"glitch as found object" by Kristen Szumyn (Sydney, Australia) (September 2024)
(Image courtesy of the artist)
Hyperreality, Simulation,
Simulacra & the Metasemic: Recent Work by Kristen Szumyn (Sydney, Australia)
By De Villo Sloan
In this essay, written in late
September 2024, I draw conclusions about the nature of asemic writing that I
could not have anticipated when I first began writing about the topic a decade
ago.
In the context of the current global
movement, I believe evidence is mounting for the position that asemic writing is
a 21st century cultural meta-language with roots in Modernity
(Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons for instance) and further refinement
via L=A=N=G-=U=A=G=E poets and related Postmodern others who contributed to the development of this discourse.
Seeing the phenomenon of asemic
writing as an outgrowth of Modernity, Postmodernism and Post-Structuralism is
the most viable tool we have.
"databending" by Kristen Szumyn (September 2024)
(Image courtesy of the artist)
Theoretical disputes are
commonplace in the asemic art/writing community. A significant contingent of
visual poets deny the existence of asemic writing, at least as defined
by Leftwich & Gaze. My own research indicates asemic writing grew out of – if it is not identical to – automatic writing and
drawing experiments championed by the mid-20th century French
Surrealists (including Brion Gysin).
The unending social media and
academic debates about readability and incoherence as well as the signification
of nothing are – ultimately – some esoteric combination of particle physics, theoretical linguistics and jello wrestling. Australian visual poet Viscount Kit Kelen devised a trope that he posted publicly to express his objections to the notion of asemic: “No meaning without signs. No
signs without meaning.”
I propose all asemic writing – across its schools of practice – is an evolving meta-language accelerated by the Hyperreal. Asemic
calligraphers including Rosaire Appel (USA), Daidi Hu (Taiwan), Geof Huth (USA), Cheryl Penn (South Africa), Kerri Pullo (USA), Tatiana Roumelioti (Greece), Karla Van Vliet (USA) and many others are creating innovative expressions through meditative, materialist approaches. However, due to the limitations of this essay, I refer primarily
to the poets and artists exploring digital asemics. Recent work by
Kristen Szumyn was selected for this essay because I believe she gives us shining examples of
Metasemic Modernity. In fact, her work sheds far more light than my faltering steps in darkness.
The visual poets and asemicists who
are working with glitchtext, AI and other randomness generation and textual
disruption achieved digitally are at the cutting edge of the Metasemic. Working in
Hyper-Reality, they are engaged in a rapid evolution of new and unimagined
meta-languages.
"untitled" by Kristen Szumyn (September 2024)
(Image courtesy of the artist)
To inspire new readers and refresh the already faithful, I will conclude with quotes by Jean Baudrillard that reference the Hyperreal, Simulacra and Simulation, the Postmodern and Poststructuralism:
“Abstraction today is no longer
that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer
that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the
generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The
territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the
map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the
map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it
would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is
the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the
deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the
real itself.” (from Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra &
Simulations, Stanford University Press 1988)
“So
it is with simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation.
Representation starts from the principle that the sign and the real are
equivalent (even if this equivalence is Utopian, it is a fundamental ax~om).
Conversely, simulation starts from the Utopia of this principle of equivalence,
from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and
death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation tries to absorb
simulation by interpreting it as false representation,
simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum."
“These
would be the successive phases of the image:
1 It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2 It
masks and perverts a basic reality.
3 It
masks the absence of a basic reality.
4
It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.”
(from Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra
& Simulations, Stanford University Press 1988)
"untitled" by Kristen Szumyn (September 2024) (Image courtesy of the artist)
- De Villo Sloan
September 23, 2024
Elbridge, New York
-sSs-
De Villo Sloan is a concrete poet living in Upstate New York. He writes frequently about postavant art & lit and is director of the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund.
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