is at the basis of the study and the relevant visual representation of the strange attractors. Strange not because unusual (in reality they are incredibly incomprehensible).
A further feature of the strange attractors is of being fractals, i.e. of having a complete structure (independently from the scale of magnification.)
Chaotic art must inquire into the inner side of the world, at last "purified" from the old scientific prejudices, looking for the manifold aesthetic and conceptual possibilities contained in chaos.
Apart from researches concerning computer graphics, the possibilities are infinite. For instance, I am projecting a "chaotic machine," which will be a metal structure 8 meters high, with a central plexi-glass sphere providing for the insertion of a person, who will be the first interference factor disturbing and therefore shifting to aperiodic the movement of the sphere itself. This sphere will also be set in motion by some magnets. Being designed for outdoors, the other "disturbances" will be caused by elements like rain, wind, etc.
This entire structure will be connected to a computer processor which will calculate all the relevant strange attractors and, through a printer device, will visualise them on sheets which will be given to the public.
The great discovery of the science of chaos is that apparently complicated behaviours can become simple if the right graphic representation has been chosen. The images of chaotic art are not only splendid but also contain infinite series of data and information.
Patrick Mullins: buildings
A twelve-sheet copy sequence of flooding and transmutating layers of typewritten words. The text is literally building up on itself in intermingling grids and the final effect is monochrome beauty.
Patrick Mullins, Route 1 Box 131, LaFarge, WI 54639, USA
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ART UNIDENTIFIED 126
Mayumi Handa interviews Shin-ichiro Yoshihara, the oldest son of the late Jiro Yoshihara, the founder of the Gutai group.
1-1-10 Koshienguchi, Nishinomiya, Hyogo, 663, Japan
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ATELIERS / STUDIOS: document'aire. C'est la faute aux copies 87
A documentary book from Jean-Francois Robic's project where the participants were asked to send a photograph from their studios. The result: many ingenious views from many ingenious photocopiers.
Jean-Francois Robic, 6, Rue Auguste Lamey, 67000 Strasbourg, France
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BIBLIOZINE 29 & 30
Bibliozine is an irregular review periodical published in connection with the editors' research on international networker culture. Held criticizes communication arts in its various aspects, from performance to telecommunication. This small publication is always a great source of information. #29 writes about Chuck Welch's new mail art anthology, while #30 collects some of the earliest published notices concerning Ray Johnson's death.
John Held, Jr., Editor, Modern Realism Archive, 1903 McMillan Avenue, Dallas, TX 75206, USA
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BRAIN CELL 301-320
A collection of original prints from this long-running mail art project. The beauty of Brain Cell is in its endless repetition and variation, some strange Japanese combination of discipline and creativity.
Ryosuke Cohen, 3-76-I-A-613 Yagumokitacho, Moriguchi-City, Osaka 570, Japan
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CAGE ANTI EMBARGO MAGAZINE 5 July 1994
An album to document Alexandar Jovanovic's interesting networking performance in Odzaci, Yugoslavia. "In this action I have asked the artists - networkers to send me their breath in the bottle because I believe that in each of our breath there is a part of our soul, a part of our soul energy, a part of our intellect, of our existence and our ethos." The album reproduces photographs from the performance (Jovanovic liberating the spirits) as well as pictures of the individual bottles. The project was sponsored by Chemical Industry HIPOL.
Alexandar Jovanovic, Zmaj Jovina 12/24, 25250 Odzaci, Yugoslavia
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CORE: A Symposium on Contemporary Visual Poetry. Edited by John Byrum & Crag Hill. GENERATORSCORE Press 1993
This book is excellent as a reference to theories, aesthetics, and general critique of visual poetry. It consists of writings and visual expressions by various poets in response to a questionnaire circulated by Messrs. Byrum and Hill. Includes a short bibliography of visual poetry anthologies, a list of magazines, and addresses to the contributors. Unfortunately the editors didn't have enough space to print materials sent by Julien Blaine, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Marvin Sackner, and a few others. (A suggestion: have you thought about making this information available in electronic form?)
