Corrupted File Concrete "Mahjong default" : Collabs by Eduardo Cardoso & De Villo Sloan

 

Collab by Eduardo Cardoso (Sines, Portugal) 

& De Villo Sloan (Auburn, New York, USA)

"Mahjong default" by De Villo Sloan (July 16, 2021)

Collab by Eduardo Cardoso (Sines, Portugal)  

& De Villo Sloan (Auburn, New York, USA)

Collab by Eduardo Cardoso (Sines, Portugal) 

& De Villo Sloan (Auburn, New York, USA)

New Image-Text by Federico Federici (Berlin)

By Federico Federici (Berlin, Germany)

Acclaimed as a physicist, conceptual artist and author, I am proud that Federico Federici has been a longtime contributor of his work to the Asemic Front Project. Today I am very pleased to share new, and I think significant, pieces by Federici with the AF2 audience.

During the ongoing run of Asemic Front and now Asemic Front 2, Federico Federici has become a noted visual poet internationally, especially for his theoretically and conceptually based explorations of asemic writing. 

The Asemic Front Project has been extremely fortunate, to a modest degree at least, to document the evolution of Federici's work. He also has earned a place as a very innovative member of the "The New Concrete Poets" (aka "Neo-Concrete Poets"). His work has been of relevance to AF2.

http://federicofederici.net/ 

These Federici pieces titled "Nights on the Highway" have a spontaneous fieldwork, "on the road" quality. Federici, however, is not a vacuous Warholian presence mechanically documenting. Using juxtapositions of image (vispo by Luc Fierens is a fine example for visual poetics) Federici constructs a meditation on signification, representation, materiality & the simulacra.

- De Villo Sloan

By Federico Federici (Berlin, Germany)

By Federico Federici (Berlin, Germany)

Asemic Front 2 Commentary: "Cooking as Synonym 4 Jamming" by Adriana Kobor

 

Screensave vispo by Adriana Kobor (Italy)

Adriána Kóbor

Yesterday at 3:39 PM  · 

De Villo Sloan in the newsfeed and my preprandial hypertension gives way to a superstition I can hardly overcome now.

Cooking as synonym for jamming. Jimming Pavlovian twinkles. Overhours over overhours. I can't let go of this strange feeling. Sinatra's synus node would nod on this.

Mine is a twinkling Hawkingian garbage bin.

Never mind, those happy hours sound like a faraway song in a vet's back office.

Death is always around as a doom. De Villo's poetic self's autohypnosis.

I would have preferred to write this with mere initials, but I'm so nervous right now that any abstraction would damage the encircled c's righteously unelliptic sphere.

The newsfeed is hungry, so we gotta feed it.

_______________________________________________

"Neuronal pressure, axonal exchange. Spare me a light bulb, dear Darkness of midnight nuns. Nons. Noons."

- Adriana Kobor

_______________________________________

Ouch. Hyperbolic pressure. Anisotropy.

Whatever you've done, you'll always be conscious about the fact that "you haven't done it (,) as well".

Those wee small hours of the evening must pass, a looming surgery of the surging thought.

The fool moon seriously damages the CNS, as bad weather does so with the PNS.

Neuronal pressure, axonal exchange. Spare me a light bulb, dear Darkness of midnight nuns. Nons. Noons.

And sorry for coinvolturism, De Villo.

As anything else, even this was only and exclusively written in the name of the lobotomized holey spirit, treated repeatedly with ECT. Etc. Et al.

- Adriana Kobor, September 22, 2021

Editor's Note: Adriana Kobor corresponds with Asemic Front 2 from Italy. 

Two New Collabs by Diane Keys & John M. Bennett

 

Collab by John M. Bennett (Ohio, USA) & Diane Keys (Illinois, USA)  

(completed September 2021)

Collab by John M. Bennett (Ohio, USA) & Diane Keys (Illinois, USA)  

Asemic Front 2 Review: Toward Asemic Minimalism: "Anthology of one letter poems" edited by Piotr Szreniawski

 

Antologia wierzy jednoliterowych (Anthology of one letter poems)

Piotr Szreniawski, Editor

wydawnietwo neopoemiksowe

Lublin 2021  124 pages

Free e-book (link provided)

by De Villo Sloan

Piotr Szreniawski has given us an extraordinary gift with the publication of Antologia wierzy jednoliterowych (Anthology of one letter poems), an e-book he edited, assembled and now makes available around the globe. You can "cut to the chase" easily with a click below, save the book as a resource & explore the world of monopoeticz at your leisure (and without fee):

http://skr.comicgenesis.com/jednoliterowe.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3BejzN_MCGI6AjRcuJVAepC1qG990vr8MOZixaAaRqv8xV1xQXCBDYPyE

For documentation purposes, however, here is a list of anthology contributors: Aid, Rosaire Appel, Sacha Archer, Volodymyr Bilyk, Andrew Brenza, Roland Dill, Tim Gaze, Geof Huth, Satu Kaikonen, Piotr Kasperowicz, David Kjellin, Karri Kokko, Stephen Nelson, Michael Orr (Orzechowski), Dave Read, Aziza Ibragimova Mystic Rose,  Denis Smith, Sven Staelens and Andrew Topel. 

By Andrew Topel from Anthology of one letter poems (2021)

The one letter poem was in ascendency during the 20th century, even if embraced cautiously as a prank, curiosity and/or avant garde provocation. The tensions then - consider Aram Saroyan - mostly concerned the conceptual viability of a one word poem. Sub-word fragmentation appeared among more marginal constituencies, such as sound and concrete poetry.

