John Giorno and Tibetan Buddhism
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vv UGO RONDINONE RICHARD BOSMAN • PHONG BUI • ANGELA BULLOCH ANNE COLLIER • VERNE DAWSON • JUDITH EISLER JOHN GIORNO • MARK HANDFORTH • MATTHEW HIGGS PIERRE HUYGHE • FRANÇOISE JANICOT SCOTT KING • ELIZABETH PEYTON • UGO RONDINONE ERIK SATIE • KENDALL SHAW • MICHAEL STIPE BILLY SULLIVAN • RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA PETER UNGERLEIDER • JOAN WALLACE • ANDY WARHOL UGO RONDINONE: I JOHN GIORNO 4 18 INTRODUCTION Laura Hoptman SLEEPTALKING Pierre Huyghe Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project 6 IDENTITY Scott King 19 Entrances of Participating Institutions, JOHN GIORNO READS, PHOTO PORTRAITS OF JOHN New Museum Lobby, Washington Square GIORNO and JOHN GIORNO SCULPTURE PORTRAIT Windows Rirkrit Tiravanija with Mark Handforth, Françoise Janicot and Joan Wallace 7 The Kitchen WE ALL GO BACK TO WHERE WE BELONG, JOHN Michael Stipe and Dominic DeJoseph 22 High Line Art GIORNO POETRY SYSTEMS, PAINTINGS OF JOHN GIORNO and T-SHIRT POEMS with works by Angela 8 Bulloch, Anne Collier, Phong Bui, Verne THANX 4 NOTHING and JOHN GIORNO ARCHIVE Dawson, Judith Eisler, Billy Sullivan, Elizabeth Ugo Rondinone Peyton and John Giorno Sky Art White Columns 10 25 SLEEP AND OTHER WORKS Andy Warhol READINGS AND PERFORMANCES Swiss Institute Artists Space 11 26 AUDIO AND VISUAL WORKS OF JOHN GIORNO with EXHIBITION CATALOGUE works by John Giorno and Ugo Rondinone The Brooklyn Rail with Guest Editors Laura Red Bull Arts New York Hoptman and Mónica de la Torre 12 28 JOHN GIORNO AND TIBETAN BUDDHISM and AIDS SELECTED PUBLIC PROGRAMS TREATMENT PROJECT with works from the collec- tion of the Rubin Museum of Art, and by John 29 Giorno and Peter Ungerleider BIOS 205 Hudson Gallery – Hunter College Art Galleries 30 CREDITS & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 14 JOHN GIORNO DANCING and GRASPING AT EMPTINESS Kendall Shaw, Richard Bosman and John Giorno Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery – 2 Hunter College Art Galleries INTRODUCTION garde poets like Federico García Lorca 1970 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Rondinone and dedicated to a body of and more contemporary radicals like Allen Art, Dial-A-Poem became wildly popular, work, an interest, a relationship or a col- Ginsberg. As a young poet in New York, and remains his best-known, most fre- laboration that has marked Giorno’s life. Laura Hoptman his friends were poets like Ginsberg and quently exhibited work of art. Giorno’s fas- This includes his poetry, painting, sound Peter Orlovsky, but also artists, like Robert cination with more contemporary methods work and performance; his recording Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and, most of distributing poetry to a wider audience projects and his founding of Giorno Poetry Ugo Rondinone: I John Giorno is a consequently, Andy Warhol, who cast the led to his creation of the nonprofit record Systems; his AIDS activism; his Tibetan sprawling, multi-part exhibition that presents young Giorno as the sole protagonist in his label Giorno Poetry Systems in 1965. Buddhism; and his vast personal archive the extraordinary life and work of the poet, classic filmSleep (1963). This mix of the Hundreds of the most important voices in that comprises a history of radical art and artist, activist and muse, John Giorno. poetry of direct experience, found object poetry, music and art of the late twentieth poetry in New York during the second half Encompassing thirteen venues around and Pop art inspired Giorno to write poems century were recorded by Giorno over the of the twentieth century. Several installa- Manhattan and featuring paintings, films, composed of phrases plucked from found 25 year period that the label was active, tions feature portraits of Giorno by different sound installations, drawings, archival print sources like newspaper headlines. including John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, generations of filmmakers, painters, vid- presentations and a video environment, this His first major publication,The American Diane di Prima, Amiri Baraka, John Cage, eographers and musicians. One consists retrospective includes work both by Giorno Book of the Dead (1964), was a single, Frank Zappa, Philip Glass, Patti Smith, of a single work: a multi-channel video himself, as well as work that he has inspired. book-length poem composed entirely of Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, among installation by Rondinone consisting of I John Giorno is also a work of art found content. In 1965, he met William many others. multiple images of Giorno performing one by Giorno’s husband, the Swiss artist Ugo Burroughs and Brion Gysin and found kin- Collaboration and inspiration elide at of his recent epic poems. Rondinone, who has been creating sculp- ship with their experiments in the “Cut-up,” many points in Giorno’s career and his Ugo Rondinone: I John Giorno is tures, paintings, drawings