The Hand & the Mouth

The Hand & The Mouth Retracing writing in art practice Matteo Spanò UdK – Sound Studies 12.2015 - 03.2016 Contents. I. Overture Opening statement and general questions about writing practice. Proposal of a structure: the historical evolution of the graphical sign, from trace to language, through calligraphy, phonographic writing, verbo-visual experiments and exploited communicative mediums. Writing in art; focus on Italian visual poetry, 1960-1980. What is visual poetry?: precursors, origins, developments, collocation in today’s artistic practice. Connection to the mouth & the auditory dimension. Visual poetry and sound poetry. Explanation of the sound piece and the compositional methods and tools. II. In the beginning there was the sign Origins of the sign. The trace as self-reflective moment of the hand. The trace vs. the speech act: Andrè Leroi-Gourhan, Jaques Derrida, Ugo Carrega. The articulation and discovery process of the hand in the work of Emilio Scanavino. Translation to auditory dimension: the articulation of the voice. Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate” as case study. III. Sign and repetition: calligraphy The development of the calligraphic technique as a tool to direct the use of signs to depict and represent outward reality, the other-than-self, the social and cultural surroundings of the individual. Calligraphy as a filter to such reality, a stage in between individual expression and the social linguistic interaction, where the two attributes shift in and out of balance in an interplay of signifier and signified, characterised by an everlasting aura of ambiguity. The work and theories of Vincenzo Accame as a case study. Multiple examples of conceptual translation to the auditory 1 dimension: Steve Reich’s early tape pieces, Alvin Lucier’s “Sitting in a Room”, Bernard Heidsieck’s “Vaduz”. IV. Rise and fall of phonographic writing The point of conjunction between writing and speech. The subordination of the graphic dimension to the vocal one. Letters as representations of sounds, the once parallel development to enable an intertwined relationship that has become the basis for the linguistic evolution of the Western world. Comparison with Chinese, again Leroi- Gourhan. The “total poetry” of Adriano Spatola as a case study, already split between visual and sound poetry. As an ulterior example, fellow visual and sound poet Arrigo Lora Totino and his fragmentation of the phonographic discourse; Luciano Berio’s “Omaggio a Joyce”. V. Visual poetry / Verbal painting After the examination of the word/sound relationship, insight into the dichotomy graphic dimension between symbol and image. How this practice aids the written dimension to regain autonomy through the pairing with visual, non-representative stimuli. Difference between the use of caption and the presence of words and images in the artwork itself. The work of Magdalo Mussio as case study. VI. Pragmatic writing Graphic symbol and image in visual mass communication and the critical, ideological, artistic approaches that derive from re-utilizing exploited written language. The work of Corrado D’Ottavi, between individual and collective conscience, the use of collage and cut-up technique. Reference to African-American poetry in the 1960s, Brion Gysin and his sound poetry work. 2 VII. Symbiotic writing Attempt to sum up the different approaches within verbovisual experimentations and to come up with a new linguistic unity for the written dimension. As an example, the work of Ugo Carrega, following the concept of the work in progress constantly adapting and relating to the malleable body of society. VIII. Conclusions Considerations about the written practice in the digital age, the evolution and directions the visual poetry movement has taken since its peak. Differences between support mediums for writing and speech. XI. References 3 I. Writing is a practice that has origins deeply rooted in the evolutionary history of mankind. Like speech, it is strictly intertwined with the development of man’s primary tools – the hand and the facial muscles. Again like speech, it has gone through a series of stages of transformation that not only refined the skill itself and the way the human brain and body relate to it, but – like any evolutionary process – dispelled and replaced certain critical traits of the practice itself. The working assumption that this paper proposes to analyse and test through the use of historical examples is that writing must be intended as a self-sufficient language. As such, it is closely connected to the social and cultural bodies that apply it and is subject to a constant process of re-definition. This is not the place to embark on a comparative linguistic study between different cultural systems, but it goes without saying that such differences are reflected and implied in the writing itself, in the form of different alphabets, grammars, orthographical structures and vocabularies, evolving into something novel in pace with historical changes. We are not therefore talking about a fixed reality, a finished, complete and all-inclusive product of culture and society, but as a dynamic stream of different instances that have to be examined in close relation to their context of origin and, even more crucially, their use. “The use is the meaning”1 as Ludwig Wittgenstein stated. The aim of this study is to trace a history of written practice, with particular focus on some decisive stages of its evolutionary process. Each of these stages can be examined from multiple perspectives; for the purpose of this essay, we will be focusing on the relation between writing and art practice. This particular case of study has the benefit of demonstrating multiple facets of the dimension in question not only through logical discourse – which is nevertheless present as self-reflective moment – but also through the symbolic, the abstractive, the representative. One artistic stream in particular is chosen as material for our investigation: the so-called Visual Poetry movement, with a focus on the Italian experiences which spans approximately the three decades of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. “Visual poetry” is a broad definition with unclear boundaries for what kind of artistic and poetic practices it encompasses; the term was coined by a specific collective hailing from Florence called “Gruppo 63” that 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, (2001) [1953]. Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell Publishing. 4 described its stylistic direction as “technological poetry”. Main traits of the Gruppo 63 were the use of collage and cut-up as techniques to craft visual compositions with strong ideological connotation. Their abrasive aesthetics and subversive intents had its roots in futurism, the works of Filippo T. Marinetti and Carlo Belloli being examples of early verbovisual experimentations. However, going back to the term “visual poetry”, we are going to use it not as indicated by the Florentine collective, but as a broad sum of the different artistic instances that were scattered throughout the Italian territory starting from the post-war experiences up to the beginning of the 1980s. The idea of a practice that pushes the boundaries of written language, however, has a much longer history that must be addressed, if not in its entirety, at least in order to trace an interpretational path to realise the complex network of applications in which the written dimension has been protagonist. A first example in the line of precursors is Simmia from Rodi (it should be noted, a focus on Western culture is here implied, although an encounter with figurative writing systems such as hieroglyphic and Ugaritic writing could indeed be in order). In Simmia’s work, linguistic expression collides with an awareness of physical space, showcasing the boundaries between the signifying elements of language and support. Various authors during the Medieval era dedicate themselves to expanding the network of connections between image and language. In this sense, the iconography of traditional Christian figurations recur in both word and image in order to enhance the mystical message; it is therefore a more functional purpose than an expressive one. With the advent of print, a new visual dimension of the written text is born, and different approaches follow consequently. It is, however, with Symbolism that the word will regain a central position as a “linguistic fact” with its multiple facets and features. With such writers as Baudelaire the word starts to question its meaning and makes a first step towards an ambiguity of the signified. Word isn’t anymore the mere lexical significance; it shifts the balance and, in doing so, opens up multiple possible interpretations of the same sign, the same concatenation of letters; the word begins to incorporate the magical, the evocative, it begins to become fluid, malleable, constantly shifting in a system of relationships and correspondences where the meaning begins to reside “elsewhere”, and the words themselves elicit uncontrollable and unforeseen reactions. With 1873’s Bateau Ivre by Arthur Rimbaud, word, sound and colour are in constant interplay and seek out each other in the poetic game. But the final blow to traditional poetic language is brought by Stephane Mallarmè with his Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard, published in 5 1897. In the poetics of Mallarmè, a progressive erosion of grammatical and syntactical structures leads to a definitive departure from common lexical values, similar to the attempt of bending and outdoing the limits of tonal system, as exemplified

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