Conceptual Poetry and its Others2

8/14/2019 Conceptual Poetry and its Others2

1/45

"Conceptual Poetry and its Others

Symposium

at the

Poetry Center of the University of Arizona

29-31 May 2008

Essay:

Haunting Questions Found Hidden in Plain Site/Sight/Cite

RubBEings Statements & 30 Visual Poetry Works

David-Baptiste Chirot


2/45

"Conceptual Poetry and its Others"---Haunting Questions Found Hiddenin Plain Site/Sight/Cite (Essay) & RubBEings Statements & 30 Visual

Poetry Works


3/45

These works are linked at the site for the Symposium at the Poetry Center of the


4/45

University of Arizona---

they are all the works I submitted--an essay, followed by Statements accomp[anyingthe Visual Poetry works that were displaed during the Symposium

Thank you to Annie Guthrie for all her great help and support not only with myself

but for the entire Symposium.

The essay was on line at the time of the Symposium, and I have added today the

other Statements and RubBEings & Visual Poetry so all my contributions may be

easily found in this one linked entry, pending the final, if any change is needed,arrangement for these with the Poetry Center.

for the Symposium "Conceptual Poetry and its Others

Poetry Center of the University of Arizona

29-31 May 2008

Haunting Questions Found Hidden in Plain Site/Sight/Cite

J'ai trop a ecrire, c'est pourquoi je n'ecrire rien. --Stendhal, Journal, 1804

Thoughts come at random, and go at random. No device for holding on to

them or for having them.

A thought has escaped: I was trying to write it down: instead I write that it hasescaped me.--Pascal, Pensees, #542

Poetry no longer imposes itself, it exposes itselfPaul Celan

If you would create, relax before moldy, wet walls and feel form shaping out of the

chaotic patterns. Michelangelo

The most beautiful world is a heap of rubbish tossed down in confusion.

Heraclitus

A final glossary, therefore, cannot be made of words whose intentions are fugitive.--William S. Burroughs, Junkie

To find among typos the unknown writings, the "Helltoy"--

camouflaged clouds, the voice-writings of the ground itself that speaks and moves inlines

emerging--


5/45

for Petra Backonja

I find in thinking with what a Conceptual Poetry might be, that I've

begun with a point of view of paradox. That is, considering the

conceptual to be the absence of a material object, a conceptual poetry

would be the absence of the poem as a "realization" of its "idea." If

"the poem" as an object is not to be realized, in what ways may it

then be said to "exist"?

One may also asksince language is the material of poetry, if

one is to create a conceptual poetrydoes this mean then that the

absence of language is involved? That the poetry is not in language,

but found elsewhere?"

The predominant view of conceptual works in art and poetry is that itis written language which becomes fore grounded, most often as the

"realization" and presentation of various directives, with theirvarious forms of pre-conceived constraints, and sets of instructions.

Yet does not the written language itself, as an object which

"constitutes" the directives and instructions, contradict the

"concept" of the "Conceptual?"

{See Appendix B below for some other "Science Fiction" aspects of Conceptual

Poetry in Relation to the Work Place.)

The directives themselves, expressed in written language, become road

blocks to the Conceptual which is supposed to be "activated" by their

instructions.

To use written language then to create a conceptual poetry isnot in a strict sense "conceptual" at all, if it produces yet another

object in written language.

It becomes instead a piling up, a massing, of materials

(language, words) which have "walled out" as it were, the conceptual.Are the words then simply a gravestone or monument to a now absent

concept?

And what of the "poet" who is the "author" of "Conceptual Poetry?"

A builder of roadblocks, a maker of monuments and gravestones, a constructor ofWalls--?

If a "poet" is the conceiver of conceptsand the realization of


6/45

the concept as a poem is no longer a conceptbut an objectdoes this

then mean that the poet, in order to be "conceptual," must no longerbe a "poet?" Or in order to be a "poet," no longer be "conceptual" in

approach? And yet who but a "conceptual poet" can produce "conceptual

poetry?"

Perhaps true Conceptual Poetry is the creation of illiterates?

And, beyond that, persons who may even be very limited in

their "Conceptual capacities?"

I think often of all the Conceptual Poets and Artists who

have existed and worked through thousands of years, persons due to

their circumstances --gender being the most common among these--who

are not allowed to know how to write, nor instructed in "art," nor permitted to

be educated, yet all the same--may have produced Conceptually a gooddeal of the greatest Poetry and Art of which there does not remain and

never was an "object," even as a "fragment."

