Asemic Writing for Mail-Artists

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Comment by cheryl penn on June 13, 2011 at 8:17am

Photographic evidence of the completion of Books 1 and 2. I am just waiting for 2 other members work which I am including in my posting.  Work on Book # 3 begins today!

Comment by De Villo Sloan on June 10, 2011 at 8:49pm

I hope I can find the Blaster Al Ackerman performance some place. Sonic asemics - I'm still reeling over that. Leave it to JMB

Comment by cheryl penn on June 10, 2011 at 2:26pm

A wonderful work received from Rob (Australia), dedicated to Satu Kaikkonen.

As Bruno has pointed out - the IMITATION  of pictograms, symbols, language and/or glyphs is well illustrated in these examples.

 

Comment by John M. Bennett on June 10, 2011 at 2:13pm

Bruno, re yr last question: some of my texts are completely asemic in the generally accepted sense of the term, yes - most of that work I did back in the 1980's.  Some of my newer work has asemic elements/lines/passages in that sense.

 

I also will "asemiquize" some passages in performance.  by putting something in my mouth, for example.

 

Blaster Al Ackerman has a great performance he used to do where he read some of his texts with a bar of soap in his mouth.  wonderful.

 

john

Comment by John M. Bennett on June 10, 2011 at 1:13pm

I

 

It's a sort of expressionistic sprechgesang, almost "singing", all improvised, done as part of performances, I don;t have any recordings handy (maybe someone recorded something out there somewhere?)  You have to be there!

Sometimes I do a bit of that with parts of my poems that are less semic before I move into the semic parts...

Comment by John M. Bennett on June 9, 2011 at 10:44pm

 

yes, but societies - which are organization - arose for many more reasons than early writing or writing-like codes.  I think the tendencies for organizing came BEFORE the writing, in fact.  Well - people have been debating this basic issues for centuries...

 

anyway, there is a long tradition of performing and/or vocalizing asemic texts; the futurists and dadaists did it all the time.  i have done it myself.  It's big fun!

Comment by De Villo Sloan on June 9, 2011 at 7:56pm

not to derail, BUT John also wrote earlier about visual and sonic aspects. I think that means the sound aspect of poetry? The spoken word? Poetry comes out of an oral tradition that was spoken and memorized? Then we've gone through the previous centuries where print dominated and the way it looks on the page became more pronounced. Some poets believe the way they set up the poem on the page and break the lines are a kind of performance score. If I have any of this right, I ponder over what asemic writing would SOUND like? Did i misread?

Comment by John M. Bennett on June 9, 2011 at 7:48pm

The idea that language IS society is a provocative kind of statement designed to make people think about it.  I think there are many many other things that form a society, or "society" as a general concept.  Tho I suppose if ine defines "society"  with a number of very specific and limiting parameters, the statement could ne true.  (Such mental gymnastics don;t interest me very much, personally; but I know many folks enjoy them!)

 

The line between asemic writing and abstract art that Bruno describes is somewhat similar to the line between visual poetry and "fine art"  that uses language and/or words

Comment by De Villo Sloan on June 9, 2011 at 7:38pm

visual poetry, concrete poetry, haptic poetry, object poetry....

 

I like what you are saying. The gap between bastract art and asemic writing, yes, that bears considering

Comment by De Villo Sloan on June 9, 2011 at 6:01pm

John's poem has dislocations of syntax as well as indeterminate words and word references. I also thought it was interesting to ask if that made it asemic. While I'd have to finally say no, there seems to be a real borderland between asemic writing and conventional text.

 

Some here do use many terms. I'd like to think it's the price you pay for common ground. The work posted seems to constantly defy and question those terms, though.

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