Can color be profound?
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Towards a definition of Material Poetics
group + instructor definitions:
- art through language that reaches out and interacts with tangible and sensory media
- formulating a code (that establishes a relationship between material and language) such that, when applied, allows for sensory perception and potential deciphering
- the concept manifesting in reality through the senses / reality defines the concept / the meaning is about and comes from the material
- poetry is the art form where language makes art of itself; poetics is the somewhat coherent articulation of a poet or a poetry's commitments and priorities (culturally, politically, aesthetically);material poetics understands poetry as an art form in which meaning is embodied in the medium, e.g., spoken or written language, and where this understanding of medium as expressive opens up a wide range possibilities of expressive media in poetry
a) use these frameworks to establish a short working definition for this class
b) discuss the question Can our definition include works of art which do not use spoken or written language?
c) discuss the question Can conceptual work be material?
Expressing an abstraction of language by creating a balanced relationship between materials and concepts. (This includes non-verbal, non-literary languages as well.)
The articulation of concepts, ideas and phenomena through the use of language/senses, in which the medium of expression and material is part of the understanding. Thinking about language itself as part of the process.
(Verbal language is not a must. Meaning can be expressed through signs and symbols, sensory experiences that do not engage in language but understandings.)
(Individual Definitions)
1. Based on Language, uses material
2. Struggle of signifier & signified
3. What you make it
4. The definition depends on the individual & their experience & exploration of the field and what they make of it.
5. A precise but changing moment in the massively undefined space between art & poetry
(2 people vote verbal rather than non-verbal, 3 vote "both")
6. Concept expressed through language and material, coded as a material idea. (Material Poetics need not be limited by verbal/spoken language. Other forms of communication can be included in the vocabulary of the material poet, assuming that language is any recognizable pattern that we can interpret.)
In this class we will work with the definition of Material Poetics as a commitment to a poetry where the medium expresses rather than carries the meaning, expanding the range of media, new and old, though retaining the commitment to the word.
Art through language interacting with tangible and sensory media
The poem as a material thing
Harnessing the real world in order to communicate an idea through poetry
Poetry the language of which harnesses the real world
Where language is sensory
The meaning includes the material.
Language makes art of itself.
The poet can become the material.
a poetry where the medium embodies the meaning.
the material is the message
Expressing an abstraction of language by creating a balanced relationship between materials and concepts. (This includes non-verbal, non-literary languages as well.)
The articulation of concepts, ideas and phenomena through the use of language/senses, in which the medium of expression and material is part of the understanding. Thinking about language itself as part of the process.
(Verbal language is not a must. Meaning can be expressed through signs and symbols, sensory experiences that do not engage in language but understandings.)
(Individual Definitions)
1. Based on Language, uses material
2. Struggle of signifier & signified
3. What you make it
4. The definition depends on the individual & their experience & exploration of the field and what they make of it.
5. A precise but changing moment in the massively undefined space between art & poetry
(2 people vote verbal rather than non-verbal, 3 vote "both")
6. Concept expressed through language and material, coded as a material idea. (Material Poetics need not be limited by verbal/spoken language. Other forms of communication can be included in the vocabulary of the material poet, assuming that language is any recognizable pattern that we can interpret.)
In this class we will work with the definition of Material Poetics as a commitment to a poetry where the medium expresses rather than carries the meaning, expanding the range of media, new and old, though retaining the commitment to the word.
Art through language interacting with tangible and sensory media
The poem as a material thing
Harnessing the real world in order to communicate an idea through poetry
Poetry the language of which harnesses the real world
Where language is sensory
The meaning includes the material.
Language makes art of itself.
