I think that if we firstly understand Sienese Shredder firstly a book of poetry and poets, it's easier to understand the ultimate task. Included are John Ashberry, Ron Padgett, William Corbett (who I am assuming is a relation of Edward Corbett), and Richard Tuttle locates it very much within the "New York School" of poets. Furthermore including works by Larry Fagin, who has produced a book of poems illustrated by Tuttle, and who has worked closely with Ron Padgett in Brooklynn further locates much of the contributors in and around New York.
Yet the books seems focused not on compartmentalizing or particularizing these contributors as much as it wishes to reveal their coalescence, discussion, and interest in one another.
It seems that Sienese Shredder is interested in poetry that is infested in and contributing to the world of visual arts, as well as revealing the sort of inverted or surprising discussions of art--such as the interview by Judith Stein wherein Richard Tuttle is interviewed about an art dealer. Instead of reading about the artist (Tuttle) we're reading a behind the scenes; stories about the people to whom the art is made collectible. Suddenly the person supporting art is given representation.
I also thought it was also interesting that the book was edited by two painters—Brice Brown & Trevor Winkfield. Furthermore, Sienese Shredder includes visual peices by John Ashbery. His long interest in Dada and Surrealism as well as his proliferation of art & poetic critique are no where to be found, instead we get only images he's produced.
It seems to be a re-examination and perhaps a revitalizationg of the New York School, the practices and interests of this school, and the ongoing transformation and transmutation of experimental poetry within art and aesthetic practices more generally.
Also, I was also thinking about the title and this is what I came up with:
Sienese = Sienna – during the 14th and 13th centuries was the center of a flourishing school of art
Shredder = a machine or other device used for shredding something.
So, yeah, I think that is an appropriate title.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Sienese Shredder as kooky
I find this collection an interesting and odd collaboration of new and old material. There seem to be lots of pieces rediscovering and reinterpreting older obscure art and literary works. The collection seems to have the goal of mining the past for rarities as well as exploring emerging works. The piece on Nadleman’s Standing Nude was one example of this examination of a piece I would not expect to see in a collection of contemporary. It was interesting to see it examined from a fresh perspective. The breath of material included this book was a bit disorienting to me but its range held my interest.
One piece I was especially interested in was Francis M. Naumann's attempt at solving Marcel Duchamp's unsolvable chess problem Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled [1932]. (It’s weird to think of Duchamp taking a hiatus from art to practicing his extreme chess master skills.) I looked the nature of this essay up on the internet and it said: Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled deals with endgame theory in chess specifically analyzing positions in which only kings and pawns remain, including the incredibly rare and even more obscure Lasker-Reichelm position. The Lasker-Reichelm is a position in which both kings are still free to move and white has 4 pawns all blocked – unable to move – by black’s three pawns. Those are all the pieces on the board and – from what I have been able to carefully gather – black can only hope for a draw and, given competent play, can produce one all the time.
I think it’s interesting to explore the process of chess as one would explore the process of art rather than looking to win or solely at the product/piece. This process of creating and the perspectives and possibilities this opens up to the viewer seems to be a prevalent theme in this collection from the Carbo's poem to the ghost weave.
One piece I was especially interested in was Francis M. Naumann's attempt at solving Marcel Duchamp's unsolvable chess problem Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled [1932]. (It’s weird to think of Duchamp taking a hiatus from art to practicing his extreme chess master skills.) I looked the nature of this essay up on the internet and it said: Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled deals with endgame theory in chess specifically analyzing positions in which only kings and pawns remain, including the incredibly rare and even more obscure Lasker-Reichelm position. The Lasker-Reichelm is a position in which both kings are still free to move and white has 4 pawns all blocked – unable to move – by black’s three pawns. Those are all the pieces on the board and – from what I have been able to carefully gather – black can only hope for a draw and, given competent play, can produce one all the time.
I think it’s interesting to explore the process of chess as one would explore the process of art rather than looking to win or solely at the product/piece. This process of creating and the perspectives and possibilities this opens up to the viewer seems to be a prevalent theme in this collection from the Carbo's poem to the ghost weave.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Hmmm.
