Klaus Peter Dencker belongs to the great tradition of visual poets whose approach
includes an encyclopedic base. Internationally well known examples of this
tradition in the 20th Century include Ian Hamilton Finlay and Tom Phillips.
Underlying Finlay's opus is the practice of collaboration with artisans of all types,
the study of artistic genres and movements, and the art of placing the finished
collaborations in environments that hold dialogues with the pieces which they
inspired, on which they comment, and with which they eventually form a unity.
Thus Finlay's oeuvre consists of poems realized in virtually all media available,
representing the skills of a complete spectrum of the most able workers, and
thoroughly exploring the land, sea, and sky of the author's native Scotland. The
center of Tom Phillips's opus is a single reworked book. This work systematically
catalogues two dimensional styles of drawing and painting, running parallel to the
author's exploration of several layers of fictitious characters. This exploration
includes games played with the nature of reality and the changing force-fields of
subject and object. Around this book, Phillips has marshaled legions of art forms,
including photographic projects ranging from isolated stills, to stills in
programmatic sequence, to films; musical compositions including an opera;
translation, illumination, formally commissioned portraits, and event pieces.
Klaus Peter Dencker's most easily identifiable encyclopedic base is his life-long
activity as an anthologist, editor, cataloguer, and collector. The four activities move
in and out of each other, producing an important opus in themselves. But they also
find their way into his poetry. Thus his poetry has constantly been enriched by the
encyclopedias of visual poetry and related works and his practice as a poet
constantly gives him fresh ideas and a deepened understanding of the arts which
enhance his catalogues, archives, anthologies, and scholarly collections. His
unpublished archives may identify as many late 20th Century visual poets as any in
the world. (The collection of Ruth and Marvin Sackner is the only probable
contender for equal range.) This kind of archive is particularly difficult for an art
form that has primarily traveled through underground channels from patterns of
barter to books and broadsides published in microscopic editions to the shifting
and deliberately ephemeral Mail Art network.
The graphic elements in Dencker's poems recapitulate not only the imagery of
Europe for several hundred years, but also reiterate the range of techniques used by
artists and designers of all sorts. One of the great satisfactions for me in his work
comes from the interaction of techniques collaged together. A simple aspect of this
appears in different types of shading in the images, ranging from the cross-
hatching, layering, and feathering of woodcuts and stone lithographs, to the tonal
ranges produced by photographic methods for offset and rotogravure printing, to
the gradations introduced by airbrushes and by the layering and transparencies of
computer graphics programs. This confluence of techniques finds a match in
Dencker's approach to letters. A page of Dencker's poetry will probably include
half a dozen type faces, running through variations on Fraktur, Roman, sans serif,
and handwriting like playing scales in different keys. In addition to its appearance,
the lexical significance of the texts resolve themselves into three parts: The printed
texts should be read something like traditional poetry. The handwriting, however,
moves back and forth between autobiographical passages and theoretical statements
and reflections on what he is doing. The different strands of handwritten self-
commentary and biography tend to be color coded in simple colors. The lexical
plane thus includes poetry, personal diary, and critical and theoretical analysis,
created as the work is in progress.
Another level of presentation involves the interaction of basic types of image, which
we can list as icons, diagrams, scores, idealizations, cartoons, and representations.
Anthropologists, philosophers, and students of media arrange these in
chronological or hieratic striations. They would see, for instance, icons as being
more primitive than representations. In Dencker's poetry, we see all types of image
simultaneously present. At times they reinforce the chronologies implied by graphic
techniques; at times, they work against them. Often images take on multiple roles.
The texture of the interaction and conjunction of image types can be as strong as
the interplay between graphic modes. The way the multi-tiered lexical poem, the
graphic and the presentational planes intersect gives the work a sense of volume,
reminiscent of polyphonic music. It is essential to note that Dencker plays in a
Dixieland band, a Jazz sub-genre with particularly strong emphasis on the
harmonies and counterpoints of multiple melodic lines.
Dencker sometimes divides a page into zones, each assigned a contrasting subject.