What of these myriads of centuries of Conceptual Works--are theystill existing--? Are they alive in the Conceptual realm? The Ether?

Or have they found ways on their own, independent of their creators,

of camouflaging themselves among those things in the world which are

hidden in plain site/sight/cite?

In working with the found that is hidden in plain

site/sight/cite, I find often that a Conceptual poetry and art isthere--always already there--which I think I am finding yet may wellbe finding me,

Some aspects of confronting these dilemmas, these "haunting

questions," are found among Conceptual Poets who emphasize an

"impersonation" via performance, camouflages, costumes, the uses ofheteronyms, pseudonyms and anonymity.

In "The Painter of Modern Life," Baudelaire is the first todefine Modernism and does so as a conjunction of the eternal and the

ephemeral. To find that element of the eternal in the ephemeral whichBaudelaire saw as embodying modernity, he turns to an emphasis on the

particular form of the living art/art as living of the Dandy. The

Dandy is the non-separation of art and life in the conceiving of one's

existence as Performance Art. The Dandy becomes not an expression of

Romantic personality and individuality, but a form of becoming an

animated Other, an impersonator going about performing the actions of a concept,rather than producing the objects of a conception.

This stylized impersonating, non-producing figure begins to appear "dramatically"


7/45

in the works of Wilde and Jarry and in many ways in the "life and

works" of a Felix Feneon, who "creates at a distance" via anonymousnewspaper faits divers (discovered to be his and republished

posthumously as Novels in Three Lines), pseudonymous articles in

differing registers of language (working class argot, standardized

French) in Anarchist and mainstream journals, unsigned translations, and

the barely noted in their own pages of his editing of journals featuring the early

efforts of rising stars of French literature. Quitting his camouflaged and concealed

writing activities, Feneon works the rest of his life as a seller in an art gallery.

The actual "works" of Feneon, then, are not written objects per

se, but anonymous actions, ephemeral pseudonymous "appearances in

print," and the works of others which he affects a passage for in his

editorship and translations, in his promoting and selling the art

works of others. This "accumulation" which one finds "at a distance"in time as his "complete works," is often unobserved and unknown to his

contemporaries, who know of him primarily via his "way of acting," his mannerof dressing, his speech mannerisms, and as the public triptych of images of him

existing as a painted portrait by Signac, a Dandy-posephoto and a mug shot taken when tried as part of an Anarchist

"conspiracy." Feneon's "identity as a writer" does not exist as "an

author," but as a series of "performances," "appearances" and

"influences," many of them "unrecognized" and "unattributed."

Ironically, it his most "clandestine" activityhis Anarchist activitieswhichbrings him the most in to the public and tabloid spotlight. As one of "The Thirty"accused and tried for "conspiracy" in a much publicized trial, it is Feneon's severe

mug shot that for a time presents his "public face."

The severe mug facing the viewer is actually producing a Conceptual Poetry "at a

distance." By not penning a single line, by simply "facing the music" to whichothers pen the lyrics, Feneon, in doing nothing more than facing the camera

"capturing" his image, proceeds to enact a series of dramas "projected" on to him,

a series of "identities," and "revelations" which use the documentary material toproduce a series of mass-published fictions.

The possible prison term facing the "Felix Feneon" in the inmate-numbered

"anonymous" mug shot, "presents its face" to the viewer, a face "taken,"

"imprisoned" and "caught" by the image and its publicity. This publicized face

facing camera and viewer and possible hard time, is "taken to be" the photo of the

face of a being from whom the mask of the clandestine and conspiratorial have been

torn off, revealing "the cold hard truth" of Felix Feneon.

Facing trial, however, all that is learned of this imprisoned face is that it is "the

wrong man, an innocent man." This fixed image, acquitted of its "sensational"


8/45

charges, is revealed not as a truth, but instead as simply a mask, a mask operating

like a screen or blank sheet of paper, onto which are projected the dramas, fictionsand "think piece" writings of others. Nothing is revealed other than an "identity"

which shifts, travels, changes from one set of captions to another. It is via these

captions written by others under his image in the papers and placards, that Feneon

continues his "writing at a distance." Simply by facing the camera, facing charges,

"facing the music," facing his accusers at trial and facing the verdict and judgment,

Feneon is "writing" a myriad captions, breaking news items, commentaries,

editorials, all of which change with wild speeds as they race to be as "up-to-minute"

as the events themselves are in "unfolding."

