Asemic Front 2 Gallery: Asemics & Automatic Writing by EgiDia Elle (Turin, Italy)

 "At School - Scrittura Asemica 2" by EgiDia Elle (Turin, Italy)

 (April 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

 "At School - Scrittura Asemica 1" (April 2025) by EgiDia Elle

(Image courtesy of the artist)

 "Colori liturgici su mimetica militare - Pace disarmata - 

Papa Leone XIV" by EgiDia Elle (May 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the artist)

"Asemic Code" by EgiDia Elle (April 2025)

(Image courtesy of the artist)

"Asemic Cherokee - Tecnica Mista Su Carta" 

(April 2025) by EgiDia Elle 

(Image courtesy of the artist)

"Asemic Neolithic" by EgiDia Elle (April 2025)

(Image courtesy of the artist)

"Inconfinabile" by EgiDia Elle (June 2025)

(Image courtesy of the artist)

AF2 Review: "Dead Wax" A William S. Burroughs Asemic Fanzine (Spain)

Cover page of Dead Wax: Las escrituras del Tio Bill (fanzine edited 

by Francisco Galvez) (Spain) (Dead Wax 2020)

Recently I posted an Asemic Front 2 update of work by mail art friend Spanish visual poet Ferran Destemple. One of his ongoing projects is an intensive exploration of asemics by William S. Burroughs (WSB). Destemple has both isolated asemic anti-signs created by Burroughs, and he has entered into an other-worldly dialog with the departed William Lee. 

Ferran Destemple also sent me a copy of Dead Wax fanzine from 2020. This fanzine is created by Francisco Galvez and made from WSB’s writing that includes asemic anti-symbols. Thus Dead Wax both chronicles WSB’s imagination and vital interpretations and collaborations taking place. To learn more about DeadWax:

https://deadwaxzine.tumblr.com/ 

I see in Dead Wax extended and astute reflections on masculinity, guns, colonization and other themes. This is an excellent publication for those interested in vispo, asemics as well as Beats.

From Dead Wax: Las escrituras del Tio Bill (Spain) (Dead Wax 2020)

WSB’s reputation rose beyond the literary and into the realm of popular culture during his lifetime. David Cronenberg brought Naked Lunch into the filmic realm, fully aware WSB had a popcult persona that influenced the ultimate narrative.

Ferran Destemple identifies the mytho-poetic aspects of WSB's life and at the same time reveals his own formidable talents to us.

- De Villo Sloan

June 2, 2025

Elbridge, New York

 

From Dead Wax: Las escrituras del Tio Bill fanzine (Spain) 

(Deadwax 2020)

From Dead Wax: Las escrituras del Tio Bill fanzine (Spain) 

(Deadwax 2020)

AF2 Commentary: Hannah Weiner at the Intersection of Asemic Writing and Visual Poetry

Cover of WRITTEN IN THE ZERO ONE by Hannah Weiner. Published in 1985 

(edition of 350) by Pete Spence, Post-Neo Publications, Victoria, Australia. 

(Courtesy of Asemic Front Archive)

I have been reviewing presses where I believe contemporary iterations of visual, concrete, and asemic poetries first took root. Correspondent of many miles and years, Pete Spence, sent me a package that included a 24-page chapbook titled WRITTEN IN THE ZERO ONE by Hannah Weiner. Pete Spence produced this first edition of 350 in 1985.

New forms in visual poetry, the emergence of a new concrete poetry plus the articulation of a theory of asemics aka asemantic writing were shared on a global scale in the 1980s: new genres evolving to the present moment. Pete Spence and a few others – such as Miekal And in Wisconsin, USA – invented and disseminated these new forms of visual poetry to tiny and “underground” audiences.

Marveling at Weiner’s WRITTEN IN THE ZERO ONE, I can see from a distant perspective that critical theory and especially the work of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets had a pronounced impact on the evolution of visual poetry and asemic writing. Weiner’s interest in clairvoyance and apparitions of language make her of keen interest to calligraphers and glitchers alike who have roots in automatic writing.

Entering Weiner’s chapbook, I am drawn into a world where I am enmeshed in a net of language, which is the only way I can comprehend my reality. Weiner is engrossed in process, wordplay, the appearance of poly-voices: I find her discourse more and more engaging as I read. She presents the writing like a sound poem score. Not surprisingly, the words make structures on the page, and we are moving into the realm of a concrete poetry but far from George Herbert’s angel wings. 

From WRITTEN IN THE ZERO ONE by Hannah Weiner. Published in 1985 

(edition of 350) by Pete Spence, Post-Neo Publications, Victoria, Australia. 

