Asemic Front 2: Vispo Trashpo by Jim Leftwich (Part 1)

Visual poetry by Jim Leftwich (Roanoke, Virginia, USA)

Visual poet Jim Leftwich generously mailed me several dozen pieces he created. I am using some of them for Asemic Front 2 collab material & archiving the rest. However, I find the work of great significance and am sharing a liberal selection with the broad AF2 group via this blog (thank you as ever for your continuing interest!) before they are integrated into new compositions and/or dutifully cataloged.

Jim Leftwich is well-known in the visual poetry community, in the Eternal Network (mail art) and as a writer and artist of an experimental bent. I am sure he is of particular interest to the Asemic Front project audience because - along with Australian Tim Gaze - Leftwich is widely given credit for having coined the term "asemic" in the mid-1990s to describe a previously undefined genre within visual poetry thus helping spark the current global artistic mania - some even call it a movement - to produce asemic texts and art.

It should also be noted that Leftwich has been publically critical and outspoken about the use of the term "asemic." He has questioned the linguistic theory that has emerged associated with asemic writing as well as the validity of abstract art variants that are currently popular; instead, it is my understanding he recommends the use of the term "pansemic" as a corrective and that (asemics-)pansemics belong firmly in the realm of visual poetry.

Alas, the use of the term "asemic" has escaped from Pandora's Box, as they say. The term "asemic" is the signifying cat escaped from the metaphorical bag. In other words, once the asemic cat is loosed upon the world it is damned hard to bag it again. Thus, with sincere apologies to Jim Leftwich who has so good-heartedly shared with AF2, I will not rename my humble project Pansemic Front.

In the international mail art network, Jim Leftwich is also known for (along with Diane Keys) launching Trashpo, a mail art genre that has inspired artists and influenced countless works, exhibits and performances for the last decade. Trashpo is a form of vispo created with found material. The pieces in this blog have more in common with Leftwich's first Trashpo compositions than his (asemic-)pansemic work. The decomposition of language, however is a trait found in asemic-pansemic pieces and Trashpo. The collabs, indeed, will likely have strong pansemic elements.

- DVS