The professionals, these writers, these journalists and reporters of "reality," chase

desperately, breathlessly, after the unfolding drama in which the mug shot is

"framed," and in so doing produce texts of "speculative fiction," a serial

Conceptual Poetry with as its "star player" a writer whose own texts aredeliberately written to be unrecognized, hidden, camouflaged, unknown. And all the

while, this writer writing nothing is producing vast heaps of writing via the work ofothers, as yet another form of camouflaged clandestine Conceptual Poetry, "hot off

the press."

Rimbaud writes of a concept of the poetry of the future in

which poetry would precede actionwhich in a sense he proceeds to

"perform" himself. If one reads his letters written after he stopped

writing poetry, one finds Rimbaud living out, or through, one after

another of what now seem to be "the prophecies" of his own poetry.That is, the poetry is the "conceptual framework" for what becomes his"silence" as a poet, and is instead his "life of action."

In these examples, one finds forms of a "conceptual poetry"

in which the poetry is in large part an abandonment of language, of

words, of masses of "personally signed" "poetry objects," "poetryproducts." One finds instead a vanishing, a disappearance of both

language and "poet" and the emergence of that "some one else" Rimbaud

recognized prophetically, preceding the action--in writingin the"Lettre du voyant," "the Seer's letter"as "I is an other."

An interesting take on a conceptual poetry in writing is

found in one of Pascal's Pensees, #542:

"Thoughts come at random, and go at random. No device for holding on to

them or for having them.

A thought has escaped: I was trying to write it down: instead I write that it hasescaped me."

The writing is a notation of the "escaped" concept's


9/45

absence, its escape that is a line of flight that is a "flight out of time" as Hugo Ball

entitles his Dada diaries. Writing not as a method of remembering, of "capturingthought," but as the notation of the flight of the concept at the

approach of its notation.

Writing, then, as an absence an absence of the concept.

A Conceptual Poetry of writing as "absent-mindedness"!A writing which does

nothing more than elucidate that the escaping of thoughts "which come at random,

and go at random" has occurred.

This flight of the concept faced with its

notationindicates a line of flight among the examples of Rimbauda

"flight into the desert" as it were, of silence as a poetand of

Feneonthe flight into anonymous writing of very small newspaper "faits divers"

items punningly entitled "Nouvelles en trois lignes" (News/Novels in Three Lines),of pseudonymous writings in differing guises at the same time

according to the journals in which they appear, and as translator andeditor as well as "salesperson" in a gallery of "art objects," a

conceptual masquerader among the art-objects embodying "concepts" andbecoming no longer "concepts' but "consumer items." Feneon's framed mug shot on

to whose mug is projected a "serial crime novel," written by others and "starring"

the mug in the mug shot, a writer of unknown and unrecognized texts who now

vanishes into a feverish series of captions and headlines.

Anonymity, pseudonyms, impersonations, poets who write their own coming silence

and "disappearance" as an "I is an other," the deliberately unrecognized andunrecognizable poet whose mug shot becomes the mass published and distributed"crime scene" for police blotters and headlines, speculative fictions and ideological

diatribes, the writing which is a notation of the flight of the concept, the writing of

non-writers who "never wrote a word," yet whose concepts may be found

camouflaged, doubled, mirrored, shadowed, anonymously existing hidden in plain

site/sight/citethese nomadic elements which appear and disappear comprise aConceptual Poetry in which the concepts and poets both impersonate Others and

reappear as "Somebody Else," an Other unrecognized and unrecognizable found

hidden in plain site/sight/cite.

"It is not the elements which are new, but the order oftheir arrangement," is another Pascalian "pensee." One finds

arrangements of the elements of Rimbaud and Feneon into the various

forms of "conceptual poetry" in the works of Pessoa, Spicer and Yasusada.

Pessoa creates many others as poets, heteronyms with their own works

and actions, their own concepts of poetry. Spicer "translates" poetry "after Lorca"

as well as exchanging letters with the dead poet, lives for a summer with his ghost,who provides a foreword to Spicer's Book.

In the Yasusada works, the


10/45

elements of a Feneon are rearranged via the concepts of Spicer's

After Lorca into a work which extends heteronymity to include a poet,and his translators and editors, all of whom also function as critics

and theorizers of concepts of poetry by others and "themselves." These fictional

writers create a "fake" framework impersonating those of "standard editions" of

scholarly annotated texts for presenting the poetry and life of a fictional poet who

"writes down" his own concepts for Conceptual Works as forms of performance.

