Asemic Writing for Mail-Artists

Asemic writing for mail-artists

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  • De Villo Sloan

    Fantastic Kerri. I like the way the background also has smoky or ghostly asemics.

    Here's more plastic comb asemic calligraphy. Guess I should callit "Parted in the Middle" or something.

  • Kerri Pullo

    I like this one a lot DVS! it somehow reminds me of my grandmother's backyard....her backyared closely, dangerously closely, bordered railroad tracks lined with seemingly never ending beautiful asemic sculpture... courtesy of Commonwealth Edison.

  • De Villo Sloan

    Kerri, Commonwealth Edison - sounds like Boston.

    Then you probably saw at M-L that I deem the plastic comb calligraphy Dark wall's worst work, worse even then the mashed PB&J sandwich on the scanner bed.

    BUT they do seem to have the same quality as these recent asemic inkblot experiments by Cheryl Penn, you, Guido and others. And you know that Rorschach inkblot test was a tool in classic Freudian analysis and is still considered a valid psychological test today. It all hinges around what each individual sees in the inkblots, indeed what they project on it.

    So I think what you see in the work is very interesting. Only it is holding up a mirror. What you see is yourself.

  • Kerri Pullo

    it does sound like Boston....interestingly I have lived on Comm Ave! But, it is also Chicago's Electric Co.... my father worked there as an electrical engineer early '80's.

  • Kerri Pullo

     Electrasemic Sculpture

  • fátima queiroz

  • fátima queiroz

  • fátima queiroz

    typewriter

  • De Villo Sloan

    Thank you very much Fatima! Back to basics concrete poetry. Wonderful!

    Now when you get into creating new symbols with overlaid letters, suggestions of syntax or different ways of thinking about linearity by the way things are structured on the page, that might be considered asemic.

  • Neil Gordon

    YEY! Typewriter art!!! Life in analog....

    DVS- Have been getting a lot of Hannah Wiener books from inter-library-loan, one even from the Naropa Institute Library! Hanah had an interesting approach to vispo and concrete at times,

    You once mentioned you may have some copies of stuff she had done on some kind of mass -mailing that was popular at the time,-- if you have any copies of the stuff i would be happy to reimburse you for "Xeroxing" them for me!

  • De Villo Sloan

    @ Kerri - note how your pic of the electric plant matches the concrete work Fatima & I posted.

    A lot of this kind of work - Matt Stolte achieves this a lot - seems industrial & metalloid. The repetition & regularity probably has something to do with it.

    In contrast, asemicists like Cheryl Penn seem to be developing something that is far more organic - given context by some earlier discussions of bio-poetry and Michael Mc Clure (using DNA models in some of his own work) made the strange but intriguing prediction poems in the future will evolve into living organisms. Now some poems I would be afraid to see as living organisms, but an interesting idea from the fella who penned: "Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."

  • De Villo Sloan

    Neil, yeah I do have Hannah Weiner manuscripts that were originally mimeoed or photocopied for the network. Gotta dig deep into the archives but will do my best.

    You know, a lot what she did had a component of concrete or visual poetry now that you mention it. (I would be tempted to keep that Naropa stamped copy.)

    It was great for her that she could practically go mainstream and do those books with good publishers.

    When Silliman did his "In the American Tree" anthology he included a bunch of folks whom he considered near predecessors of Langpo, like Bern Porter, Jackson MacLow, and Hannah Weiner - that definitely brought her from the underground and into a bigger field, which can be good and bad. I never thought she was really Langpo, maybe the opposite in fact, but I've always loved her work.

    Glad you found it.

  • Neil Gordon

    When i saw the Naropa stamp i almost fell out of my Chair, i may copy it to use in mail art! If you can dig stuff up, no rush!& like i said i will reimburse for the copies...

    i will check w/ the library for the Silliman bk., Ben Porter, and Mac Low!

    Thanks, you have an encyclopedic knowledge of this material, its very helpful DVS!

  • Neil Gordon

    Nice overlays sometimes i try that w/ the old printer,,, Great typewriter F.Q, and Electrosemics Pulse Pullo

  • Neil Gordon

    Wow, love the plastic comb asemics DVS, and the Karl Kempton stuff!, Kerri;your work is incredible! SOOO FLOWING>>>

  • De Villo Sloan

    Karl Kempton is one of the Old Masters from the era of Richard Kostelanetz (spg?), Emmet Wiliams at Higgins' Something Else Press.

    I think Ron Silliman is teaching at Naropa this summer - take a road trip to Boulder.

    But a long way from Sanders' Investigative Poetry Seminars, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Leary, Jerry Garcia bankrolling the Jack Kerouac conference. Oh well.

  • De Villo Sloan

    Silliman's anthology In the American Tree (I think originally published by the Poetry Foundation in Orono, Maine) was one of the things that contributed to the rise of Langpo.

    It was a smaller scale version of what Don Allen achieved with the epic New American Poetry in 1960 and the Butterick/Allen retread in the 80s called the Postmoderns or something.

    How the most obscure poets on the planet like Olson and Spicer became icons - well that was a feat.

  • Neil Gordon

    Thanks DVS,wish i could high-tail it to Naropa!

  • Kerri Pullo

    Pullo Family Eggsemic Collab

  • De Villo Sloan

    Cool pic, Kerri.

    I'm glad you rescued me from delivering a rant on the state of contemporary poetry.

    Which came first? The pollo or the egg?

  • Kerri Pullo

    hahaha! good question. I'll withhold my rant on that! I'm still trying to avoid egg in the face.

