Thursday, February 20, 2025
SEMI-AUTOMATIC #15, #39 & #52 by Minette Marcroft & De Villo Sloan (USA) (automatic writing)
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Friday, February 7, 2025
Exhibition - Henry Michaux: The Mescaline Drawings (The Courtauld, London) (February 12 - June 2025)
Opening soon... Henri Michaux: The Mescaline Drawings
The Courtauld, London (February 12 - June 2025)
https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-henri-michaux-mescaline-drawings/
In January 1955, as part of an experiment prompted by his publisher, the Franco-Belgian poet and visual artist Henri Michaux tried the psychedelic drug mescaline, to investigate the effect of this non-addictive drug on the creative act.
It transformed Michaux's artistic life - provoking an outpouring of writings and distinctive drawing during the 1950s and 60s as he sought a portal into the inner workings of the mind.
Opening soon in the Drawings Gallery, explore a selection of these later works, rarely seen in the UK, and experience his attempt to push the limits of what the essence of drawing really is.
The programme of displays in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery is generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos.
Henri Michaux (1899-1984), Untitled (Mescaline drawing), 1957, pen and black ink on paper. Promised gift by Linda Karshan in memory of her husband, Howard Karshan. On long-term loan to The Courtauld Gallery, London © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2024.
Henri Michaux (1889-1984), Untitled, 1956, Graphite, black and coloured inks on paper, 184 x 131 mm. Private collection © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025.
(Thanks to The Courtauld for exhibit information & image)
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Words become images; images become words: New visual & concrete poetry by Hiromi Suzuki (Tokyo, Japan)
Words become images; images become words:
Concrete & Visual Poetry by Hiromi Suzuki
The work of Hiromi Suzuki reveals the potential of the new visual poetries currently emerging.
While Western concrete and pattern poetry represent a kind of hyper-formalism, Suzuki reaches a higher level of expression via skillful use of collage, distortion and many other available tools. Technology has created many new possibilities for concrete poetry.
Suzuki’s compositions tend to be language-centered. They also offer the reader fascinating image-text juxtapositions that produce asemics as well. In Suzuki’s vispo, words become images; images become words. At times he uses open field composition, which tend to reduce disruption and fragmentation.
I am very pleased to present recent work by Hiromi Suzuki at The New Concrete Poetry. I hope we will see more of his work here. Deepest thanks to him for granting permission to use his images.
De Villo Sloan
February 5, 2025
Monday, February 3, 2025
AF2 Gallery: Recent asemics & visual poetry by Rosaire Appel (New York City, USA)
Thursday, January 30, 2025
The State of Asemia 2025 According to Jim Leftwich at Slow Forward
Please make sure to visit Slow Forward for more outstanding asemic reportage:
From Slow Forward:
In my later 2024 posts about asemic writing here at AF2, I discussed theoretical and practical components of the current movement. My approach is to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.
I contend a small but vocal group of mostly veteran visual poets grounded in Leftwich & Gaze (circa 1993-97) increasingly run in contradiction to the ubiquitous, abstract expressionist-based visual art that - in the majority mind - currently constitutes authentic asemic writing.
While trying to interpret and resolve Leftwich's work with my own, I encountered what I have at times less than seriously named "Deth Metal Asemics." Leftwichian Asemics produce an infinite, boring, dissonant wasteland that, as Pound already warned, "will not cohere."
Deth Metal Asemics do little more than suggest the outlines of a massive Greenland made of destroyed and decaying alphabets. What I find fascinating in Leftwich & Gaze - what keeps me returning - is the conceptualism and deeply philosophical components of asemics that have yet to be adequately explored.
Thus I am always seeking current, succinct, quotable pieces by Jim Leftwich I can use to represent his views. Many thanks to Marco Giovenale at Slow Forward!
it does not speak
Why would this be called asemic?
In the late 1990s, Tim Gaze and I were not looking for another way of saying 'reader response.'
Asemic Writing was not supposed to be an 'anything goes opportunity.'
The word 'polysemous' works perfectly well for the Wikipedia statement. We knew the word in 1997, and would have used it if it had been appropriate.
Asemic is not meant to give you and me and our 39 thousand friends a chance at every imaginable meaning, an experience wherein anything we want is as good as anything else.
Asemic should return no meanings. We should stare at it, and it should stare back in silence.
The asemic does not speak. It does not give anyone anything that they want.
January 20, 2025
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