These impersonators and their fake framework create a fiction which is at the same

time "real," its indeterminacy generating effects and after effects among the flood of

texts, lectures, commentaries, translations which radiate from its real existence as afake. and its fake existence as the real.

This flood of texts generated by the Yasusada in itself is a Conceptual Poetry

generated by the "After" effects of its own "indeterminacy," in its impersonations,

doublings, and its fictional exchanges with a dead Spicer who corresponded with adead Lorca. The writings of "real, dead Poets," "fictional, dead Poets" and ghosts,

perform impersonations in a Conceptual "play house" theater of haunting absences.

In After Lorca and Yasusada, one finds that the "ConceptualPoetry" is not limited to the "real," the "living," "poet" alone, but extends

to and includes the dead, the fictional, the ghosts and "after" effects of "real"

and "forged" and "unreal" poets and poetries. In these works, the

"concepts" of both concept and poet of the term "Conceptual Poetry"

are further extended in their relationships with performance and the "haunting

absences" which "performances of" make present within a "staged" space and

temporality.

(The Yasusada includes several basically performance pieces, and both the

Spicer and Lorca of After Lorca and the many entities involved in the

Yasusada are basically "performances" themselves.)

Emily Dickinson wrote that "Nature is a haunted house, and Artis a House that tries to be haunted."

I think that if one considers "haunting" via the impersonations of Others,themselves beings trying to be "haunted," and "haunting"

as a ConceptualPoetry, one finds that the methods of "After Lorca" and Yasusada

(which Yasusada in a letter notes that he is going to call his "After

Spicer") provide a Way or Method by which one may enter the "haunting"

performances across media by which the impersonations of the would-be " Haunted

House of Art" may

be examined in terms of a "play house," as a form of"theater" like that of Shakespeare's Globe Theater where "all the

world's a stage." And in doing so find ways of "making contact" with that

"real" Haunted House" of Nature via Performance, actions taken not as


11/45

"oneself," but in the guise of an Other.

In my work with RubBEings and clay impression spray paintings, as well

as various media which may be mixed with these such as transfers of

Xeroxed images done using various chemicalsone finds such a Concept as

it were of "making Contact" in a very literal, "hands on" way. As I

work on one side of the page, that which is thereletterings, forms,

grass, leaves, glass, wood, dirt, stone, concrete, the found materialsI am able to take home to work with and those things fixed in the

landscapes and urbanscapesthese materials are working on their side

of the page also. The "making contact" is that which is the work

created out of this encounter, this collaboration made by the things

reaching to touch from one side and my hands from the other.

I have been fascinated for years by a statement of RobertSmithson's that a great artist could make a work of art as a

glancethat is, there is no object, no material record of this "work."

This is to free "the time of the artist" from having a market value

fixed to it by means of the objects which are produced "on the

artist's time." To free the artist from the "wage slavery" of being

forced to produce an object or written text in order to "prove" the

action of the artist in the world as indeed being "of value," is aparadoxical envisioning of the artist as at once "freed fromconventions of objects and texts," and at the same "excluded from

existence as a conventional artist and poet." It is a way of making plain the

paradoxical

simultaneity of being "silenced" and "forced to speak, to produce, to

write," in order to participate in the social constructions of artaccording to monetary values.

A Russian artist writes: "Language is fascism not because it censors, but because itforces one to speak."

"Forcing one to speak," is the purpose of torture; one may then ask if a Conceptual

Poetry of directives, instructions, copying, is not from this point of view a method of

torture? The object of torture is not to produce "truth" or "lies" or "silence," but

simply to produce languagespeech which becomes part of the "records" stashed

in files as "evidence" that a prisoner has indeed "confessed."

By a paradoxical turn, does this then turn Conceptual Poetry of some kinds into a

new form of "Confessional Poetry?"


12/45

And so produce a Conceptual Confessional Poetry of impersonal drones "following

orders" who at the same time wish to be known of as "Conceptual Poets?" And soperhaps to "make a name for oneself" as an "outstanding employee," or as a

"lyrically inclined soldier," a "poetic mercenary" who may become the "New

Conceptual Poetry's Archilochus?"

