#summergimurne

[summergimurne]

Once a movement becomes an institution, it is lost.

Jacques Ellul

[summergimurne]

De Villo Sloan recently sent me a copy of Whistle, his collaborative visual poetry book with Kristine Snodgrass. As a preface to the review, I would like to express my gratitude for DVS's generosity that he has shown me and other members of the vispo community. By "vispo community" I have in mind the intersection between three communities that I cannot imagine existing separate from one another in the early 21st century: visual poetry, mail art, and asemic writing. I am almost tempted to say that DVS is at the "center" of these communities, or movements, or whatever you might call them - but, of course, there is not, or shouldn't be, a center, and that's precisely the point of his critical and artistic activity. Thank you, DVS, for sending me this wonderful gift.

What stayed with me throughout the book, from start to finish, was a sense of motion and vertigo. There is no place in the book to get "ground under one's feet". What is responsible for this feeling, I believe, is that it is a collaboration where no voice admits itself to be subsumed by the other. The authors themselves speak of the the pieces with various metaphors (aggression, power, gender, sexuality). But present in all of this heavy artistic territory is something light and playful. I would interpret Whistle as play or sport - art done collaboratively as a sort of intimate contest, where the one responds to the moves by the other. It may also be interpreted as a creative dance between two partners, which may look elegant to outsiders, but inside the minds of each member of the dancing couple there is an intense semiotic activity occurring - signs are given, interpreted, and then given in exchange. Another metaphor the authors used is that the collaboration here is a sort of conversation. It is certainly a bright and lively one.

It seems to me that the intense energy of the sequence arises primarily because both Sloan's and Snodgrass's voices remain distinct. I could discern multiple voices, and none of these meld into one monologue, nor should they. In some pieces, they seem to be playfully echoing one another while remaining identifiable and distinct. The spread in the book where variations on the phrase "I don't do faces" are typed or written repetitively, as if one voice typed as another teased the other with handwriting. The result is obviously a book neither author could have possibly written on their own. I should clarify that I do not mean to say that there is Sloan's "voice" and there is Snodgrass's "voice" as if each is a singular strand one can easily separate from the whole and examine on its own; that is not the case at all. Sometimes the book seems like a massive chorus of expressive energy coming from all directions, giving it a feeling of endless life and possibility.

To return to this collaboration-as-conversation: the pieces themselves are in a continual unfolding dialogue with one another as the sequence moves forward. For example, a poem that occurs earlier in the the book ("Concrete Kristine") is cut up and photographed in a latter part of the book. While the book does not become settled at any point, the little bits of autobiography hinted at indicate that the artists have changed one another as all friends do. In this life, of necessity we remain individuals, but others enter our stories and histories and without them, we would not become who we are. Whether by hurt or healing, everyone ends up altered by others to such an extent that we may be tempted to swap masks by the end of the play.

One final note: Whistle seems rooted in the collaborative practices of mail art, such as add-and-pass and add-and-return. In mail art, retaining your "style" and adding to it is critical to the collaborative performance. It is the element of play, and the surprise that comes from play, that is important. And it is a democratic, open practice - no one's art is too bad (or too good?) to be part of the piece. Nothing is "ruined'; it just becomes something unexpected. By publishing such a book - a "real book" with an ISBN and everything - the spirit of mail art crosses over into the practices of the non-mail art world. It's happened before, and it will happen again, and I hope this crossover is always welcome.

(reviewer: c.r.e. wells)

[summergimurne]

Received from Keith S Chambers.

[summergimurne]

Received from Keith S Chambers.

[summergimurne]

Timothy Waldron.

[faintpress]

Taking a little break from making/posting new art here, hopefully for just a few weeks. This is because I’m busy with a few exciting projects: I’m a) collaborating with a contemporary artist and poet whom I admire to make some visual poetry collages together, which we may submit to some journals before posting them on Tumblr and elsewhere; b) experimenting with methods of doing prints of my collages that I can exhibit this fall/winter; and c) preparing to mail out a bunch of stuff to people, ideally by the end of this month. So I’m still active--just not posting as often as I have been. :) Still planning to check in often and reblog beautiful stuff to Summergimurne?

Take care,

C.

[summergimurne]

Richard Baudet (Marseille, France) is a mail artist who does mixed-media work and striking, masterful calligraphy. Above is a poem of mine that he set in his own calligraphy and mailed to me in an envelope decorated with a stunning collage. 

Merci, Richard!

[summergimurne]

Civilisation is before all, the will to live in common. A man is uncivilized, barbarian in the degree in which he does not take others into account. Barbarism is the tendency to dissociation. Accordingly, all barbarous epochs have been times of human scattering, of the pullulation of tiny groups, separate from and hostile to one another.

José Ortega Y Gasset