John Giorno © Joan Tomas

PRESS RELEASE

May at Flux Laboratory : A month of poetry

John Giorno

Opening night and performance by the artist: Thursday 30th April from 6 p.m. RSVP: [email protected] Exhibition runs from 1st to 29th May 2015 Opening times: Monday-Friday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and by appointment. Weekend opening Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th May only, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

In collaboration with the Almine Rech Gallery (Paris, Brussels, London)

Flux Laboratory is reopening and has invited the American poet John Giorno to mark its homecoming with a monthlong exhibition devoted to poetry.

A leading figure of the Beat Generation, John Giorno seeks to extend the frontiers of poetry and to free it from its elitist repertoire. In 1965, he founded Giorno Poetry Systems, an artists' collective and record label that aimed to relay poetry to a wider audience using innovative means of communication. One such innovation was Dial-A-Poem, which uninterruptedly since 1968 has allowed anyone who wishes to hear poetry readings over the phone. John Giorno is also a pioneer of performance poetry, readings performed with intensity before a live audience. Some years ago, Giorno began adding a pictorial dimension to his work, creating Poem Paintings composed of words and phrases from his poems in the form of paintings, murals, drawings and screen prints.

The greatness of the poet is to get the audience to connect with a poem – John Giorno

Flux Laboratory's exhibition will feature a selection of Giorno's Poem Paintings and a Dial-A- Poem phone offering dial-up access to around 200 poems. John Giorno will give a performance on the exhibition's opening night, on Thursday 30th April from 6 p.m

John Giorno was born in New York in 1936. After studying at Columbia University, he moved into the Bowery, joining that neighborhood's vibrant artistic community. It was there that he met Andy Warhol, who shot footage of him sleeping for his first film, Sleep. John Giorno's collaborators have included William S. Burroughs, Robert Rauschenberg, Patti Smith, Philip Glass, Robert Mapplethorpe and, more recently, Elizabeth Peyton, Pierre Huyghe and Ugo Rondinone. MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, Faux mouvement Centre d'art contemporain (Metz) and the Almine Rech, Agnès b., Nicole Klagsbrun and Elizabeth Dee galleries are among the venues that have shown John Giorno's work. He has given performances at Dia:Chelsea, the New Museum, 104, the Serpentine Gallery, the Swiss Institute and the Beacon Theatre. The Palais de Tokyo will put on a retrospective of his work in October 2015.

Flux Laboratory is a multidisciplinary venue, based in Geneva and Zurich, that fosters creative work and thinking via high-quality encounters with the world of art, dance, philosophy, music, technology, the media and business. Flux Laboratory produces avant-garde contemporary dance works, artistic performances and exhibitions of the visual arts and of design.

For more information, please contact: Inès Flammarion +41 22 308 14 50 - [email protected]

Two special events will accompany the monthlong exhibition – more examples of the richness of the poetry theme:

Bernard Heidsieck © Françoise Janicot

A Reading in Homage to Bernard Heidsieck Thursday 7th May – 7 p.m. RSVP : [email protected] Poésies Sonores – Sound Poetry

Banker by day, poet and visual artist by night, Bernard Heidsieck began writing at an early age only to realize later that the written word was no longer adequate to itself. At the end of the 1950s, he set about inventing new forms and means of expression.

Waiting for a hypothetical reader spells death for poetry. The poet had to move, go out to find listeners or readers, become active. So I wrote a series of what I called "poem-scores", which were meant to be read out loud. Bernard Heidsieck

In the 1960s, the time of Fluxus, the Beat Generation and the first happenings in New York and Paris, the poet began working with a tape recorder, recording, editing and mixing his texts. In 1991, Bernard Heidsieck, who never stopped writing or telling, was awarded the Grand Prix National de Poésie (France), while in 2011 the Villa Arson devoted a retrospective to him.

In 2013, les presses du réel published a volume of almost 1,200 pages bringing together all of the typescripts of his Poèmes-partitions, Biopsies and Passe-partout.

We invite visitors to join a number of figures from the world of culture in bringing these lines to life through readings of selected texts. This event, in homage to the poet, who died in 2014, will take place at Flux Laboratory on 7th May at 7 p.m.

Fafapunk © Kevin Le Roch

Slam Session with Fafapunk Thursday 28th May – 8.30 p.m. RSVP : [email protected] On a tous quelque chose à dire - We've all got something to say

An empty stage just waiting for someone to climb up on it, mics for those with something to say. Or a text to read. Their own or somebody else's.

Poetry, prose, stories, rap, speeches, monologues, answering back, tirades, logorrhea: Three minutes - No music - No props

You and your words.

Spoken word/slam artist and urban poet Fafapunk appears on stage either solo or with a pianist. He mixes words, rhymes, notes, melodies and his poetry has a pulse. What he has to say is influenced by what he sees going on around him. Come and see for yourself on Thursday 28th May at 8.30 p.m.