  • fátima queiroz

    beautiful poem De Villo!
    I have many difficulties in the typewriter, I find it very difficult and you can not make mistakes

  • Guido Vermeulen

    GREETINGS FROM LEWIS & HARRIS, Part 1

    Around 1992 the idea started of personal encounters between networkers all over the globe, A KIND OF MAIL ART TRAVELING.
    A congress happened each time mail artists met each other!
    Contested by some in the network (no personal meetings, see the statements of Keith Bates in the UK) many joined this movement of personal and collective encounters.

    My first publication to document a personal effort happened in 1994, when I traveled to Scotland.
    Second traveling to Scotland happened in 1996 in the company of Marilyn Dammann, a networker from the USA with Scottish and Irish roots.

    Second edition of the book (61-120) published in 1995 by Lingua & Littera, Liza Leyla, Belgium.

    PART 1 of this book with automatic drawings, cut up poems, glue painting and photo of the standing stones of Callanish at the isle of Lewis and Harris... (Western Hebrids)

    More images on a new blog in development:

    http://mailartinternationale.blogspot.be

    GV

  • Guido Vermeulen

    JACQUES BERNIMOLIN, 1923 - 1995

    Second part of my artist book publication
    Greetings from Lewis & Harris, 1994, second edition in 1995 (61-120) by Lingua & Littera, Liza Leyla, Belgium

    containing automatic drawings by Jacques
    Bernimolin, a poet and pharmacist who followed
    the experiments of Henri Michaux and Aldous Huxley (Connaissance par les gouffres / Gates of perception). Next to his amazing vispo work he became a rap poet at an elderly age.
    After he died in a retirement home an art commando of friends raided the place to save his artistic heritage

    from destruction.
    His works are scattered between Belgium and France and in the hands of close friends...

    More works are visible on

    http://mailartinternationale.blogspot.com

  • Guido Vermeulen

    IF YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE in the mailartinternationale blog please mail me your email address so I can invite you as contributor.

    Reserves: I want people who have an historic point of view on mail art and are able to surpass the sometimes silly contradictions of the present.

    People like Guy Bleus, Ruud Janssen, Geert De Decker, John Held Jr, Clemente Padin, Wilfried Nold, Henning Mittendorf, Gianni Simone, Craig Saper, Vittore Baroni and others.

    If you think you can match them, please email me at signsstones@yahoo.com

  • De Villo Sloan

    Fatime, I agree the old typewriters are very hard to work with compared to any sort of word processing or photoshop to make concrete poetry. Cheryl Penn, for one, still uses a typewriter for some things. Folks might remember her Zalop concerto that used a standard typewriter:

  • De Villo Sloan

    & Guido, thanks for posting that work.

    I've been promising to take on this automatic writing/drawing-asemic connection. Interesting territory. Someday.

  • Kerri Pullo

  • Kerri Pullo

  • Kerri Pullo

  • Rebecca Guyver

    St Andrews, Scotland sandsemics

  • Rebecca Guyver

    BTW Guido and Kerri, I hung your beautiful asemics book (+ the envelope and other contents from Guido) at the Forest Cafe exhibition (memories are made of this). I did it with trepidation as one can't help but worry that some fan might not be able to resist slipping it in their pocket, but when I checked on Monday it still looked great.  

  • Kerri Pullo

    Thanks Rebecca!

  • Neil Gordon

    WoW; sandsemics w/ paw prints! Looks like a raccoon, opossum?? Beautiful!

  • De Villo Sloan

    Fantastic Rebecca!  A great concept for the book/object, the haptic/asemic book.

    & is that a new kind of pawtry? Or a visit from the pawpers?

  • fátima queiroz

    Yes, De Villo is very complicated ... I have a hard think more beautiful

  • Rebecca Guyver

    DVS, pawsibly plausible.

  • De Villo Sloan

    An imp-pawster among us!

  • De Villo Sloan

    Putting together a blog, I came across this beautiful work by Rosa Gravino (Rosaria, Argentina) from Asemics 16 collaborative book edition #5:

  • Kerri Pullo

    wow this Rosa Gravino is stunning!

  • De Villo Sloan

    Rosa is a Vispo All Star

  • John M. Bennett

    I.m guest-editing the blog TRUCK this month - http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.com/ - so send me some stuff, text/visuals/whatever, for consideration.  visual as jpgs please.  send to bennettjohnm@gmail.com, and put TRUCK at head of subject field.

    thanks

    john

  • Guido Vermeulen

    About mail art disappearing into other pockets / it is mail art that found another destination! No worries as far as I am concerned..

  • Kerri Pullo

  • John M. Bennett

    would like to see some good stuff for TRUCK which I'm guest-editiing this month.  It's at http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.com/

    Send stuff to bennettjohnm@gmail.com, and put the work TRUCK at head of subject field

    john

  • De Villo Sloan

    C'mon all students of the Martha Stuart School of Asemic Wallpaper! JMB needs a hand here! A friend in need is a friend indeed.

  • Rebecca Guyver

    Tragic news: just got the mail art back from The Forest and the one thing that I've noticed that is missing is the Pullo/Vermeulen collab.  The first thing I did this morning was to email, hoping it turns up.  I am grief stricken. And if it isn't somewhere safe waiting to be mailed back to me, I hope someone really special is enjoying it.

  • De Villo Sloan

    I am unveiling two batches of work by Kerri Pullo I've been sitting on for too long. Fantastic stuff including an asemic book/folio:

    As ever, more at MinXus-Lynxus:

    http://minxuslynxus2.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/minxus-mail-bag-treas...

  • Kerri Pullo

    Many thanks to Guido for sending ET Asemics!

  • De Villo Sloan

    A very cool posting on "Beyond the Pale" today. A poem by Tom Clark and photos by visual poet Marie Wintzer. Black Mountain/NY School meets vispo. 

    http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-indifferent-man-things...