I'm still here ...
... and I'll be posting again as soon as I get half an hour to myself. For the last few days I've been trying to catch up on all the 'real work' I was neglecting during the exhibition, as well as starting new things with angela.
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Friday, 3 April 2009
Estelle Boelsma
Sadly Estelle's film didn't make it here in time for the Brussels edition, but it is very much here in Ghent:
5.11
“Boredom is the desire for desire.” Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
My focus is perceived reality, in all its repetitive banality; it is a question of magnifying apparently pointless actions; what is normally concealed in activity is accentuated. The moment is stretched out almost into infinity; one sees that “this is what there is.” The separate film fragments present scenes that only refer to themselves. They do not communicate. The story they tell is of a world where otherness is irrelevant.
Estelle Boelsma (1971) is a visual artist and poet. She studied at the College of Visual Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands. She has published poems in 'De Revisor', 'De Brakke Hond', 'Op Ruwe Planken' and 'Lava'. In 2006 she founded the e-zine blue-turns-grey with Edwin Fagel, which is for and about visual art, literature and poetry. Her short films have been shown at film events and exhibitions.
5.11
“Boredom is the desire for desire.” Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
My focus is perceived reality, in all its repetitive banality; it is a question of magnifying apparently pointless actions; what is normally concealed in activity is accentuated. The moment is stretched out almost into infinity; one sees that “this is what there is.” The separate film fragments present scenes that only refer to themselves. They do not communicate. The story they tell is of a world where otherness is irrelevant.
~~~~~~~
Estelle Boelsma (1971) is a visual artist and poet. She studied at the College of Visual Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands. She has published poems in 'De Revisor', 'De Brakke Hond', 'Op Ruwe Planken' and 'Lava'. In 2006 she founded the e-zine blue-turns-grey with Edwin Fagel, which is for and about visual art, literature and poetry. Her short films have been shown at film events and exhibitions.
When vispo goes viral ...
I have thoughts and opinions most days about visual poetry in general and infusoria in particular. I have a blog post from last week in which I say everything I want to say about my own work. I even distinctly remember writing a Masters thesis all about visual poetry. So did I tell the nice television lady any of that? Did I fandango. I read the back of my green box poem and paraphrased that, putty-brains.
In our defence, the television station first called Jelle to arrange things about an hour in advance. It wasn't some spectacular feat of organisation and publicity on our part; none of us had any idea it was going to happen. If I had had a little more presence of mind, I would have asked to talk about the organisation of the exhibition itself, which interests me, rather than about my work, which basically doesn't.
And one of the things I might have said - not that it would really make sense in a three-minute spot - is how excited I am about the possibilities of new media for semi-underground or otherwise low profile art forms. I need to blog about it in more detail when I have time to gather my thoughts, but clearly Facebook and blog providers have changed everything. The people who are interested in what Krikri does are never, never going to be all in the same country - or even the same continent - at the same time. But there are so many possibilities for community.
I am reminded of Carlfriedrich Claus, a visual poet who lived in East Germany all through the Cold War. He corresponded fairly intensively with poets in the West and published regularly in Belgium and elsewhere despite the Iron Curtain. (Possibly because his poems are huge tangles of illegible handwriting. The censors must have gone home weeping.)
If he can do that, we can do anything.
a.rawlings and Maja Jantar improvising at Logos
Yesterday was the first time I tried using my camera to make films. So this post was just an experiment to see what happened and whether any trace of a stunning performance would still be audible/visible in a 2x3 inch moving picture.
Svend and Claire did make proper films again of the whole evening, but it will take them much longer to do editing and get them online.
I have more.... you are going to be so excited when you see my more .... but I'm going to try and keep the posts as chronological as I can.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Infusoria report on AVS television
I finally got home to see it long, long after you all posted it on facebook, you famous filmstars you... there's an English transcript below.
Vanessa: The first days of summer also mark the beginning of the Literaire Lente [‘Literary Springtime’ festival] this week in Ghent. If you’re up for a king-size portion of culture, there is a whole range of literary activities to choose from. The infusoria exhibition in the Zilverhof for example, which focuses on visual poetry.
Jelle: ‘Infusoria’ is actually the word for little, microscopic water creatures, but in this case it refers to an exhibition with work by seventeen female poets from three continents. The intention of Helen White, the curator, was to show that all sorts of things have been happening in visual poetry since the seventies, and particularly in work by women. It is a whole different way of looking at poetry and what poetry, and by extension visual poetry, can mean.
Vanessa: Don’t come here expecting readings from poetry books. What you will find is a creative and playful treatment of poetry.
Helen: This is a little series about the different layers you find in language. So on the surface of course there is the semantic level, the meaning of the words, but just by the way you write, using handwriting or typing or with crossings out or whatever, you get different layers of meaning. It is a kind of body language in addition to the semantic language, the meanings. I have worked with lots of different layers to try and convey that. I often work with illegible texts. There are little fragments of a poem on each of the pebbles, which is an attempt to say the same thing.
Angela: These nine poems are part of a longer piece called ‘Rule of Three.’ There are seventy- eight visual poems like this in that series and they’re designed to be eventually printed on tarot cards. I’m very very interested in working with found text and found image, so the image that appears throughout these – the bivalves, the shells – they come from a Creative Commons image that I found on the internet. The little poem that’s off to the side here I found in spam in my e-mail at one point so I pulled that out.
Vanessa: Infusoria is open until Sunday, which is the end of the Literaire Lente. On Thursday you can also go and see poetic performances in the Logos Tetrahedron. You can find all the information here [on the Krikri website].
Vanessa: The first days of summer also mark the beginning of the Literaire Lente [‘Literary Springtime’ festival] this week in Ghent. If you’re up for a king-size portion of culture, there is a whole range of literary activities to choose from. The infusoria exhibition in the Zilverhof for example, which focuses on visual poetry.
Jelle: ‘Infusoria’ is actually the word for little, microscopic water creatures, but in this case it refers to an exhibition with work by seventeen female poets from three continents. The intention of Helen White, the curator, was to show that all sorts of things have been happening in visual poetry since the seventies, and particularly in work by women. It is a whole different way of looking at poetry and what poetry, and by extension visual poetry, can mean.
Vanessa: Don’t come here expecting readings from poetry books. What you will find is a creative and playful treatment of poetry.
Helen: This is a little series about the different layers you find in language. So on the surface of course there is the semantic level, the meaning of the words, but just by the way you write, using handwriting or typing or with crossings out or whatever, you get different layers of meaning. It is a kind of body language in addition to the semantic language, the meanings. I have worked with lots of different layers to try and convey that. I often work with illegible texts. There are little fragments of a poem on each of the pebbles, which is an attempt to say the same thing.
Angela: These nine poems are part of a longer piece called ‘Rule of Three.’ There are seventy- eight visual poems like this in that series and they’re designed to be eventually printed on tarot cards. I’m very very interested in working with found text and found image, so the image that appears throughout these – the bivalves, the shells – they come from a Creative Commons image that I found on the internet. The little poem that’s off to the side here I found in spam in my e-mail at one point so I pulled that out.
Vanessa: Infusoria is open until Sunday, which is the end of the Literaire Lente. On Thursday you can also go and see poetic performances in the Logos Tetrahedron. You can find all the information here [on the Krikri website].
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Microtopes
Claire and I have lots of new pictures of what we have done with your work this time round - we'll be posting it over the next few days / weeks.
Jenny Sampirisi kindly allowed us to try something different with her work, which I think turned out beautifully....
Jenny Sampirisi kindly allowed us to try something different with her work, which I think turned out beautifully....
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