Lemon Hound

Discussion of concrete poetry tends to centre on male figures—personalities and practices which dominate the discourse. This domination suggests that there isn’t a preponderance of women in concrete poetry and that women the poets who are working in this subgenre must be minor or merely occasional. This is not the case. Building on my “Pulled from my shelves” column in Lemonhound’s previous incarnation, “Abstract / Concrete” will focus on marginalized or underappreciated voices in Canadian and international concrete poetry.

This opening quote starts off a new series on Sina Queyras' blog Lemon Hound about women in concrete poetry by Derek Beaulieu.

I am thrilled to announce that an essay about my work is now published in this series as Abstract / Concrete #2.

I'll put out the links here for you as they are published.
Stay tuned!

Abstract/Concrete #1: Judith Copithorne
Abstract/Concrete #2: Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim

Folding Space-Time

Wanted to share this video with you as is truly relates to my project Fra Vestfjorden.

The compositorial retrograde technique used by i.e Johan Sebastian Bach literally means "backwards and upside down". Fra Vestfjorden was composed by the shape of a mountain from a photo found online. As a photo you would be able to flip it and look at it in four different ways. The right way as you photographed it (prime/1.), backwards (inverse/2.), upside down (retrograde/3.) and upside down backwards (retrograde inverse/4.).

Sol LeWitt: Sentences on Conceptualism

I saw these sentences on Sina Queyra's blog Lemon Hound today and felt I had to share it with you. 
It was first published in 0-9 (New York), 1969, and Art-Language (England), May 1969. 

(Feel free to swap his for her)

• Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
• Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
• Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
• Formal art is essentially rational.
• Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
• If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
• The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
• When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
• The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
• Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
• Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
• For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
• A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.
• The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
• Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
• If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
• All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
• One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
• The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
• Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
• Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
• The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
• The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
• Perception is subjective.
• The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
• An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
• The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
• Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
• The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
• There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
• If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.
• Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
• It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
• When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
• These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

Looking back at 2012

 2012 was a great year for my art practice in many ways. First and foremost I was in April given a work grant that turned my everyday life upside-down in the most pleasant way giving me the opportunity to fully commit to my studio at Grünerløkka Lufthavn.

Early 2012 I made my publication partitur available at Printed Matter in New York and at Torpedo in Oslo.

Spring was dedicated to presswork and PR for Oslo National Academy of the Arts' Fine Arts graduation show,  20 MA Exhibitions. A lot of work organizing it as it had spread out all over Oslo, but also a lot of fun working with the students again.

Summer was all about scenography for the Norwegian theatre group Leikhús. The play was entitled Og Alt Skal Bli Borte (directly translated: And Everything Will Vanish) and was intended as a play for adults and children from the age  of 7. Creatively this was a new area for me, but working in a team to find visual sollutions to fit together with Gudmund Bolstad Skjær's compositions and Kristofer Blindheim Grønskag's manuscript was a great way of spending the summer. As an "old" cinematographer I loved playing around with old light bulbs and machines again, and based the whole scenography on overheads. We had our premiere in the small town of Stjørdal at the end of August and had another performance in Trondheim some months later. 

I continued curating the trans art event ++ with six more successful nights at Black Box Teater; still learning a lot about how to organize an event as interesting and smooth as possible. We are now ready for another season in 2013!

Invitations from venues and publicists and new projects in my studio emerged, and resulted in publications of experimental and concrete poetry abroad. By the end of 2012 I had work published by no press in Calgary, Matrix Magazine in Montreal (Canada), In Edit Mode Press in Malmö (Sweden) and Edition Ch in Graz/Vienna (Austria).

Late 2011, In Edit Mode Press and Derek Beaulieu invited me to contribute to their new publication LOCAL COLOUR: GHOSTS,  VARIATION. I chose to compose a piece of 3 movements which we recorded in a Oslo studio in June. I was granted a project grant from Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond and OCA (Office of Contemporary Art, Norway) for traveling to Malmö together with my two musicians in December. There we performed First Of All There Is Blue at Signal -Center för Samtidskonst. Phenomenal publication and great people!

The year's last (which was predicted to be the world's last ever) event Winter Solstice found place at Atelier Nord in Oslo, December 21st. Here I showed the paper based project We Built This City On Rock And Roll published in Matrix Magazine some months before.

With upcoming projects still unannounced,  this is, so far, the start of 2013.

Local Colour: Malmö 17.12.12

Back in Oslo again after a great time in Malmö on the launch of In Edit Mode Press' LOCAL COLOUR: GHOSTS, VARIATIONS.
Singer Stine Janvin Motland and double bass player Inga Margrethe Aas performed my contribution to the publication; First Of All There Is Blue which is a composition in 3 movements based the first paragraph of Paul Auster's short story Ghosts (New York Triology, 1987).
Listen to excerpts here.

              (image: soundcheck with Carl Lindh at Signal -Center för Samtidskonst)

I want to express my deep gratitude to Derek Beaulieu, Ola Ståhl and Carl Lindh for making this possible. I also want to thank Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond and Office Of Contemporary Art (OCA) for supporting the project.

(A video documentation of the performance will be out soon)

Quote on quoting by Helen White

I was so fortunate of meeting visual poet Helen White in Malmö Monday on the occasion that both of us where performing at the launch of Local Colour: Ghosts, Variations.
She has a quote online about what visual poetry that I have to share with you:

(Helen White) read that visual poems can't be quoted. That a poem you can quote, you can learn by heart, has an intimacy a visual poem will never achieve. Silly vispo, how defective. How uncontrollably physical of it. Like stupid, stupid music you can't grab hold of, stupid dance you can't write down. I dream of making poems you can't possess, can't appropriate, can't get over. They'll choose their intimacies as it suits them.  

(image above: performance by Helen White at Signal, Malmö Dec. 17th)

Pre-order

In Edit Mode Press is now taking pre-orders for LOCAL COLOUR: GHOSTS, VARIATIONS.

Besides my work, it features the work of Derek Beaulieu, Steve Giasson, Cia Rinne, Peder Alexis Olsson, Jörgen Gassilewski, Craig Dworkin, Elisabeth Tonnard, Martin Glaz Serup, Eric Maximillian Zboya, Ola Stahl, Magda Tyzlik-Carver & Andy Prior, Pär Thörn, Ola Lindefelt, Andreas Kurtsson, Helen White, Moribund Facekvetch and Carl Lindh. 

And this is the link to where you can make it happen:
In Edit Mode Press

Go! Go!