Acoustic Holographic Language

Acoustic Holographic Language Rosa Aiello Moyra Davey David Grubbs Susan Howe Ghislaine Leung Sara Magenheimer curated by Lilou Vidal OPENING WED 9 MAY 6 - 9PM * Reading by Rosa Aiello 8pm “Calypso’s Way” * 10 MAY - 1ST JULY 2018 327 Chaussée de Neerstalle Open Friday 2 - 6 pm 1190 Brussels - Belgium And by appointment www.bureaudesrealites.org T +32 497 23 48 21 [email protected] Acoustic Holographic Language The word “holographic” comes from the Greek holos (“whole”) and graphein (“to write”). Strictly speaking, acoustic hologra- “A work of art is a world of signs, at least to phy belongs to the world of science - some- the poet’s nursery bookshelf sheltered be- thing I was unaware of when choosing the hind the artist’s ear.”1 Susan Howe title for this project - yet the scientific definition may just coincide with the poetic in- tent: “The recording of sound waves in a two-dimensional pattern (the hologram) and The question of language is at the heart of the use of the hologram to reconstruct the modern thought in the arts, literature, phi- entire sound field throughout a three-di- losophy and linguistics among others. This mensional region of space. Acoustical holog- project is devoted to one of the few ambigu- raphy involves reconstruction of the sound ous aspects of its emancipation: language in field that arises due to radiation of sound at its tangible and acoustic form. a boundary, such as the vibrating body of a The exhibition brings together artists who violin, the fuselage of an aircraft, or the sur- practice writing, who explore and manipu- face of a submarine.”5 late the perceptual possibilities of language Language is intrinsically linked to adoption, in space, a liminal zone between the visual borrowing, embezzlement, even theft. and literary arts where writing becomes an immersive physical experience generating Renowned American poet and essay- new signifiers, sounds and images (however ist Susan Howe (born in Boston in 1937) ma- disembodied they may be). nipulates words and language like a physical, Linguistic codes and narratives are short-cir- visual substance she’s been collecting since cuited, defining a new zone of transfer be- the beginning of the seventies: “I’ve never tween verbal and visual signs. really lost the sense that words, even single letters, are images. The look of a word is part No linear or structured syntax, instead a of its meaning - the meaning that escapes constellation struck of fragmented, cut-up dictionary definition, or rather doesn’t es- and chiseled-out words. Language becomes cape but is bound up with it. Just as a sail- kaleidoscopic, the reading of it intertex- boat needs wind and water.”6 tual, but in its most vast conception, where Susan Howe composes her collage poems voices interweave, like an echo. If there is a using fragments of texts that are cut up, narrative, it is unpredictable, collected, as- crossed out, truncated and spliced. Sentenc- sembled, made up of the fragmentary, the es, words are chopped up and chiseled out; quotation, the notation, and remains ellip- then, with barely visible scotch tape, the soidal. “(…) [A] work of art is nourished and splintered pieces are patched together in a multiplied through subliminal abecedarian delicate collage. The last phase involves pho- recollection.”2 tocopying the whole to give the text a new integrity. The page is as much a visual experi- The title of the exhibition, Acoustic Holo- ence as it is something to read (if the words graphic Language, derives from readings of can be read at all). Susan Howe’s study of the poetic work of “Indeed, poetic language is iconic,”7 and un- Emily Dickinson. It would be difficult to fully like signs, icons can be interpreted but not address Emily Dickinson’s writing without read. taking a transversal approach, made possible from facsimiles of the poet’s manuscripts.3 Susan Howe’s deconstructionist attitude to- Beyond language, other factors come into wards literary convention is rooted in her play; the object, the support - the formal training as a painter, and from her experi- constraints of a paper envelope, errors and ence as an artist in the interdisciplinary envi- cross-outs - accord with the layout of words, ronment of the New York avant-garde scene textual structure and poetic content. The of the sixties. Inspired by the Minimalists poem becomes visual; a holographic projec- and Marcel Duchamp, Susan Howe left the tion takes shape where linguistic and sound studio in the early seventies to fully devote form appears in space. herself to writing. The words she posted on “Every mark on a page is an acoustic mark.”4 the walls of her studio would fill the pages of a book 8. Susan Howe’s 67 collage-poems TOM TIT gives me a form of security, a thrill even. […] TOT draw from various