GENERATOR, John Byrum, 8139 Midland Road, Mentor, OH 44060, USA
SCORE, Crag Hill, 125B Bay View Drive, Mill Valley, CA 94941, USA
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DREAMTIME TALKINGMAIL 7 Spring 1995
The newsletter from Dreamtime Village, a hybrid commune that is devoted to combining permaculture farming and gardening with hypermedia arts and experimental (artistic) philosophy. Influenced by Hakim Bey's ideal of autonomous creativity, the group continues to publish articles about their research, ideas to guide their energies, and invitations to take part in their festivities and educational workshops ("Trance Plants" and "Musical Instrument Making" being some of the titles). The newsletter is well designed and printed. The veritable gem here is Detlef Benjamin's JOURNAL OF TEXT POISONING 1.1, that is enclosed as a 8 page booklet with this issue. Beginning with Bern Porter's idea of fluid, intravenously administered language, Benjamin proceeds to explore the relations of language and soul, text and body. He presents such tools as the text-whip used by Renaissance monks, and Porter's Dense-Text Generator. "Presently, though we've assembled a modest first issue, we're ever on the search for more material. Send information on text poisoning research going on elsewhere c/o Dreamtime Village."
Dreamtime Talkingmail, c/o Xexoxial Endarchy, Route 1 Box 131, LaFarge, WI 54639, USA
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LE REFLET CHARENTAIS: Bulletin de la Charentaise de Discernement. September 1993
Some satirical text on Sartrean mytho-pathology, creative misogyny, and an attack on FRAC. This issue has an excellent cover with girouettes poitevines restaurées: one of these being the Sartre spectacles in a silhouette. Writes the editor in his letter, "This zine is now still going on ... mostly literature and essays, including translations of American and East Europe writers."
Laurent Fairon, Taiz‚-Aizie, 16700 Ruffec, France
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LONDON PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER 8 & 9 1995
LPA is active in preserving the Situationist traditions of psychogeography and drifting. Their viewpoint is (of course) centred in London, but this doesn't make them uninteresting to non-English observers. These issues include a discussion of Thomas … Becket & the cult of love, ley-lines, levitation news, and a reprint of Gilles Ivain's "Formulary For A New Urbanism". "Psychogeography: The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals. Theory: 1. A sight, a spectacle. Obs. rare."
LPA (ELS), Box 15, 138 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2NS, England
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ND 18 1995
This issue of ND features a profile of Selektion label, Chris & Cosey (of TG fame), Francisco L¢pez, and Picasso Gaglione interviewed, also Chuck Welch's invitation for a networker Telenetlink Year 1995. Highly recommended.
ND, P.O. Box 4144, Austin, TX 78765, USA
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PIPS 1/95 PARADOX BOX
This is a great assembling box edition of object literature and book art. Published three times per year, every number has a different theme.
PIPS-DADA-CORPORATION, c/o Claudia Pütz, Prinz-Albert-Strasse 31, D-53113 Bonn 1, Germany
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POLYPHONIX 26 - BUDAPEST
A documentary booklet from a contemporary poetry festival organized by Artpool and Association Polyphonix, in October 1994. The publication consists of the participants' biographies and statements. The participants include Julien Blaine, Bernard Heidsieck, Gábor Tóth, György Galántai, and the blessed Transfuturists, Rea Nikonova & Serge Segay.
Artpool, 1277 Budapest 23, Pf. 52, Hungary
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RE:ACTION Newsletter of the Neoist Alliance 1 1994
Closely associated (as it seems) with the LPA, the Neoist Alliance examines political and public structures. "While much of the anarchist and underground milieu call for unity, the Neoist Alliance is more interested in scission and radical separation."
Neoist Alliance, BM Senior, London WC1 3XX, England
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SPINNE 57 "wehe weppen" November 1994 bis Januar 1995
Collaborative book project by Dirk Fröhlich. Each number of Spinne consists of original visual works and texts, and is produced in an edition of 20 copies. These books are produced with a great skill and care.
Buchlabor, Dirk Fröhlich, Priessnitzstr. 19, 01099 Dresden, Germany
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TERAZ MOWIE 18 A & B January 1995
Powerful texto-visual imagery with Hartmut Andryczuk's fondness for haunting themes. This issue contains Mariano Maturana's set of alphabet as bizarre transformations of zoological and calligraphic forms, as well as some plans for his imaginary library. Also an excellent sequence from Jrgen O. Olbrich.
Hybriden-Verlag, Hartmut Andryczuk, Postlagernd, 12154 Berlin, Germany
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TRANSMOG 16 December 1994
Text and image mutations/mutilations compiled by Strangulensis Research Laboratories. Earlier issues were more concerned with computer treatments of "normal" source texts to produce twisted results, while the present issues are collections of accidental revelations by a multitude of authors. "Spread the meme. Language is a virus. Love it, use it, don't trust it."