Humument was certainly very engaging and interesting on the visual level. However, I found the book to be lacking of narrative. The overwhelming emphasis on the visual was somewhat discouraging from my attempts to read the book critically. I generally found no connection between the visual and the words scattered across the artwork. I read through the book patiently, looking for any signs of narrative or ; characters, themes. The little I came up with seemed entirely negligible next to the intricate artwork. The swinging, lyrical effect that the arrangement of the words creates, discussed by Misha below, had the potential to create an interesting voice for the speaker, but I generally had trouble identifying a speaker at all.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Narrative, or word Play?
I found "A Humument" to be surprisingly engaging, as traditional forms of peotry are abandoned and rather than meter, rhyme and structure creating a flow to the language, the active pull of the visualization of a complete poem on a scattered page of words is what pulls you through the work. As I was reading the book at first, I observed what seemed to be a poem about the act of making poetry, and then seemed to be about the associations of love with poetry. As I got further and discovered the implication of a narrative, I discovered that what I was reading was the personal expressions of the author on and about the creation of poetry through himself and the character 'toge', who is both the creation of his poetry and also a representation of himself. The narrative, if that's what you can call it, vaguely follows a poetically inclined life through it's ups and downs and the kinds of life experiences thet engendre poetry in the first place. In the style of the epic, each page is a snapshot of a moment, or an experience, or a feeling that could not be expressed. Also much like an epic, as the book moves further on the author brings in other characters who are captured in the midst of their experiences of life in the pages of his book, and every person experiences life differently so he brings new colors and tones into his poetry as he adds new (or old) characters, both in a literary and a perfectly literal sense made possible by the visual execution of the work.
The poetry also makes me curious about the book, as while the poetry does not follow the characters of "A Human Document", it very obviously follows the emotional tone of the book, given the useable repetitions of words that appear in the poetry. The language that we use is part of how one creates a mood in a poem or a book, and the author is using the language that was already available, which leaves me inclined to believe that he read the Victorian novel as it was written and saw the potential for something else hidden in it's pages. The book as it has been presented to us appears to be about the evolution of poetry through life and conversly the expression of life as poetry. "I am sad and so I write poetry, but also I am sad and that in and of itself is poetry", the true poet sees poetry everywhere. It is a poetical expression of life, love, art, the travails of the writer, the pain in the world that makes beauty beautiful, and the fluidity of all things as life and experiences overlap to form systems of ups and downs that our classically trained minds experience as poetry and art. The visual aspect is facinating as he uses it for stops, pauses, tone, and the almost forceful dragging of the reader through the book much as one lyrically trickles through a Frost poem. Given the disconnected and haphazard word placement on the pages, the art is also like a guide, and is the only reason the poetry makes sense.
I quite liked it. It was like a playground for my brain.
I found "A Humument" to be surprisingly engaging, as traditional forms of peotry are abandoned and rather than meter, rhyme and structure creating a flow to the language, the active pull of the visualization of a complete poem on a scattered page of words is what pulls you through the work. As I was reading the book at first, I observed what seemed to be a poem about the act of making poetry, and then seemed to be about the associations of love with poetry. As I got further and discovered the implication of a narrative, I discovered that what I was reading was the personal expressions of the author on and about the creation of poetry through himself and the character 'toge', who is both the creation of his poetry and also a representation of himself. The narrative, if that's what you can call it, vaguely follows a poetically inclined life through it's ups and downs and the kinds of life experiences thet engendre poetry in the first place. In the style of the epic, each page is a snapshot of a moment, or an experience, or a feeling that could not be expressed. Also much like an epic, as the book moves further on the author brings in other characters who are captured in the midst of their experiences of life in the pages of his book, and every person experiences life differently so he brings new colors and tones into his poetry as he adds new (or old) characters, both in a literary and a perfectly literal sense made possible by the visual execution of the work.