sources: American I’m drawn to fragmentary forms, to lists, dia- and British literature, folklore, history, po- ries, notebooks and letters. Even just read- etry, philosophy and art criticism. The texts ing the word ‘diary’ elicits a frisson, a touch include Robert Browning’s poem Childe Ro- of promise. It’s the concreteness of these land to the Dark Tower Came, the Collected forms, the clarity of their address, that ap- Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Ovid’s peals and brings to mind Virginia Woolf’s Metamorphoses, as well as Spinoza’s Ethics, dictum about writing, that ‘to know whom The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, and texts to write for is to know how to write.’” by Elizabeth Sussman and Lynn Zelevansky Notes on Blue (2015) is a meditative, po- from Paul Thek’s exhibition catalogue Diver: etic work on blindness, color, and the life A Retrospective. The title of the collection and work of British filmmaker Derek Jarman refers to the magic spell “Nimmy nimmy not (1942-1994) and his last film, Blue (1994), / Your name’s Tom Tit Tot” from the English made as he was going blind due to compli- variant of the German fairy tale Rumpelstil- cations from AIDS. Moyra Davey’s 28-minute zchen by Joseph Jacobs (English Fairy Tales, video opens with an introductory mono- 1890). logue: “I began with a first note to myself: I Susan Howe and the composer David Grubbs made a list. But I’ll start in the middle with teamed up for the first time in 2003; the “Blue Ruin”, a one-minute movie shot on out- sound piece WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLAT- dated film stock about a woman at the end TER, taken from TOM TIT TOT, represents of the day, threading her bra out from under their fourth collaboration. David Grubbs her t-shirt, while pouring shots of gin from overlaid a long tonal structure music last- the freezer.” An analogue film Moyra Davey ing 42’35 onto the voice of Susan Howe, of created about ten years earlier, before she whom he is a keen and diligent reader, ac- herself went blind in one eye. Analogue companying the articulations and silences of and digital techniques overlap, along with the poet on the piano and computer. Their the content. The words of Derek Jarman, of performative encounter is a complete poetic Anne Sexton, J.L. Borges, Fassbinder and PJ sound experience. Harvey enmesh with those of Moyra Davey, in a system of intersubjective equivalence. Moyra Davey (born in Toronto in 1958) is a video-artist, writer and photogra- As Moyra Davey walks back and forth in front pher; she sees her practices as complemen- of the camera, reciting the pre-recorded tary to and inseparable from each other, all monologue streaming from her earphones linked to another essential activity: reading. that serve as a memory aid, the structural For Moyra Davey, the act of reading is akin elements of Moyra Davey’s films emerge, to that of writing, “reading is writing.”Her as the intimacy of the interior time of the work is rooted in a relationship of reciproc- apartment is made visible (snapshots on the ity based on correspondence between her fridge, a clock, dust, a dog on the sofa, paint personal notes and her philosophical and lit- peeling from the walls…). erary references. This relationship to writing Moyra Davey’s photographs are rooted also and reading evokes the complex relationship in the fragment, and in domestic temporal- between producing and consuming, and the ity, to which are added accidents of the pres- notion of the author. ent on an affective and unpredictable mode Moyra Davey’s writing practice is organized of relating. Photographs are folded, scotch- around the jotting down of personal obser- taped, stamped and sent by mail to their ad- vations, of quotations; it is fragmented and dressees. anachronistic, but weaves connections between her personal voice and that of others. Sara Magenheimer (born in Philadel- The note-taking involves the collecting of de- phia in 1981) combines performance, col- tails, and of what’s missing since it can never lage, sound, video and sculpture, offering a convey a source in its entirety. It is about the defamiliarization of language in her engage- extracting of essence. ment with image. She creates abstract nar- In Notes on Photography and Accident from rations through bold juxtapositions of words 2007, responding to Roland Barthes’s pas- with graphic elements, drawing attention to sion for taking notes, Moyra Davey wrote, the vernacular and pictographic nature of “Reading and thinking about note-taking writing. In Sara Magenheimer’s series of letter press oppressive. Rituals apply in domestic and prints, reading has lost its linearity, signs and emotional cycles and habits, as well as in the letters cohabit.

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