Ficus strangulensis, Route 6 Box 138, Charleston, WV 25311, USA [far@medinah.atc.ucarb.com]
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UNI/vers(;) magazin 1 & 2
Well-produced booklets reproducing original material from Deisler's international visual poetry project. The work featured here include Willie Marlowe's "Ziggurats" and César Figueiredo's black and white word collages of strange dream-state beauty, like psychical advertisements.
Guillermo Deisler, Kirchnerstr. 11, 06112 Halle/Saale, Germany
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FIELD STUDY INTERNATIONAL. A decision was made in 1993 to reclaim the negative spaces on CV's i.e. the time between two activities became "Field Study" space. These negative spaces are the true "doing times" and are impossible to capture within the fixity of the CV. "Field Study" is an open collective which acknowledges these spaces through encouraging participation and collaboration by people from all walks of life.
Field Study sees the creation of works as living processes with their own inherent cycles and rhythms. Each work is a dynamic manifestation of the collective spirit.
Field Study International, 28 Caversham Road, Kentish Town, London NW5, UK.
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WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ARTIST'S BOOKS AND BOOKS MADE BY ARTISTS WHICH ARE NOT ARTISTS' BOOKS, AND BOOKS ? Answers on a postcard please.
ARTISTS BOOK EXCHANGE. Send me a copy of your artist's book and I will send you one of mine in exchange, together with a contact list of bookmakers prepared to trade in this way. Your name will then be added to the exchange list if you request it. Send books or information requests to:
Pat Collins, 128 Kingston Road, Teddington, Middlesex, UK.
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HERE TO GO * MAIL ART PROJECT. About W.S. Burroughs' ideas of the Western Lands: immortality in Space.
"Please send me your *visualised* reaction on these ideas of Mister Burroughs (media & size free). If you send me your work before 1 September 1995, it will be displayed at StampArtGallery De Voet in Deventer. After the exhibition I will send documentation to all participants. I hope that you will help me to make this project a big success and I wish you a lot of inspiration. I'm looking forward to see the result of your work. Thank you in advance. "
Marcel Herms, Bruynssteeg 7, 7411 LS Deventer, The Netherlands.
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8.1.1994
Dear friends and artists of the Visual Poetry,
you know that I did the very first German anthology of the Visual Poetry in 1972: TEXTBILDER - VISUELLE POESIE INTERNATIONAL VON DER ANTIKE BIS ZUR GEGENWART (DuMont Verlag, K”ln 1972).
Now, more than 20 years after, I want to do a world-wide encyclopedia, a so called hand-book, where you can find all the names and informations about the visual poets around the world - a very hard project, and so I need your help!
If you get this letter with my list of addresses please:
I think it will last at least one year to get most of the material, so please DON'T STOP THIS RUNNING LETTER and BE QUICK!
Send your material to
Klaus Peter Dencker, Sieker Landstr. 77, D-22927 Grosshansdorf, Germany
Thank you so much for your cooperation. I hope, that this work will do a lot for the Visual Poetry.
With the best greetings, yours, Klaus Peter Dencker
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The League of Canadian Poets will produce a sixth edition of POETRY MARKETS FOR CANADIANS. As with latest version, the book will be co-published with The Mercury Press. Editor James Deahl's goal is to cover all magazines and annuals that publish English-language poetry in the world, with the exception of the United States of America.
THE LEAGUE OF CANADIAN POETS, 54 Wolseley St., 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5T 1A5
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A NEW LETTRISTE INTERNATIONAL. The Neoist Alliance has been holding ongoing talks with the London Psychogeographical Association about organising a Preliminary Committee for the Founding of a New Lettriste International. Any individuals or groups interested in participating in this process should contact either the LPA or the Neoist Alliance immediately.
LPA, Box 15, 138 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2NS, England
Neoist Alliance, BM Senior, London WC1 3XX, England
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STAMPZINE, edited & published by Picasso Gaglione is a collection of rubber stamp art featuring the hand-stamped works of international artists. Anyone wishing to contribute to Stampzine should send 75 hand-stamped copies of rubberstamp artwork 8 1/2 X 11 to the publisher. All contributors will receive a copy.
STAMP ART GALLERY, 466 8th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA
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THE SECRET LIFE OF MARCEL DUCHAMP. Send Your black and white work. Size: 14 x 21 cm. Deadline: 15 December 1995. Subject: FRESH WIDOW. Documentation to all participants.