The poet can become the material.
a poetry where the medium embodies the meaning.
the material is the message
Monday, February 27, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
The Present Order is the Disorder of the Future
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| Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Present Order Is the Disorder of the Future |
Nothing that says something
Xu Bing describes going back to the factory where his Book from the Sky had been printed from the 4,000 blocks he had hand-carved with invented characters:
Once Book from the Sky had been exhibited continually around the world to broad critical praise, I just thought of those carved blocks. When I returned to China in 1994, I went back to the factory once to retrieve the blocks, and to see everybody. I would pass a small bridge on my bicycle, then down a straight road lined with trees on one side. When I saw a yard with several rows of single-storey buildings, I would know I was almost there. But the factory gate was padlocked. I was peering inside when a middle-aged woman appeared from behind me and said: "The factory moved to the other side of the village." There was a boy at her side, and she sent him off: "Go find the factory director and tell him somebody's here!"
The new factory was not far from the old one, and the factory director was still the same, except that he now walked with some difficulty. He had come from his house, and revealed that something had happened there. It seemed that his youngest daughter had suffered a bout of hysteria. He called out to someone" "Go find young Xu's blocks, and bring them." With that, he turned to me and breathed his familiar sigh, "After the move, I'm not sure if they're still there." In a while, the same person returned, carrying a rice sack with a bunch of black stuff in it.
"Empty it out!"
The contents spilled onto the ground. There were the pieces of type. It looked like a pile of coal briquettes. But upon closer inspection, they really did have characters, with a thick layer of ink stuck to them. They looked as though they had been through a lot, not unlike the antique blocks. One complete chase and a few characters survived, which was enough to leave me quite satisfied. As for the model books with the 'coded' symbols, they were simply gone and that was that. But it was okay.
I asked: "What about Miss Bian and the others?"
"She went off and got married in some village, isn't that it?" Then his sigh. It seemed as though he were asking somebody else. I wonder, now that she was married, whether she was still leaning over a printing press all day. The factory had changed; the personnel had changed. What would never change was the printed sets of Book from the Sky.
On the road back, the trees were light green, and I carried a rice sack that was filled with something other than rice. In mind, I wasn't really sure what to think. From 1987 to 1991, what was I like? What did I do?
I can only say: a person who spent four years of his life making something that says nothing.
from Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book. John Cayley, Xu Bing & others. Ed. Katherine Spears. London" Quaritch, 2009.
Once Book from the Sky had been exhibited continually around the world to broad critical praise, I just thought of those carved blocks. When I returned to China in 1994, I went back to the factory once to retrieve the blocks, and to see everybody. I would pass a small bridge on my bicycle, then down a straight road lined with trees on one side. When I saw a yard with several rows of single-storey buildings, I would know I was almost there. But the factory gate was padlocked. I was peering inside when a middle-aged woman appeared from behind me and said: "The factory moved to the other side of the village." There was a boy at her side, and she sent him off: "Go find the factory director and tell him somebody's here!"
The new factory was not far from the old one, and the factory director was still the same, except that he now walked with some difficulty. He had come from his house, and revealed that something had happened there. It seemed that his youngest daughter had suffered a bout of hysteria. He called out to someone" "Go find young Xu's blocks, and bring them." With that, he turned to me and breathed his familiar sigh, "After the move, I'm not sure if they're still there." In a while, the same person returned, carrying a rice sack with a bunch of black stuff in it.
"Empty it out!"
The contents spilled onto the ground. There were the pieces of type. It looked like a pile of coal briquettes. But upon closer inspection, they really did have characters, with a thick layer of ink stuck to them. They looked as though they had been through a lot, not unlike the antique blocks. One complete chase and a few characters survived, which was enough to leave me quite satisfied. As for the model books with the 'coded' symbols, they were simply gone and that was that. But it was okay.
I asked: "What about Miss Bian and the others?"
"She went off and got married in some village, isn't that it?" Then his sigh. It seemed as though he were asking somebody else. I wonder, now that she was married, whether she was still leaning over a printing press all day. The factory had changed; the personnel had changed. What would never change was the printed sets of Book from the Sky.
On the road back, the trees were light green, and I carried a rice sack that was filled with something other than rice. In mind, I wasn't really sure what to think. From 1987 to 1991, what was I like? What did I do?
I can only say: a person who spent four years of his life making something that says nothing.
from Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book. John Cayley, Xu Bing & others. Ed. Katherine Spears. London" Quaritch, 2009.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
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