One zone, for instance, may involve work and another play. Both graphically and
semantically, the major elements in a page function like the clauses in a sentence,
and the pages in a section work much like a paragraph. Thus the phrases and
sentences in his work not only carry their own significance, but each contributes to
a larger linguistic construct. The semantics of image display on pages and through
sequences of pages may or may not relate to the significance of the text in letters,
and may instead form a syntax more related to patterns of intuitive connections
which extend our perception and understanding beyond the range of habit and the
restrictions of the linear nature of language. One of Dencker's activities has been
the production of films. His vita includes over a hundred films produced for
German television. He sees the sequencing of his extended works as drawing on
film. The eye can track multiple lines and layers simultaneously. Reading a page or
sequence of Dencker's poetry can thus draw on some of the same capacities used in
listening to polyphonic music, as well as those employed in the reading of linear
text.
"Wort Koepfe" gives us a good place to see these characteristics
work together. This is a poem on the nature of the mind, the intellect, the rational
facilities, and the sensorium - all concepts that see the human being in frameworks
similar to its graphic representations and artistic techniques. Since this work centers
on the head, we see heads presented as icons, diagrams, scores (in the form of text
and musical notation), idealizations, cartoons, and portraits. Each type can be
rendered in any of the available encyclopedia of techniques made available by
millennia of artists. But neither the image types nor the techniques stay in their
chronological place: combinations constantly change relations in such a way as to
suggest a dance in which all Western times and places intermingle. This could
suggest a sort of Carnivale or Mardi Gras, but one held in an Apollonian state of
mind, not the ur-Dada or proto-Surrealist milieux of New Orleans or Rio de
Janeiro.
An essential component of Dencker's art can be expressed as degree of gradation,
fine tuned as color. In his exploration of color, he has tended to retain a white
ground. I'd like to think that this was a conscious decision, based on his study of
negative space in Japanese art, though it probably comes from a broader sense of
clarity. In many places, the white ground allows images to stand out more distinctly,
and for their image type and their technique to keep from blurring, no matter how
much they combine. Dencker's use of multiple techniques and image types looks
graceful on his pages, but is not easy to achieve. Two pages from
"Wort
Koepfe" suggest what Dencker can do with color gradations. The first I'd like
to point out is page 4 of part 3. In this page we have strong contrasts between the
black and white of the drawing and the color of the photograph. Both the lines of
the skull and the shades of skin on the woman become more clearly visible in
conjunction with each other. The composite can be read as an archetype or a
recension of Memento Mori sermons or Death and the Maiden motifs. The skull's
teeth could be read as sinister, though the lines of the jaw and the shape of the eye
sockets suggest something more like amusement. If the sense of vegetable matter
growing around the skull make a reader's skin crawl, that may make the sensuality
of the woman all the stronger. At the same time, the branches around the skull,
positioned so as to unit the woman with the brain stem, can just as strongly suggest
the Biblical Tree of Life theme, with its powerful evocation of the interdependence
of life and death. The position of the woman's arms and legs suggests, first, sleep
and repose; second, sensuality, expressed primarily through the curves of the
stomach and hips. In this image, flesh and bone, sensuality and structure form a
quiet but eternal dialogue. The darkness of the woman comes close to black, and the
lightness of the skull comes close to white. They are, however, modulated into a
different realm of color which makes the light and dark contrast more luminous
and more striking than they could if pushed to their extremes. If this piece avoids
sermons and guffaws, it also shows how rich a contrast can become if handled in the
gradations of reason rather than the extremes of irrationality and dogma.
In part 4, page 6, the largest form is the outline of a head as if cut out from the white
paper of the poem. Inside it we see clouds in the area of the face, devolving into
storm clouds toward the top of the head. Punctuating the storm is a commercial
logo. This round shape suggests an eye for the cut-out figure by its position and
echoes the curved shape of the heads on the page. Deeper into the head, we see a
detailed diagram of the head and shoulders of a figure with no individual identity.
This "Everyman" has lost his skin in an imaginary world of diagrams for the
purposes of understanding anatomy. None the less, the impersonal figure looks
defiantly heroic and individualistic in stance as he as he lifts up his head and eye
sockets toward the stormy sky. His color is the faded white of old textbooks. In
front of him a photo of two people's heads and shoulders is true portraiture. They
are a man and woman, perhaps partners, as suggested by their proximity - though
not two people whose minds are in the same place, judging from their expressions
and the different directions in which they are looking. The man looks through
binoculars at a part of the sky away from the storm. The dark purple clothing of
these figures ties them into the stormy sky on the other side of the anatomical
diagram figure. A white cloud creates a path between the faded lightness of the
diagram figure and the bright white of the page ground. In this page, multiple heads
in multiple presentations and technical forms look in different directions, though
away from each other. Though the blues and purples dominate the "positive"
space of the page, this simple segment of the spectrum seems lush in color and is
rich in significance.