Pascal Lenoir, 11 Ruelle de Champagne, 60680 Grandfresnoy, France
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GRIST ON-LINE WORLDWIDEWEB http://www.phantom.com/~grist
Grist On-Line is an Internet WorldWideWeb (WWW) site and Personal Computer-based Bulletin Board system (BBS) devoted to poetry. The WWW site and the BBS provide publication and marketing services to the international on-line communities. Both the WWW site and the BBS offer on-line poetry publications, collections and individual poems as well as news, announcements and commentary regarding the worlds of poetry. Catalogues of books, files, CDs, CD-Roms, Diskettes, Audio and Video Cassettes devoted to poetry and literature are updated regularly and made available to the WorldWideWeb Internet community at the WWW site: http://www.phantom.com/~grist and the dial-up BBS at (212) 787-6562. The complete catalog contains over 4,000 titles and is constantly growing. Call (212) 787-6821 (voice) to add your poems and publications of to become a Grist On-Line vendor.
Grist On-Line, P.O. Box 20805, Columbus Circle Station, New York, NY 10023-1496, USA [grist@phantom.com]
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V GER The Vision Project
electronic; query to
ANABASIS, Thomas Lowe Taylor, editor, Oysterville, WA 98641-0216, USA [taylort@pdx.edu]
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FREIE GALERIE
Klaus Rupp, Müggenkampstr. 1, 20257 Hamburg, Germany
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THE RUTH AND MARVIN SACKNER ARCHIVE OF CONCRETE AND VISUAL POETRY
300 West Rivo Alto Dr., Miami Beach, FL 33139, USA
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LIST OF EXPERIMENTAL POETRY / ART MAGAZINES
Spencer Selby, P.O. Box 590095, San Francisco, CA 94159, USA [selby@slip.net] fax:415-752-5139
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PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY
Send me images, memories or symbols from your childhood that have particular meaning to you. For more info contact
David Peniston, Dir., Cloud 9 Galley, P.O. Box 147, Mill Valley, CA 94941, USA
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RED LIPS AND NAILS
Mail art project
15 Stroma Court, Dreghorn, Ayrshire KA11 4JF, Scotland
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ROBINSON CRUSOE WAS NOT ALONE
In 407 pages of writing about ROBINSON CRUSOE, Daniel Defoe only refers to the dog kept by Crusoe on the island four times. Please help me, through mail art, to reclaim this figure lost from canine history. Send me any description, story, image, or souvenir of CRUSOE'S DOG and its life.
Pat Collins, 128 Kingston Road, Teddington, Middlesex, UK.
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RÉPARATION DE POÉSIE COLLECTIVE
MEMBERSHIP SUBSCRIPTION CAMPAIGN
The Réparation de Poésie Collective is a ten years old without benefit organism. It's goals are to create links between poetry and the visual arts and to establish the International Mail Art Network in our Québec City and regions area. To reach these goals we organize a main activity each two years period (Réparation de Poésie Event), with a exhibition and performance art schedule and experimental poetry workshop in the bush (atelier poésie-nature).
Since 94, had been added the organisation of Québec Mail Art Congress (Rencontre internationale d'art postal dans la région de Québec) which second issue will be realized on May 96 during the Réparation de Poésie Event featuring about 15 International Network Artists and specialists who will perform, take part to the panels, video presentations, poetry in nature workshop in collaboration with Québec région artists run centres and cultural organisms: Inter le Lieu (Québec), Regart (Lévis), les Productions Byzantines (Inverness, Bois-Francs).
We also assemble an artist's book (International participation). A hundred copies édition, which half is returned to collaborators, few of them are sold to individuals, artist's run centres and friends (50 $ Canadian dollars) who receive the same advantages than regular members); the rest is distributed to the Network (Artist's book exchange).
With the actual issue (No. 6: Extra-terrestrial poetry) will be added an edition of our Mail Art Chronicle (Chronique de L'abominable homme des Lettres written by Jean-Claude Gagnon), already published in Inter Magazine in Québec City: Mail art, visual poetry, exhibitions, projects, events, audio, video, archive, fanzines, catalogues.
The Réparation de Poésie Collective also owns the only one Mail Art Networking Archive centre in the Québec région.
Today our work has gain a world recognition since we realized the Québec fist Mail Art Congress on May 94 (a good press covering in many countries); our Mail Art Chronicle in Québec City and our Artist's book received a very good appreciation and participation by many artists.
Our organism has been restructured few time ago with the addition of very dynamic new members of our administration staff whose help to give us a new impulsion. This new impulsion is partly the support of hundreds of artists who have been collaborating to our activities and artist's run centres, and cultural organisms and friends who have supported us for years.
Since the very beginning money has never been mentioned between you and us because we had a little help for friends and cultural organisms who bought few copies of our artist's book and the very sporadic subventions we received for years.