Archilochuscreator of then Avant Garde poetic forms and a member of the avant-

garde troops as a soldier.

One then is faced with the questions of a Conceptual Poetry as being away of making Poetry by means which are not recognizedas "art/poetic means,

methods, and materials." To make poems without words, and films

without film.

A Conceptual Poetry not of 'impersonality," nor of "Conceptual Poets" whoseadvocations of "impersonality" ironically "make a name for themselves."

A Conceptual Poetry that finds and is found by anonymous beings, who in working

with Conceptual Poetry are for a space of time "Conceptual Poets," with or withoutbeing aware that they are even being "Conceptual Poets."

Perhaps in this way, strangely, Art Brut as originally found and later

conceived of by Jean Dubuffet comes close to a "Conceptual Art and

Poetry." It is art made outside any of the conventions of art, by

persons without often any awareness of "art" per se. Yetsince they

have been "recognized" by the Glance of A Great Artistdo they thenremain things which exist only in the glanceto exist that is truly ina "Raw State"--or as things which could not be detected as Art Brut

without the knowledge of Art, of an Artist?

That is, in what ways do they exist before the Artist's glance

introduces the Concept of Art?

A similar question arises in the studies of Rock Art and Petroglyphs.

Since many forms are very hard to distinguish between being the work ofhumans, or that of natural processes which produce things which "look

like" the works of humansare they of the Haunted House of Natureorthe one trying to be the Haunting of Art?

And furtherwhich "came first"the things in Nature which inspire via

imitation those which are the "copies" of the Haunted House ofNatureorthings which humans see as made by humans because of knowing

the "copies"? And which paradoxically turn out by means of chemical

testings to be from the Haunted House of Naturethat is, "originals"


13/45

rather than "copies"? Or do humans see things in Nature which they

think are Nature "resembling Art" because they see them as also the"Origins of Art" via the copies which enable them to see "Nature" as

"Art"?

These "haunting questions" emphasize an element of indeterminacy in

the "Conceptual" aspects of Poetry and Art. This is an indeterminacy which is

found, not one that is imposed by the use of "procedures which generaterandomness."

"The most beautiful world is a heap of rubble tossed down at random/in

confusion."--Heraclitus

Is the only way to "know and recognize" a Conceptual work via its

being labeled so? Is that why a Conceptual Work of the kind found inobjects, in written language, has always also an author's name

attached to it? Does that particular Concept then "belong" to thatperson only? And so even if one "follows its directions," is not one

simply replicating the author's concept? That is, one becomes

imprisoned not only by the object, and by the process, but by the

author also?

Or may not "Conceptual" works be "hidden in plain site/sight/cite,"and simply to be found require a letting go, an absence of "Concepts" which are

predetermined, dependent on objects, examples, titles (and "poets" and

"artists") in order to be "noticed?" As indeed being "Conceptual Art

and Poetry" always already, and the conceptions emerging from them,

and not from the "poet" or "artist" or "viewer?"

The conceptual then emerges from OUTSIDE the "Conceptual Artist/Poet."

That is, the things themselves are their own Concepts, their Conceptual poetries

and arts and "call out" as it were to be "found."

"Poetry no longer imposes itself, it exposes itself," writes Paul Celan in a notebook.

In a sense this is the way that working with the Found takes place.

"I do not seek, I find," said Picasso. Instead of creating "methods"

of chance operations, or of copying things which entail apredetermined "exercise" of a "Conceptual Approach" mapped out in

advance, to find means to be open to what is there in the moment as

being that which is the Concept that is calling to oneand with which


14/45

one responds. And in working with the found, one then is moving

within a collaborative flow, in which the give and take and effects ofthe materials themselves directly affect what "takes place."

The "author" of the works is not a single person; it is a collaboration that emerges

in the contact of a person with the found.

There are no "directions to follow," simply the directions of the

moving flow--with which one is moving--and along the way thereemerges, there calls, the Conceptual everywhere to be found, hidden in

plain site, sight/cite.

Disintegrations, corrosions, the effects of time and weathering, appearances and

disappearances of shadows, Hauntings of ghostly "after effects" of disturbancesfrom wars to demolitions to erosion are a presence of "change in the universe,"

Basho's "basis of art."

It is not the "poet" who creates "Conceptual Poetry."

Conceptual Poetry finds and is found by anonymous beings who for a

while during contact and working with this finding and found

Conceptual Poetry are "Conceptual Poets."