Szreniawski has chosen some work within the historical continuum. He also reveals just how far contemporary visual poets have departed from their roots to transform the single sign poem.  The Anthology of one word poems is an indicator this form is likely to have a continued ascendency and evolution in the post-literate 21st century.

In his announcement of the anthology's release, Geof Huth - a minimalist visual poet widely acclaimed - discussed the state of the form in helpful terms: "Today, Piotr Szreniawski released Anthology of one letter poems, a small but also rich anthology of two kinds of visual poems: 1. what I call invented choerms and 2. poems that repeat the same letter in a single poem. This description of mine makes the anthology seem boring, yet it is a visual delight. Plenty of pieces by me and other better visual poets appear herein, so take a look for a brief but reverberating state of bliss."

By Geof Huth from Anthology of one letter poems (2021)

The anthology achieves closure with especially powerful sequences. Sections by Geof Huth and Sacha Archer are stellar examples. Rosaire Appel's stamp series radiates gentle energy and intimate tonal qualities that only she seems capable of attaining; these are especially fine examples. In terms of linear reading, I find the edition builds momentum as it moves forward; and it took me several reads to pinpoint the ending sequences I wanted to study closely.  

I find I am drawn to the poems that seem to be part of a discernible series arranged thoughtfully by the poet and/or editor (or any sequence with structural characteristics). Perhaps the latent power of the minimalist poem is not in its apparent isolation and self-sufficiency but in its unique variability when placed in different contexts. 

The one letter poem has evolved, from what I see, mostly through the application of postavant tropes, such as performance, conceptual writing, art actions, object poems, found material, etc. Three decades of visual poetry innovations have contributed to healthy growth in the one letter genre. The merging of image-text that we see in visual poetics has altered the field for minimalism.

Especially from the AF2 perspective I also note the considerable impact the asemic writing movement has had on the one letter poem, if one sees the anthology as representative, and I do. The asemicists, or visual poets making a foray into these waters, have created calligraphic, collaged and concrete "glyphs."

Those practicing "deconstructive asemics" have produced an astonishing array of pulverized non symbols, recombined language fragments, cracked prosody debris that are expanding the idea of the one letter poem. Indulge me, please, as I coin more asemic jargon and suggest some of the most interesting one letter pieces today compose using "sub-semic particles."

The anthology of one letter poems is a must-have, must-read look into the state of a fascinating poetic genre positioned for a bright future.

- De Villo Sloan

A Semic Rosetta Stone? On A Re-discovered Collab by John M. Bennett & Jim Leftwich

 

Collab by John M. Bennett (Ohio, USA) & Jim Leftwich (Virginia, USA) 

(August 2018) (Images courtesy of John M. Bennett)

Thanks to John M. Bennett's (JMB) excellent documentation, I came across this eye-catching vispo collab by JMB & Jim Leftwich made in August of 2018. 

I think it is of some interest to the Asemic Front 2 audience. The poets combine "semic" (a go-to jargon descriptor that has emerged in asemics to identify signs that communicate "meaning" & that can be read as conventional text) with abstract calligraphy, deconstructed text & linear associations between the various signs. The work suggests relationships between the symbols, words (& sometimes the unintelligible).

Asemics & pansemics have wide-ranging, often contradictory, interpretive possibilities. Sometimes I've been known to engage in these reader-response based "interpretations" of asemic writing. 

This piece by Bennett & Leftwich, I think, deserves this kind of reflection. For instance, I frequently receive questions & mail art about the relationship of the Rosetta Stone to asemics. 

I believe it is safe to generalize that when "readers" first encounter asemics they most likely assume there is surely a meaning that can be decoded or - in an even greater nod to the power of imagination - that the asemic text (somehow) communicates complex concepts & emotional nuances - that other cultural forms cannot express adequately.   

I hope we find a new poetics & a reconstituted language in asemics, I do. Early L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing initially promised the literal collapse of capitalism if its methods could be widely applied, but the rhetoric deflated quickly.

I believe in the piece above Bennett & Leftwich do illuminate the linguistic-philosophical core of the asemic text, which I can best explain through an allusion to one of the great, pervasive popcult metaphors in The Wizard of Oz: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" 

The old pop myth - adequate for the despairing 20th century - reveals a charlatan behind the spectacle, a skeletal signification of the patriarchy controlling the machinations of economy & kultur. That is still a narrative; the asemic text is incapable of narrative.

When the curtain is pulled aside in the asemic text, which is what Bennett & Leftwich do here, we find ................ no thing, nothing meaning less.

- De Villo Sloan 

gliTchXT (disrupted asemics & vispo) by Lanny Quarles

 

By Lanny Quarles (Texas, USA)

Moving ahead with the Asemic Front 2 glitch text vispo series (woven among other interests), I am thrilled to introduce this work of extreme relevance by artist & writer Lanny Quarles from Dallas, Texas, USA.

Lanny Quarles is an experimentalist in novel forms of text & image disruption & distortion (among other efforts), deconstruction & reconstitution (see work above). Quarles is a master of disrupted image-text while not necessarily using the same digital sources & method as most of the glitchtexters. I think the result is of equal brilliance & new directions.

Quarles is likely well known to the AF2 audience. He is not, however, with the "usual suspects" in the self-identified asemic writing community (no antipathy suggested) or the various conceptual writers attached.  This might help account for his, sometimes fierce, individualism & originality.

Many thanks to Lanny Quarles for sharing this work with AF2. I look forward to including more. Quarles' piece will be of interest in terms of composition & process as well.

- De Villo Sloan