Asemic Writing for Mail-Artists

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Comment by De Villo Sloan on November 25, 2014 at 3:28pm

Some great asemic work by Carlyle Baker appears on the Post-Literate blog today (November 25). Carl is an active IUOMA member and his work has appeared on the M-L blog.

http://thenewpostliterate.blogspot.com/

Comment by Jan Hodgman on November 24, 2014 at 5:26pm

a jolly laugh starts the day

as the scabby apples

drop.

Comment by John M. Bennett on November 24, 2014 at 5:24pm

Lembratentive, Jan!

bingabinga

john

Comment by Jan Hodgman on November 24, 2014 at 5:22pm

John,after downloading Textis Globbolalicus Vol. III I can truly say it is lumivencent! Not only is it phintical in its syntefic nature, but the mictic surfolly really "cranks your crotch." Binga binga, indeed!

Comment by John M. Bennett on November 24, 2014 at 8:45am

I suppose the language I invented, Globbolalia, and the poetry I wrote using it, can be considered asemic, in that it's not a language one could make a dictionary for.  Most words are only used once!  And it certainly can be performed, as it has been, by me and others.  The definitive books are available in various formats - Textis Globbolalicus, in 3 volumes, you can find them with a Google search.

Comment by Terry Owenby on November 24, 2014 at 3:19am

As a novice to asemics and asemic writing, I've been reading and appreciating the comments and views on it here. Thanks everyone for the recent insights. Jan, thanks for your nice words about my card. Perhaps I'll try the purist approach next time. In a way, I have an easier time understanding the purist approach. It makes sense to call it "writing" if it's something that looks like a language.  I once read about creating one's own alphabet using made-up symbols. It might be fun to try it, then create an asemics writing with it. We'll see. :-)

Comment by Jan Hodgman on November 23, 2014 at 11:37pm

I'm very familiar with "word salad" with my mother's decline into Alzheimer's back in the 90's. I even composed poetry around some of her phrases, like "winking in their troubles." Intended meaning? Not quite random, often still syntactically correct....Understandable if I was riding a wave of intimate communication?

I often talk gibberish to my dog---he seems to understand it about as well as he does my English :)

In a related vein, as a Zen priest and now nondual coach and facilitator I'm fascinated by the use of language to indicate This, that stands in for contentless awareness. Of course, as it's truly without content, words will never suffice, AND there is a way that words can take us beyond words. The 13th century Zen master Dogen was a master of phrases like, "mountains walking" that turned language (or is it our brains??) on their heads to bring about new ways of experiencing "reality"  as do many koans. But this is a looooong subject (and at the same time very short.....)   KATZ!!!

Comment by De Villo Sloan on November 23, 2014 at 11:18pm

Asemic sign language - great!

When I was just getting into this back during the book projects (I've known about asemic writing for a long time but never really dug deep) John Bennett (JMB) talked about "spoken word asemics" (not sure what he called it) but people who do public performances and readings of asemics. First, I couldn't imagine how it could be done. He explained how people did various things akin to stuttering, talking with things stuffed in their mouths, speaking in tongues rants - then I thought it was the funniest thing I ever heard. I guess there are recordings of asemic performances. Blaster Al did them, I think. Someone said Ray Johnson did them.

So you're only limited by your imagination. People write asemic music on music score paper. I've never heard it performed but imagine that exists also.

"Word salad" - great topic Kerri! Certainly in poetry, DaDaist and a lot of postmodern, there is cut-up, word salad type constructs that have similarities to schizophrenia and other kinds of disassociation, while the writers are consciously using the fragmentation techniques to achieve an effect.

Certainly a lot of the "word salad" compositions (a lot of Langpo is like that) is a bridge between conventional writing and asemics. In some cases, the fragmentation is so severe it might be considered asemic because meaning is impossible to determine.

Comment by Kerri Pullo on November 23, 2014 at 10:47pm

Jan it is very interesting and also helpful I think that you bring up asemics and sign language! Yes indeed there can be asemic sign language. I would not doubt there are Asemic ASL Performance Artists out there. However, that was not what happened with Obama's interpreter at Nelson Mandela's funeral. In that case, the interpreter had experienced a symptom of schizophrenia that is called "word salad." Word salad is a confused mixture of seemingly random words and phrases from the person's native language, therefore, semantics are present. 

Comment by De Villo Sloan on November 23, 2014 at 8:59pm

Great questions and observations, Jan.

That's why I can appreciate the position of asemic "purists" even if I don't personally follow it or encourage it.

Above is an asemic piece Geof Huth sent me. You can see just how close it is to cursive English while at the same time being elusive in terms of meaning. This would be a traditional piece, IMHO. (Geof is a fantastic visual poet btw.)

Asemics or asemic writing is different from images because asemics is supposed to suggest a language without having any real meaning. (Hence the discussion about codes not long ago.)

(This gets very theoretical. A picture of an apple is not language. But the word "apple" is language. In asemic writing, the language has been disconnected from that which it is supposed to signify. So you have strings of "meaningless signifiers.") Any way...

So it's sort of fake language. I've seen people refer to it as a kind of weak replication of language and thus inferior to language.

But so many people are experimenting with asemic writing these days using so many novel approaches that it's evolving beyond the original definition. To satisfy everybody in this group, I conceded much of the work was asemic-vispo hybrid.

A lot of visual artists post work they think is asemic on FB. And some of the asemic writers get really steamed because anything similar to abstract expressionism isn't necessarily asemic, although it might be.

Mail-artists, because vispo and concrete poetry is so prevalent, usually have a pretty good sense of what asemic writing is and isn't. Often it's on an intuitive level. There are always cases open for debate and folks have to agree to disagree.

In our great debate here, Moan Lisa finally proclaimed, "Everything is asemic." Well, that didn't go over well and the tense part of the debate began.

But I'd say generally the "language suggestive" clause provides an anchor.

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