And then both move on----

into those unknowns in which are found the uncanny recognitions, the encountersamong Conceptual Poetries hidden in plain site/sight/cite--

Appendix A: from "El Ojo de Dios" Part One: "Insects and Letters."

El Colonel smiles. Along with his great fondness for alliteration, El Colonel has an

addiction for placing thoughts, those improvised compositions, in quotation marks.

This brings "a deft touch of intriguing and entertaining irony to the most prosaic ofideas, events, and persons " Habituated to an imaginative isolation, El Colonel's

intellectual companions are his "compositions" with their attendant"commentaries," "asides," "digressions," and "annotations." By means of this

"ironic distancing" he continually invents "a hitherto unknown and as yet

unpublished form of writing, never before seen nor heard."

El Colonel smiles. This writing is a method of creating for himself a reader who is inturn accompanied by his own doubling as a writer. Where there had been "no one

with who to share his most intimate thoughts, the fullness and agility of his life,"

there is now not only such a companion; there is also a recorder of "his deeds and


15/45

exploits." In such a way El Colonel simultaneously acts, writes and reads both for

himself and to another, who is also both a reader and an other author in turn,providing El Colonel with his own role as a reader. By these means his life takes on

an aura of legend, and he acts both as though creating the performance of

something which is happening, and of something which has happened "already." By

the latter means, his life is taking place in a futurity in which it is read, and in a

present in which it is written. The simplest acts and words are invested with the

immediacy of a drama "taking place," the glow of "great acts having taken place ,"

and, to heighten both drama and aura, the precisions of a prefatory "about to take

place," which allows for the insertion of the necessary commentaries, directions, andasides. "For the benefit of the listener, for the pleasure of the reader, for the

background material necessary to the writer," as El Colonel describes it with relish

in a self-penned blurb . . .

El Colonel smiles. Going to the wide open window he gazes through aviatorsunglasses at the bright birds, the luminosity of the landscape and "reflects on the

irony that reflective glasses shield one's reflections from observing eyes by theirmirrored reflections of a thwarted inquiry."

El Colonel smiles. Behind the reflecting sunglasses, "his own reflections concern

themselves with a reflection found within the 'Author's Note' to the Second Edition

of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, a copy of which he found when literally

ransacking a small private library whose owner he had been ordered to take

possession of." El Colonel "recollects in tranquility," that the passage had "greatlyinterested, inspired and amused him, for in it Conrad had written: 'Man may smileand smile but he is not an investigating animal. He loves the obvious. He shrinks

from explanations. Yet I will go on with mine.'"

El Colonel smiles. Watching the play of light on large leaves upon whose surfaces

insects have begun to gather "seems to remind him of the play of the light even inthe cool dimness of the library on the leaves of the book, upon whose surfaces the

letters had gathered." This "doubly reflecting" aspect of his seeing and his

recollections strikes him "as an image of the intimate intercourse of the natural andhuman worlds, of the revelatory union of the exterior and interior of consciousness,

and of the synchronistic simultaneity of the moment and a memory which doublesas its mirror."

El Colonel smiles. Conrad's man who may smile and smile, loving the obvious and

shrinking from explanations, he finds himself to be the "paradoxical embodiment of

the contradiction of." For, "reading Conrad's words crawling on the leaves of the

book in the cool, shadowy light, he had found himself, not as the one described, butas the union of the description and its author. As both the smiler and the

investigative explainer who describes and refutes him, as the one whose task it is to

bring into being their union. As and in himself. And in that moment he experienced


16/45

the recognition of his unique Vocation and of himself. "

El Colonel smiles. "To smile, to love the obvious, and to present and preserve the

explanation which both the smile and the obvious conceal, the reflections behind

their reflecting surfaces. This, this is his alone, this unique vocation, this great

passion, this most confidential mission."

El colonel smiles. Checking his watch, he turns and approaches a chair on one side

of the table set in the center of the large light filled room. This chair and the one on

the table's other side are high backed, with strong arms of a wood hard as iron andpainted in a still shiny black lacquer. The upholstered seats and backs are not

uncomfortable and of a worn red fading into rose. With studied and precise,

angular movements, El Colonel begins to arrange himself in the correct position in

which to be found by his "immanent and eminent visitor."

El Colonel permits himself a barely audible and very brief laugh as "he takes

possession of himself the better to assiduously arrange the head, the torso, the limbs,the folded hands, as though he were in the process of preparing a stuffed and

mounted specimen of a representative example of a Colonel, whose taxidermist hehimself was."

