Artists/Exhibitions I have been looking at:

Lilane Lijn

She wanted the word to be seen in movement, dissolving into a pure vibration until it became the energy of sound. When Lijn puts words on cylinders and cones and makes Poem Machines, she wants the word to be seen in movement splitting itself into a pure vibration until it becomes the energy of sound. These were the first in a series of works with text and Lijn called them Poem Machines because she made them to give power back to a depleted language.- http://www.lilianelijn.com/portfolio-item/alphabet-poem-machine-1962/

We cannot fix onto the words of the Poem Machines with the added kinetic movement, it translates into a sound that we are unable to understand or try to decipher. This work allows us to visually connect text to how we hear and perceive languages around us.

Get Rid of Government Time, 1962, 29.5 x 38 x 30 cm. Letraset on painted metal drum, plastic, painted metal, motor. Words from a poem by Nazli Nour.

 

“From Concrete to Liquid to Spoken Worlds to the Word” at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva

https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/concrete-liquid-spoken-worlds-word-centre-dart-contemporain-geneve-geneva-2017/

 

https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=10330&menu=4. From catalogue of above exhibition.

Screenshot from exhibition webpage.

This exhibition took place in 2017 and featured talks and performances by artists involved. The gallery space was transformed into a blank page for the written word, offering a kaleidoscopic perspective of a range of texts, typopgraphies and objects. This white-cube like space allows visitors to explore words as if looking at paintings; how the words can have none or multiple meanings depending on who is looking at it. Spaces between art and poetry are being interrogated, usually only reserved for concrete poetry, in a gallery setting that allows for visitors to see, walk on, sit, on and fully engage with texts.


50 minutes- Moyra Davey- 2006

“What to read?” is a recurring dilemma in my life. The question always conjures up an image: a woman at home, half-dressed, moving restlessly from room to room, picking up a book, reading a page or two and no sooner feeling her mind drift, telling herself, “You should be reading something else, you should be doing something else.” (1)

According to Chris Kraus in Where Art Belongs, this text/image configuration introduces an interrelation of elements: a written narrative, a videotape that offers an excursion into the physical world (2), the use of video allows the written narrative to become a 3D version of itself; how text would live in the world if it was allowed to. As an audience we are searching for connections between what we hear and what we see; witnessing Davey act out thoughts and questions as if in her head in real time.

 

https://www.ubu.com/film/davey_50.html

2 Where Art Belongs (pg. 54). C. Kraus. Semiotext(e), 2011.

Martin Jackson- Resident in Maps- 2013-15

 

Screenshot of video. https://martin-jackson.com/resident-in-maps

Alan. Martin Jackson. 2005. Screenshot from video accessed here: https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/19735/1/digital-art-meets-poetry-in-this-google-maps-mash-up

Two years as the uninvited ‘writer in residence’ of Google Maps, funded by Arts Council England. (The website was live only until the completion of the project.)

Jackson utilises the visibility and accessibility of google maps for this series of works. These works consist of screenshots of places where he has written and responded to a place with poetry, positing words inside maps. In one work entitled Alan, Jackson follows a google maps image of an airport worker, arranging a narrative of assumptions based on and for the figure in the video. This reminds me of Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge (referenced in presentation blog post) which is also situated in google maps. This introduces bigger platforms for ways words can be performed and seen by others.

Dr. Plimptons Revenge. A Google Maps Essay. Dinty W Moore. 2010.

Dr. Plimptons Revenge. A Google Maps Essay. Dinty W Moore. 2010.