Notes
The One whose Oracle is at Delphi neither
speaks nor conceals but gives signs. The most beautiful world is a heap
of rubble tossed down at random. —Heraclitus
Visual Poetry is an ever ongoing continuum from the cave paintings and
petroglyphs
to the rapidly developing new technologies
of the web, of military and surveillance devices (Virillio)and telescopes
in space.
For myself, my participation in this continuum has
been, I feel gratefully and humbly, dictated by a number of limits—what
in essays I have called "Refuse/Refuse" and "Necessity
is the Motherfucker of Invention". "I do not seek, I find" Picasso
said—and "What is not in the open streets is false, derived that
is to say literature" Henry Miller wrote. I have found that
visual poetry exists everywhere, all around us. The forms of trees,
the flight of birds, the arc of broken metal, the grain of woods, the
cracks in pavements, the faces found in telephone pole knots, shattered
fragments of letterings and words on broken or public objects. To
move among these is to become attentive with the signings and singings
of languages and fragments of languages, abandoned and overlooked fragments
or series of words in the daily spoken and written language. I
work with these materials for and with a number of reasons.
First, they are free—free materials, open to be
found. Due to
my monetary limits, I am limited in my choices not only of the free materials
but in the materials, tools I use to work with. These are a lumber
crayon for rubBEings, cheap spray paint for printings, impressions, cheap
children's modeling clay for making impressions and being incised and
pressed into by hands and objects and letterings, and cheap notebooks
and paper. I use many found materials —nail polish, stage blood,
inks, house paints, model car paints, dirt, ashes, tar, wall paper, linoleum
etc etc. I make use of wood, metal, plastic, glass, stone, brick,
bark, feathers, shells, car and machine parts. "It is not
the elements which are new but the order of their arrangement" Pascal
wrote—so these common elements anonymously about us may become arranged
into visual scores of soundings, songs, whispers, murmurs, screams, quietness.
"Refuse/Refuse" is to use refuse (trash) to refuse heirarchies, "values", "standards" and
the conformity of the accepted and recognized materials, styles and dogmas
of the "art" worlds. It is a way of following the abandoned
into an other finding, an other community/communication. "i is an
other" Rimbaud wrote, and I find this uncanny other signing in the
cave paintings, the petroglyphs and in these found materials being arranged
into new signs. We may not know what the cave paintings "mean", "say" yet
they speak to us, sign to us, there is the uncanny recognition and a
community/communication. In working with visual poetry this is
what I also hope to be presenting.
"Necessity is the Motherfucker of invention"—it is
via limits that one finds things open outwo/ards. The crack in
a wall or pavement may burst into song—create calligraphies, present
the present in the present—a notation in the continuum. The movement
of dust motes in light, and their patterns when landing on a floor—these
also present elements for visual poetry, materials literally and figuratively
to use for community/communication. Visual Poetry, making it and
living with it all around—the world is opened—the evidences, signings
are everywhere visible and heard. It may be the configuration of car
parts torn apart in a crash—or the letterings on manhole covers, the
ruts left in mud by passing tires, their imprints. All of this
is signing, and visual poetry responds, finding ways to communicate among
these abandoned languages, hidden in plain sight.
I live with this continually, and it is ever opening.This I feel
is Visual Poetry, which is really an area which thankfully has no strict
definition, no fixed address so to speak. A nomad of everyday life.
A freedom of finding, rather than already knowing. A way—an open
way.
Visual Poetry (short saying of it) is to me a heiroglyph
of site/sight/cite. The
site of the page, the sight of the image, the cite of the letterings,
forms. Visual Poetry is an anarkeyology of memory, imagination,
dream and concrete fact.
I regard my work in and with visual poetry as a form
of thanks, a thanks for being participant in this that is. AndI
hope that in making visual poetry, I am making this thanks and also
passing on to others sites/sights/cites in uncanny recognitions, which
the visual poems are the notations of.
It is a thanks and a present of the present of the present—to you,
anywhere, anytime, any place.
And I hope that it calls out to others who will then want to set out
on their own ways of Visual poetry.
For it is ever open, ever ongoing, all around one. And calls for
our response. which we then present in our ways, findings. And
making notations, are making contact, community/communication. A
form of touch in time. An uncanny recognition. Visual Poetry. |