Appendix B: Conceptual Poetry and the Work Place: the Death of the Author and

the Birth of the Drone, A Science Fiction Poetics of the Invasion of the Body

Snatchers

The Concept of Conceptual Poetry one finds among some Conceptual Poets is one

that resembles a form of training for the embrace of working in bureaucratic and

corporate settings as an "impersonal" manipulator and mover of masses of material

in the form of words. Conceptual Poetry becomes a "discipline" for the productionof "well adjusted functionaries" carrying out the "boring" tasks of filing, copying,

sorting and arranging word-data. The "unoriginality," "impersonality" and

boredom raised to the level of "Conceptual Poetry" is perhaps a way to aestheticizethe dystopian existences of millions of "lower level" workers in globalized

corporations and bureaucratic State apparati.

Perhaps finding in this manner a Poetry in the Conceptions of themselves as bored,

unoriginal, impersonal data copiers and processors, employees will become

"happier" about their jobs and less questioning of their exploiters and exploitation.

To be rid of all of the baggage of "the personal," the yearning to prove oneself

"original," and to accept a lifetime of boredom, without wondering about "themeaning of all this," and "what is it doing for ME!"

The Conceptual Poet may in this manner be able to have their services be much in


17/45

demand, and so "to make a name for oneself," by emphasizing the impersonality of

others, and training them to "disappear" into the services they provide as handlersof all the unwanted, uninteresting masses of material that need somehow to be

sorted, copied and stored.

Conceptual Poets becoming the creators of the glamorization of non-creation serve

as "beacons" lighting this boring, dull, impersonal industriousness by which it may

be seen "in a better light" by the industrialists and the Conceptual Poet consultants

with their own cliques of admirers in the Management and Socio- Cultural spheres.

It is not "wage slavery" and "drones" one is providing the world with, but instead

an exciting, "avant-garde" Conceptual Poetry taught in all the best universities!

And so Conceptual Poetry becomes a new method of Consulting for firms interested

in innovations in "employee relations."

Conceptual Poetry examined in this light may be seen as a form of preventing the

kinds of breakdowns among lower level employees in the bureaucratic andcorporate fields one finds in the writings that depict and explore the effects of the

rapidly industrializing and mass data producing machines of "progress" of the 19thCentury. These "breakdowns" appear in the forms of Melville's "Bartleby the

Scrivener," with his "I would prefer not to," and among the bottom level clerks and

copyists in the works of Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Balzac and Dickens, several of which

point to the works of Kafka, himself an employee in an immense bureaucracy.

Instead of the "troublesome" writers of previous eras, Conceptual Poetry offers an

efficient, impersonal service worker, a copyist who unlike Bartleby will not "prefernot to," but "stay on the job" and simply do as is told via the directives and "Avant-Garde,"'Innovative" Conceptions of Conceptual Poets hired as Consultants.

Conceptual Poetry becomes the non plus ultra form of aestheticizing drones for

their Conceptual management as Poetry for the analyses and admirations of their

Bosses and Trainers, their Managers and Owners, their CEOs and Instructors, for

all those at the top and their elite consultants, Conceptual Poets and the academieswhich train them.

"No more Kafkas!! No more Gogols!! No more Bartlebys!!"

The "death of the author" is the birth of the drone, a transformation that occurs

when persons are asleep, as the pods from Outer Space give birth to the impersonalcopies of the once human beings in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

SELECTED STATEMENTS ACCOMPANYING VISUAL POETRY WORKS ON

DISPLAY AT THE SYMPOSIUM

Selections from Statements re Various Aspects of Working with


18/45

RubBEings and Clay Impression Spray Paintings

(with some comments in the present added--)

I began making rubBEings in Spring 1999. Walking a great deal, findingmaterials to bring home to useI realized I was already in an immense

work roomsurrounded by letterings, words, signsthat I could copy on

site and make arrangements from directly. Immediately I purchased alumber crayon and cheap note pad and the rubBEings became not only

part of daily life but of my dreams and memories as well.

RubBEings may well be the oldest form of copy art. Rearranging foundsigns and letterings, one arrives at visual poems that emerge from the

existent materials. By moving from site to site, one is collaging,

combining scattered elements to juxtapose and create new arrangements.

The Poetry of the Found, everywhere to be Found.

