Artist's book by Rebecca Resinski (published by Cukoo Grey, Arkansas, USA)
In a previous Asemic Front 2 review (June 29, 2019), I wrote about reading work by Jay Snodgrass as "asemic gothic." I proposed Snodgrass had effectively synthesized elements of medieval gothic art (calligraphy in particular) with the post-avant conceptualism of asemic writing and visual poetry. Now, I am pleased to share another work - this time by AF2 contributor Rebecca Resinski - that blends contemporary visual poetry with the gothic literary mode (a later strain than Jay Snodgrass's sources but still part of a great gothic tree growing through time and culture).
Rebecca Resinski's Gothic: A Room With Three Windows is another elegantly produced and appropriately minimal artist's book (a total of 10 panels) by Cuckoo Grey editions. Resinski is a visual poet working in the concrete poetry tradition (or "pattern poetry" as Dick Higgins preferred to call it). Her approach is still language-centered even though forms are largely determined by geometry and, by extension, the physical constraints of the book.
Resinski is one of a number of contemporary poets at places around the globe who are basing their work in concrete poetry but also contributing to its evolution. Thus we can apply terms such "neo-concrete" and "new concrete" to their compositions in an era when some visual poets have abandoned text completely in favor of image sequences and associations. A concrete poetry revival is an interesting trend to note. I believe Gothic is a very interesting, even important, addition to contemporary concrete poetry.
Gothic: A Room With Three Windows by Rebecca Resinski
The content of Gothic deserves special attention. Resinski employs the post-avant method of "appropriated" text. Further, the source material is parsed (or "cut-up" as William S. Burroughs called it) and re-combined into new structures with new possibilities for meaning.
Her source text is Ann Radcliffe's novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Unlike much current writing by appropriation that focuses on public and/or media discourse, internet language and literary works connected to the post-avant, Resinski chooses an 18th century literary text by a woman. (Most avant and post-avant art is ahistorical. After several generations this mode can become problematic in terms of the societal function of culture: In other words, a permanent culture of protest denies artists the very mechanisms needed to achieve a healthy cultural evolution.) Gothic offers an alternative to the post-avant dilemma and a new possibility for cultural continuity in a post-literate society.
The Mysteries of Udolpho was popular in its time but was maligned by critics (as was most gothic fiction). Today the narrative has been elevated in literary history and is regarded as a key text in gothic fiction aka Dark Romanticism. Gothic fiction has made huge and ongoing contributions to popular culture. Resinski's close examination of gothic fiction through text appropriation and the formal qualities of concrete poetry brings the reader/viewer insights into the literary gothic as well as the emotional experience of the gothic mode; after all, the gothic is said to be a literature of "feeling" over "reason."
- De Villo Sloan
Her source text is Ann Radcliffe's novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Unlike much current writing by appropriation that focuses on public and/or media discourse, internet language and literary works connected to the post-avant, Resinski chooses an 18th century literary text by a woman. (Most avant and post-avant art is ahistorical. After several generations this mode can become problematic in terms of the societal function of culture: In other words, a permanent culture of protest denies artists the very mechanisms needed to achieve a healthy cultural evolution.) Gothic offers an alternative to the post-avant dilemma and a new possibility for cultural continuity in a post-literate society.
The Mysteries of Udolpho was popular in its time but was maligned by critics (as was most gothic fiction). Today the narrative has been elevated in literary history and is regarded as a key text in gothic fiction aka Dark Romanticism. Gothic fiction has made huge and ongoing contributions to popular culture. Resinski's close examination of gothic fiction through text appropriation and the formal qualities of concrete poetry brings the reader/viewer insights into the literary gothic as well as the emotional experience of the gothic mode; after all, the gothic is said to be a literature of "feeling" over "reason."
- De Villo Sloan
By Rebecca Resinski
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