(Courtesy of Asemic Front Archive)

A crucial difference between the stance of the New American Poetry and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing is that the former strove for immediacy and direct experience. Allen Ginsberg’s “first thought; best thought” is well-known. L=A=N=G-U=A=G=E writers insist our only experience of the world is language and, ultimately, language can only speak about itself. Regrettably, the nihilist view endures as visual poetries emerge as serious contenders in 21^st century literary culture. 

- De Villo Sloan

May 29, 2025

Elbridge, New York, USA

From WRITTEN IN THE ZERO ONE by Hannah Weiner. Published in 1985

 (edition of 350) by Pete Spence, Post-Neo Publications, Victoria, Australia. 

(Courtesy of Asemic Front Archive)

Burroughs is a Virus: Ferran Destemple's Asemic Clairvoyant Dialogs with "Uncle Bill" (Spain)

Cover of art catalog altered by Ferran Destemple (Barcelona, Spain) 

with asemic signs made with/by William S. Burroughs

 found in The Soft Machine and elsewhere. 

(no date) Courtesy of Asemic Front Archive. 

Burroughs is a Virus: Ferran Destemple's Asemic 

Clairvoyant Dialogs with "Uncle Bill"

I have written a number of Asemic Front 2 articles about a Spanish visual poet - Ferran Destemple - who is doing fascinating work with asemic signs by William S. Burroughs. See the Soft Machine article and other work by Destemple and Burroughs on AF2.

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2024/08/af2-commentary-ferran-destemples-asemic.html

A number of us currently involved in asemics discovered this esoteric practice via the work of Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. (Many more sources of asemic inspiration can be found and, I think, are worthy of in-depth exploration.) 

While examples of Gysin's calligraphic work are readily available, Burroughs' asemic output is less well known. Destemple "writes-over" Picasso (and cultural Modernity) with anti-symbols  invented by Burroughs. Destemple's asemics salvage incomprehensible lost languages from the wasteland of WSB's imagination.

Of even more interest to me are Destemple's asemic dialogs with the dearly departed Burroughs. The result is an asemiotic construct of beauty and complexity. We live in a time when musicians collaborate via AI with musical partners dead nearly a half century to make new hits. Ferran's dialogs with WSB are entirely reasonable - even expected.

I look forward to sharing more work by Ferran Destemple. His kind missive explains much and is so articulate I give you the full text:  

Dear De Villo, 

I am sending you an asemic piece by Uncle Bill (Burroughs). In this work, Bill's asemic writing is inscribed over a Picasso art catalog. It is a dialog between two artists' visions: Burroughs' (writing) and Picasso's (paint), the language virus, the writing virus, injects Picasso's drawings.

Uncle Bill is making more work with printed texts by other artists. He is also working on pieces of asemic writing with AI. 

I will send you more work soon.

Best regards,

- Ferran Destemple

April 14, 2025

Cabrils, Spain

From altered art catalog by Ferran Destemple (Spain) 

with asemic signs by William S. Burroughs.

(no date) (Courtesy of Asemic Front Archive.)

From altered art catalog by Ferran Destemple (Spain) 

with asemic signs by William S. Burroughs.

(no date) (Courtesy of Asemic Front Archive.)

From altered art catalog by Ferran Destemple (Spain) 

with asemic signs by William S. Burroughs.

(no date) (Courtesy of Asemic Front Archive.)

From altered art catalog by Ferran Destemple (Spain) 

with asemic signs by William S. Burroughs.

(no date) (Courtesy of Asemic Front Archive.)

"Pharmacological Series" - New Visual Poetry by Laura Kerr (Canada)

"Still Life With Medicine" by Laura Kerr (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) 

(May 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

My Pharmacological Series

by Laura Kerr

is a poetic diagnostic series that is part visual poetry and part conceptual critique. It explores

how language, like medicine, is dosed, delayed, over-prescribed, and sometimes ineffective.

My work does not promise cures. It functions more like poetic capsules:

distilled, delayed, mislabeled, or blank.

Where Damien Hirst gave us the cabinet, I give you the chart. The insert. The unread scan.

Each image is a fragment of medicalized language -

glitched, withheld, or still processing.

This is pharma-poetics as ghost report.

a place where meaning is pending,

prescriptions overflow,

and the poem refuses its own diagnosis.

-SSS-

"A/Distilling/X-Ray []" by Laura Kerr (May 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

"500 mg. Poem" by Laura Kerr (May 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

"Monochrome Field: Complete with PILL Folded Inside" 

by Laura Kerr (May 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

"Dossier of a Post-Human Therapist" by Laura Kerr (May 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the artist)