Dencker's conflation of historical strata might be seen as part of the Post Modernist
rejection of history. It seems, however, that Dencker's historical strata work as part
of two dynamics outside this range. The first is simply the progress of history itself.
In "Dero Abecedarius," we see an image suggesting catastrophe at the World
Trade Center towers in New York City. This piece was done before the September
11, 2001 attack on them. Some might see this as prophetic. This intersection,
however, dramatically shows how much a part of continuing history the work, its
sources, the media employed, and the arts of visual poetry are part of ongoing
history itself; and, like the components of past eras Dencker employs, the
significance of his work will change with changing events and changing media.
History and changing media have been essential to the formation of Dencker's art,
and it seems essential to look at his work in precisely these terms. Audiences at the
present time tend to look at Visual Poetry as an outgrowth or next step after
Concrete. I see Concrete as a short-lived fad, largely based on the appearance and
cultural significance of newspaper headlines conjoined with the sensibility of Haiku.
The Concrete movement itself lost credibility because the overwhelming majority of
readers saw it as trivial, gimmicky, and irrelevant. And so much of it was.
Interestingly and appropriately, newspapers started moving toward irrelevance as
Concrete fell out of favor. Dencker's work has based itself on photographs,
magazines, video, and other, fuller modes of graphic presentation. These modes
allowed him to recapitulate and revive images from the complete European past,
not just the era of narrow Ideologies intimately entwined with newspapers. This
reach backward has characterized many North Atlantic arts in the second half of the
20th Century. Fluxus, for instance, reinvented confluent arts under the banner of
"multimedia." At the time of Fluxus's greatest strength, you could still find
churches throughout the world holding an older form of polyartistic event in the
Mass, just as easily as you could see most political movements recasting their
ceremonies along the lines of the spectacles of Monarchy, and cinema developing
Technicolor to try to capture imaginary versions of the visual richness of such
events. By the time Concrete began to crack, color television moved from the realm
of a few wealthy people to a universal and ubiquitous entity. Near the end of the
millennium, the media of the century joined forces: television and typewriters
united in the personal computer; the personal computer joined the telephone
creating the internet; at the present time the computer is joining the radio, creating
wireless. A decade from now, most people in the West may be constantly connected
via the growth of what we now call cellular telephones. At home, they may spend a
good deal of time interacting with holograms. Communication may never flow only
in one direction again. The concept of the "consumer" may disappear as
contributions to the electronic network become decentralized, and speech and
image will once more become inseparable as we look at people, take pictures, and
experience our news with the computers we may wear on our wrists like watches or
carry in our pockets like billfolds. As society becomes saturated with vibrant
images, some people will find it increasingly desirable to escape into a simpler
environment. As this happens, the masterpieces of Concrete by poets such as Eugen
Gomringer and Seiichi Niikuni may actually regain the currency they have lost, and
contemporary masters of black and white minimalism such as Márton
Koppány, may find an audience through a more eclectic environment.
Given the lack of expense in reproducing color images electronically, black and
white has already become a deliberate choice rather than an economic expedient or
a habit or a state of mind.
Klaus Peter Dencker's encyclopedias seem harbingers of the poetry of the future -
and perhaps a prescriptive example of what should be done in it. Given the graphic
possibilities and imperatives of the internet, it seems unlikely that word and image
will exist in segregation as they did during the age of print domination. In the last
decade, there has been a rapid expansion of visual poetry throughout the world.