For the future that help is no more sufficient to continue our activities which we consider essential for the development of Mail Art, poetry and other forms of art because the increasing cost relative to the postal services, secretarial furniture, organisation technical needs etc. So we put together this membership application form to assure the Collective Réparation de Poésie's survival.
We will be happy to have you on our new membership list (10 Canadian dollars - 10,000 Italian lires) from one year until April first, 1996. The individuals and groups who already bought copies of our artist's book will deserve the same privileges than regular members.
OUR MEMBERSHIP ADVANTAGES
If you want us to continue our ten years activities to whom hundreds artist's have been collaborating until now, please send an international money order (ten Canadian dollars value) at the mention of Collectif Réparation de Poésie to this address:
Collectif Réparation de Poesie, a-s Jean-Claude Gagnon, 359, rue Lavigueur, #1, Québec, (Québec), Canada, G1R 1B3 tel. (1-418) 647-3833
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THE ART BIN.
My name is Karl-Erik Tallmo. I am a writer and cultural journalist in Stockholm, Sweden. I am also editor of The Art Bin, a new electronic cultural magazine on World Wide Web on the Internet.
Point your browser at http://www.algonet.se/-artbin and have a look!
The Art Bin contains essays and articles about cultural matters, of course, but also source texts, ranging from Chaucer and the Magna Carta to Novalis, Joyce, and Queneau. In the Gallery section there is new work not by visual artists only, but also by poets, authors and contemporary musicians.
The idea is to publish texts in their original languages (e.g. English, German, French, Swedish ...) and to provide historically important source texts as well as more unusual material, not found elsewhere on the Net. Magna Carta is an example of the former and the Novalis texts of the latter.
Do you compose minimal music? Do you write concrete poetry? Have you written an essay about Bartesian punctum within contemporary cinema? Or about the phrygian bias in Sun Ra's improvisations? Or have you done some interesting paintings - no fancy gimmicks, just darn good art? Why not share this with the readers of Art Bin? Or do you just hate some of this? Write an article and explain why!
Artists, writers, and musicians of all kinds, all over the world, are hereby invited to contribute to the Art Bin. But please contact me first and discuss your idea. You can reach me on e-mail [tallmo@nisus.se].
If you don't have access to the Internet but still would like to participate, you may write me the old-fashioned way:
Karl-Erik Tallmo, Observatoriegatan 22, 113 29 Stockholm, Sweden
Hope to hear from you soon!
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BREAK THE SILENCE!
A Mailart Sanbenito For Marcel Broodthaers
Sanbenito: a penitential garment worn by heretics condemned by the Inquisition.
Hyde Park Corner, also known as Speaker's Corner, is a London landmark where individuals are free to express their freedom of speech as public spectacle. In 1973, the Belgian conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers performed a number of actions there, one of which was to stand on a soapbox holding a blackboard on which was written the word "silence".
Field Study invites you to re-work and break the silence!
Send works in the form of badges, rubber stamp dies, pieces of cloth (maximum size: 10 by 10 inches) and/or any other works which could be attached to a jacket. The theme of these works is to be on the nature of silence, censorship, freedom of speech and Marcel Broodthaers.
All works will be attached and/or stamped on to a jacket which will be worn by a member of Field Study in a reenactment of "Silence" at Speaker's Corner in 1996. Works will not be returned, but all participants will receive a documentation of the event.
Deadline for works: December 1st 1995.
Please send all contributions to:
Field Study, c/o David Dellafiora, 28 Caversham Road, Kentish Town, London NW5, UK.
"The silence of Marcel Broodthaers is underrated".
Field Study
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Artpool, H-1277 Budapest 23, Pf. 52, Hungary
Paolo Barrile, via G. Milani 9, 20133 Milano, Italy
John E. Fowler, Columbus Circle Station, P.O.Box 20805, New York, NY 10023-1496, USA [grist@phantom.com]
HAIKUS, Hello Black Tech, Gran Capitan 3, 37006 Salamanca, Spain
Geof Huth, 875 Central Parkway, Schenectady, NY 12309, USA
J. Lehmus, Stenbocksv. 24, 02860 Esbo, Finland
Ruggero Maggi, Corso Sempione 67, 20149 Milano, Italy
Patrick Mullins, Route 1, Box 133, LaFarge, WI 54639, USA
Clemente Padín, Casilla C. Central 1211, Montevideo, Uruguay
Spencer Selby, P.O. Box 590095, San Francisco, CA 94159, USA [selby@slip.net] fax:415-752-5139