#humument

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

the universal thump —what will compare with it? because in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern part of the grand programme of Providence drawn up a long time ago. 

 Found Poem Moby-Dick, Loomings (p. 6 of the Moser edition)

[David Reader]

[ambientlightning]

from ‘A Humument’, an altered book by Tom Phillips, 2016

[thelonlybritishwriter]

Another humument

[seriousartplace]

A Humument, Page 325 by Tom Phillips (b. 1937)

A Humument has been a work in progress since 1966 when artist Tom Phillips set himself a task: to find a second-hand book for threepence and alter every page by painting, collage and cut-up techniques to create an entirely new version. The book he found was an 1892 Victorian obscurity A Human Document by W.H. Mallock and Phillips transformed it into A Humument. The first version was printed by the Tetrad press in 1973, and Phillips has continued to transform it, revise it and develop it ever since.

[dustedmagazine]

Tom Phillips — Words and Music (Recital)

Part of the 1960s British interdisciplinary art scene that affected both pop and avant-garde expression, Tom Phillips is an artist best known for two things: the cover of Eno’s Another Green World and A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, an artwork in which he took the book A Human Document, and painted, drew, and collaged over each page to find a surrealistic story underneath or within the original book. As both of these are thrown at art students on their first day of class his star seems secure, but besides visual work Phillips was also a composer and improviser (he was also Eno’s teacher). Words and Music was originally released in 1975 by the important publisher of concrete poetry Hansjörg Mayer and is now re-released by Recital. It acts quietly as a selected works rather than a bold complete statement.

The first side of the LP is the music; the second side is the words. The first selection might as well be a recording The Scratch Orchestra, which Phillips was part of, but is from Phillips’s opera IRMA. In the selection a chorus of bouncing wordless vocals are led by flute and some sort of child’s instrument (pump organ? glass harmonica?). Then there are two works for essentially solo piano that surprise by eliding romantic noodling with low drones and a waltz form. Think something between the searching, quietly transcendent playing of the Ethiopian nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbro moving towards the more historically minded playing of Blue “Gene” Tyranny in his work for Robert Ashley. Then, a 15-minute composition of long slow tones recorded live in concert and described quizzically in the press kit as “acoustic and electronic instruments…played as extended shapes along a piece of paper.” These works are all pleasant, but they might as well be a Sokal Hoax for the 1960s avant-garde.  

The second side of the LP is simply Phillips reading from A Humument. He has a slightly fussy British accent and reads slowly and without effort for about twenty minutes. It is, no joke, one of the best things I’ve heard all year and does important work to remind how speech and imagination came into being when thought came slowly. “Page two-one-six…He could hardly breath, belated figures with feathers lying on his chest…two-seven-four, a strange day ago…he was there walking slowly, fifty people near her, judged the grass, he over took his old fantastic hours…page one-three-hour, ah how peaceful this place, ten miles away from your face.” One comes to this LP looking for more of Phillips beyond The Humument, but it simply drives the listener deeper into its genius.  

Devin King

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Humument

via Carrie Zona

Deviant Art

[thelonlybritishwriter]

Some more stuff that I have done for my course.

I can’t decide which picture is best so here’s both.

[tsunebulae]

Money. The dust of a treasure temple. Monism. The principle of wealth, warning the money-eyed of the moneyed. In order, the mungk{monk} collect monitorship. Scandal. Republic. Mischief. Monkeyshine.