The Theory of Spontaneous Composition & Asemics by Yayoi S.W.

Asemic visual poetry by Yayoi S.W. (Kirkland, Washington, USA)

 

 

 

Yayoi S.W. is an Asemic Front regular. I am always thrilled to receive her work, which usually arrives via snail mail. She is obviously a very talented visual artist and currently participates in the international mail art network. The network has long been an important conduit for concrete and visual poetry and now asemic writing.

 

Yayoi S.W. integrates image-text concepts into her art with, I believe, tremendous success. She embraces avant concepts - many derived or related to Fluxus - that have permeated the international mail art network for decades. These include exploring the temporal and material nature of art, all that is implied in the notion of "anti-art," and an allegiance to the spontaneous, intuitive and the mechanisms of "chance operations." In short, Yayoi S.W. either looked at the art around her in the network and/or was a kindred soul who found a welcoming community (which is the case for most people who stumbled into the network over the years and stayed.)

 

From what I see, Yayoi's output as she shares original pieces with a large art community is prolific. Her growing body of work, along with this beautiful new piece on AF2, has led me to reflect on how amenable asemic writing is to those who extol the benefits of the

"spontaneous." This includes the Romantics, Surrealists (automatic writing and drawing),  and Beats (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg's "First thought best thought" as well as, of course, Burroughs and Gysin.)

 

Asemic writing/art is expressive and captivating when the writer creates spontaneously and without rational planning, allowing a direct connection to the unconscious. This applies to calligraphy and - as a further example - juxtaposing images in a collage by associative rather than linear connections. Randomness also plays a part in spontaneous composition.

 

Of course, asemics is a vast area not fully explored. Some asemicists create fonts, symbols, structures - ultimately complex artificial languages - or better, systems that give the appearance of being languages. In order to be asemic, they cannot be "read" in any conventional way. They are a code that can never be deciphered because behind the façade is not another system that conveys meaning. Asemic writing that is composed following rational precepts can also produce phenomenal results. However, I find myself engaging more with asemics that are rooted in Romantic spontaneity.  

 

Precisely what the discovery of and interest in asemic writing will reveal about the nature of

language, discourse and poetics is at this time a mystery. But I believe the artists and writers - such as Yayoi S.W. - will bring great revelations.

 

- DVS