and multi-media a method of word permutation and collage projects with fellow artists span three a unique artistic and curatorial experi- installations for almost three decades. meant to elide the distinction between generations. After his work with Warhol ment. The cooperation between so many With this project, Rondinone presents a words and images. Around the same time, and Giorno Poetry Systems in the 1960s disparate nonprofit institutions in New prismatic portrait assembled from thought- Giorno began to transform his poems into and 1970s, in the 1980s, Giorno collabo- York in the presentation of a single project ful arrangements of the materials, experi- forms by silkscreening them on posters, rated with visual artists Keith Haring and is similarly unprecedented. The singular- ences and relationships that have defined handbills and T-shirts. In 1968, he made Richard Bosman, who illustrated books of ity of this monumental hybrid of artwork Giorno’s astonishingly wide-ranging artistic his first “Poem Painting,” beginning a series his poetry. In 1998, the French artist Pierre and exhibition is testament to the breadth, career. Foremost, though, the project is a that he would turn to periodically over the Huyghe made a contemporary version of variation and longevity of Giorno’s ongo- joyous celebration of Giorno’s ubiquitous next fifty years. “Painted like a poet,” as Sleep starring Giorno, and in 2003, Thai ing career, as well as Rondinone’s artistic presence in contemporary culture, as well he has said, their unwavering format is artist Rirkrit Tiravanija created a 10-hour vision. Those lucky or stalwart enough to as his myriad contributions to it. comprised of stacked words in emphatic film of Giorno performing his entire poetic visit all eighteen installations of the exhibi- For more than half a century, Giorno has capitals, silkscreened on canvases with repertoire. Over the years, many artists tion will come away with an idea of both of moved effortlessly from one cultural milieu smooth monochrome backgrounds. Like have been moved to make portraits of these artists’ achievements. In its size and to another: from Beat poetry, to the heart street signs, they can be simultaneously Giorno including Kendall Shaw, Elizabeth ambition, I John Giorno can be seen as of the Pop art explosion, to performance looked at and read. Peyton, Billy Sullivan, Verne Dawson, a citywide work of public art. At the same at venues ranging from Judson Church Understanding that sound was another Judith Eisler and the singer Michael Stipe, time, it is an intimate expression of love to CBGB, to the activist trenches of the way to embody language, and encour- who in 2011 made a moving black and and inspiration between two artist partners. AIDS crisis, to the mixed media, mixed aged by his friend, the electronic musician white film of Giorno’s face that served as It is an astonishing gesture of love on use art world of the fin de siecle. He has and inventor, Bob Moog, Giorno experi- the official music video of the REM song, Giorno’s part to give the sum total of his always defined himself first as a poet, mented with magnetic tape during the “We All Go Back to Where We Belong.” life’s work to Rondinone as material for his but as one who looks at poetry through sixties, manipulating and layering his own Rondinone’s homage to his life partner, own artwork. Perhaps it is equal only to the lens of visual art. This ambidexter- voice, as well as recording other poets I John Giorno, is the latest, and by Rondinone’s conception of an artwork as ity between the literary and the visual reading their poems. In 1969, he had the far, the most ambitious collaboration big as Manhattan to do justice to that gift. has marked a career in which words and idea to distribute these taped poems tele- of Giorno’s career. The project unfolds objects are intimately connected. phonically, creating an interactive concep- in eighteen chapters, each a distinct Born in Brooklyn in 1936, Giorno tual art work that allowed the public to call exhibition sited in a nonprofit space in studied at Columbia University where he a telephone number to hear a randomly Manhattan. Every chapter takes the form was shaped by reading the works of avant selected poem. Included in Information, a of an immersive installation designed by IDENTITY WE ALL GO BACK TO WHERE WE BELONG, JOHN Scott King Michael Stipe and Dominic DeJoseph Entrances of Participating Institutions, New Museum Lobby, High Line Art Washington Square Windows Ugo Rondinone asked Scott King to make a graphic identity for the exhibition I John Michael Stipes’s video We All Go Back to Where We Belong, John (2011), featuring Giorno that is visible at each partner institution and throughout New York City. John Giorno, is installed as part of High Line Channel 14, High Line Art’s ongoing outdoor King explains his process: “I made a false start with this project. When Ugo Rondinone video program located on the park at 14th Street. In 2011, Michael Stipe and Dominic J.