The poetry also makes me curious about the book, as while the poetry does not follow the characters of "A Human Document", it very obviously follows the emotional tone of the book, given the useable repetitions of words that appear in the poetry. The language that we use is part of how one creates a mood in a poem or a book, and the author is using the language that was already available, which leaves me inclined to believe that he read the Victorian novel as it was written and saw the potential for something else hidden in it's pages. The book as it has been presented to us appears to be about the evolution of poetry through life and conversly the expression of life as poetry. "I am sad and so I write poetry, but also I am sad and that in and of itself is poetry", the true poet sees poetry everywhere. It is a poetical expression of life, love, art, the travails of the writer, the pain in the world that makes beauty beautiful, and the fluidity of all things as life and experiences overlap to form systems of ups and downs that our classically trained minds experience as poetry and art. The visual aspect is facinating as he uses it for stops, pauses, tone, and the almost forceful dragging of the reader through the book much as one lyrically trickles through a Frost poem. Given the disconnected and haphazard word placement on the pages, the art is also like a guide, and is the only reason the poetry makes sense.
I quite liked it. It was like a playground for my brain.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
A Humument
Overall I found this text to present some ccrative approaches to both visual communication and literature. The general arrangement of the words on each space typically curves and jumps around the pages, and the visual connections or bridges drawn between these words contributes to a swinging, lyrical effect in the voice. This was a successful combination of art form and poetry, as one element throughly contributed to the other to produce a cohesive result. Overall the ambiguous and vaguely romantic narrative within A Humument was not the focal point of the text, partly because of the number of pages that diverge from the suggested plot. However, these brief scenes, such as "sixteen portraits.."(page 61) support a more intimate projection of the narrator, or the protagonist to which the voice belongs. Here is also an example where the art evokes dark sense of presence, through the texture and the sinking depth in the imagery, which in turn supports the small point of text in the corner.
As we continue jump to dynamic ideas, the title begins to support the general presence of the text as the reflection fo a human being in all of his scattered details. Yet the visual proves a little distracting in its chaos. On many pages atterns and shapes are haphazardly arranged despite the lack of any visual connection to the poems. Some of the pictures bring to mind the doodles the appear through an anxious state of boredom, or as a means of destraction from the task at hand.
However, Tom Phillips may consciously be undermining man's sincerity that sporaticaly appears through A Humument. This could prove to be a successful literary tool if only the character were defined more or if the images were more consistently adolescent. Overall the scattered visual and poetic elements reveal a dominanting feature in the human conscious with a tone of sarcastic belittlement, to me.
As we continue jump to dynamic ideas, the title begins to support the general presence of the text as the reflection fo a human being in all of his scattered details. Yet the visual proves a little distracting in its chaos. On many pages atterns and shapes are haphazardly arranged despite the lack of any visual connection to the poems. Some of the pictures bring to mind the doodles the appear through an anxious state of boredom, or as a means of destraction from the task at hand.
However, Tom Phillips may consciously be undermining man's sincerity that sporaticaly appears through A Humument. This could prove to be a successful literary tool if only the character were defined more or if the images were more consistently adolescent. Overall the scattered visual and poetic elements reveal a dominanting feature in the human conscious with a tone of sarcastic belittlement, to me.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The Humument
As far as issues of narrative within The Humument go, there seems to be a very vague narrative, or at least a series of connected ideas. While there are a few characters that pop in and out of the book and each page has some bearing on the ones before and after it, there isn’t what could be traditionally considered a story. This, in part, is where it seems to be most poetic. The abstraction of the narrative and the events happening in whatever narrative there is can be attributed to The Humument’s poetics.
Also of note is the attention given to The Humument’s visual component. The visuals on each page seem to be more carefully considered than any of the traditionally poetic elements of it (i.e. word choice). This brings up concerns over the correlation of any visual element of a page to the particular words chosen to be singled on the page. The visuals on each page are notably distinct from the visuals on the other pages and seem to be set up to distinctly relate to the words chosen on the particular page. For instance, a page in which abstract art is mentioned, a representation of abstract art is presented on the page.
Notable is page 73 on which there appears to be relatively no visual element to the poetics of the page, although if one looks close, Tom Phillips has cut up and mixed up words to describe a particular sex scene and make a lot of sex jokes. Within the context of the work as a whole, this seems to work really well since it draws attention to itself as a piece of text rather than having a very important visual element to it. When one reads the actual text on the page, it’s really funny with various “ughs” inserted throughout the text and words cut up to be assembled into the words “cock tease”. Since the actual text on the page is meant to be considered as a whole, the choice to not include any immediately visible visual manipulation seems to be a wise one.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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