Some of this may remain part of a discrete Visual Poetry genre; but even if it does,
the other literary arts will probably be strongly influenced by, and in many places
joined with, graphics. If the importance of keyboards recedes, and we begin
talking to the computers on our desks, our living room walls, and our
wrists, while language comes to us in conjunction with images, we may find
ourselves in an internal world closer to that of classical Greece or the Roman
Empire than the North Atlantic culture of the 19th and 20th Centuries. If history
works out along these lines, we will probably not loose printed books as we will
certainly lose newspapers. An example of the retention of books in the last decade
comes from the Harry Potter novels. These ridiculously long volumes, primarily
written for children and teenagers, achieved record sales at precisely the time when
pundits were most shrilly announcing the death of print. Distribution of the books
depended on electronics, and their popularity was strongly reinforced by e-mail,
internet chat rooms, and listservs, but the fact remains that children and young
people, unspoiled by theory, overwhelmingly voted with their allowances to keep
books along with their computers. One of the reasons for this is that they were not
put in an either/or, black and white position. Given freedom to make up their own
minds, they opted not to exclude either medium. These are young people who have
developed in a multi-tasking environment, not unlike the world of polyphonic
music, or an encyclopedic mode of Visual Poetry.
Clearly, Visual Poetry is poised to move out of the ghetto in which it has languished.
At this transition time, it seems important that the age of electronic multimedia
have guidance from its encyclopedists available to it, rather than be left to the
dogmas of technological absolutists. If so, the poetry of Klaus Peter Dencker seems
to be a good model. Unlike many collagists, he avoids violence, the desire to shock,
and the exultation of incompetence. Avoiding classic Psychoanalysis and its artistic
wing in Surrealism, this is a poetry that celebrates the rational mind and the powers
of intuition that belong to it. Although this is a poetry that depends heavily on
intuition and association, it allows these faculties to function in a world of nuances
and modulations, not the harsh world of impulsiveness or reflex. Dencker's view
tends to favor a sense of humor, but one that does not mock or ridicule or find glee
in other people's humiliation. In his poetry, Dencker wears his erudition lightly: his
catalogues seem offered up as sources rather than conclusions.
A single encyclopedist could be dangerous, just as the electronic world we are
moving into may be our worst nightmare if it is controlled by a single entity -
whether that entity be a traditional police state or a private information
totalitarian such as Google. This is
where Dencker's poetry comes full circle to his activity in collecting the work of
other Visual Poets. It seems particularly important to me that he has published
several anthologies of Japanese Visual Poetry. These bring the East and West into
closer contact with each other. In Japan, several types of Visual Poetry have existed
side by side for some time, seldom paying much attention to each other, but
creating their own rich genres. It may take outsiders such as Dencker to bring these
groups together, just as it might take a non-Westerner to make anything like a truce
among the much more hostile and actively feuding movements of the West.
Dencker studied Japanese at University. It is important to note that in the 20th
Century very few Western poets did this; those interested in Asian language at all
did not look to contemporary Asian poetry, and in the Sino-Japanese sphere, they
made up bizarre explanations of the Kanji writing system as little sets of pictures.
Perhaps in part to distance himself from such practice, Dencker avoids the
orientalisms that find their way into much of the art and poetry of the West in the
20th Century. He has nonetheless learned a great deal from his Japanese colleagues.
Not least of these has been the ability to cooperate across significant cultural
divisions.
As much as Concrete has dominated exclusive spheres of influence in the West
itself, it is absolutely essential to understand Western alternatives. Of these,
Lettrisme and its offshoots are certainly the most important, even though the
central movement may not long outlive the now impending death of its founder,
Isidore Isou. It is instructive to follow the vigorous and at times relentless historical
analysis of Lettrisme as pursued by its founders; but it is equally important to see its
continuation in such movements as Signalism and Inismo, as well as its impact on
unaligned individuals living in places as far from Paris as Russia and Argentina. It is
just as important to understand encyclopedists outside of movements, such as Karl
Kempton who has patiently worked his way through the world's spiritual symbol
graphs; to understand the work of individual perfectionists, such as Joel Lipman,
who has completely explored the possible uses of rubber stamps; to understand
tireless innovators, such as Kitasono Katue whose working life included the
invention of multiple forms of lexical poetry and three unprecedented genres of
visual poetry - the last of them, a form of graphic language whose implications are
only beginning to become apparent half way through the first decade of the 21st
Century. Although not as prominent during the last decades as other movements
and individuals, Visual Poetry has been growing at an accelerating rate that doesn't
suggest that it is about to slow down soon.
If Klaus Peter Dencker is one of the great encyclopedists of the turn of the
millennium, one of his most important functions may be to show us how essential -
and how much fun - encyclopedias can be.
- Karl Young