All my work is made with a profound faith in the encounter with the

Found, everywhere and at all times to be Found all around one.


19/45

Like Picasso, I work with the sense that "I do not seek, I find."

The poet Paul Celan wrote: "Poetry no longer imposes itself, it

exposes itself."

The Found is that which exposes itself, and with which one works via

an uncanny encounter, a call and response, a shock of recognition, out

of which collaboration emerges an Other, which is the BEing in/with

rubBEing.

For this way of working, Conceptual Poetry is not imposed into or on

to a work, it is not a Conception from the mind alone, but one that

emerges via touch, seeing, hearing, contact with the site/sight/cite

with which one is working.

In much of my work with rubBEings and clay impression spray paintings,

what emerges is a notation of what Basho called the basis ofart--"change in the universe."

Language as material is not solid, but is disintegrating via the flows

of time, weather, the effects of man made interventions, including

War, as in the seres of "Wall" paintings and works.

This is a fugitive language, hidden in plain site/sight/cite, "over

looked," vanishing into its forms of the next moment in the flow.

Rather than "Conceptualize" it, one finds oneself encountering andworking with its ever shifting forms in the flows of Time.

In order to express "ideas" in pieces done with such an intention, I

have also worked with collage, the introduction of transfers, the

inclusion of elements of all kinds of materials directly into thepaint so that its leaves residues among the pieces to give an added

texture, a further haptic element. Some pieces have also been left

outside during wind, rain, and afterwards the drying out of the sun,while others have been made during "blinding snowstorms." Even if it

is not "visible" there is a residue of these encounters with thesite/sight/cite as it travels through time and weather, through the

effects of differing elements.

Made with "next to nothing" on a budget of "next to nothing" one finds

in a sense--"everything," that is going on around one at any moment.

"necessity is the Motherfucker of Invention" is one way I use toexpress what happens when one works with the "bare necessities."

To work "without" Walls in a world in which one is among


20/45

Walls--physical and virtual, in that the Virtual is Walled off via

wars, occupations, poverty, discrimination in the destruction of powergrids and the cutting off of electricity to huge populations, and the

physical Walls which Wall in large communities (Gaza, prisons,

detention camps) and Wall Out others--gated communities, Green Zones,

borders--is working with the cracks found among their disintegrations

and disruptures.

This is the Poetry that exposes itself of which Celan, a survivor of

the Concentration Camps, writes.

The Poetry of the Found, everywhere to be Found.


21/45


22/45

Haptic Visual Poems of Twilight Lowlight and Next to No light

From making rubBEings under all sorts of conditions I have beendeveloping seeing with my hands and touching with my eyes. These are

very good skills to have when working into the night now that it is

getting dark out earlier and earlier each evening. In the pieces hereI just ran my hands and fingers over the surfaces of trash cans,

plaques, telephone poles and a clay impression, "seeing" them in the

dark and rubBEing them on the spray painted or Xerox-copied images I

had brought with me to work on. A few pieces were done in alleys where

there was a bit more light from the occasional dirty dim orange-yellowglow of a street lamp. Some are from a sliced outer section of a huge

truck tire I found and have hidden in some bushes in another alley.

Those were made in almost total darkness.


23/45


24/45


25/45

I like a lot working in this way--not just that one is learning to see by hand--but thatone is also learning to touch by seeing--so that walking along the eye instead of

finding a relatively limited and stable world of flattened or rounded forms issuddenly embarked in a wildly shifting universe of textures in a myriad scales--from

tiny pockmarks to a sense of immense concavities--from gritty gravel feels to

softness of skin and lips to jagged cold edges of metallic shards--eye moves amongthousands of sensations, feeling them , caressing them, as if by hand--shaping them--

while the hands in touching things are seeing them--rubBEing them with the lumber

crayon a means of notation of both the seeing and the touching simultaneously--andvia notation also evoking the sense of music and voices one hears with these

exchanges among the senses . . . these pieces are for most part ones guided by the

grid; as I wrote yesterday this is a way for me to work against the grain of my own

impulses and habits and enjoy the tension between trying to "toe the line" so to

speak and my natural character to be "out of line"--so the pieces once I finally seethem by light of day or inside a brightly lit place--seem to me to be a dialogue of the

"clean" and "dirty" . . . a dialogue literally "in the dark" . . . developed in the "dark

room" of the outdoors of alleys and parks--and seen later on "by light of day"--to beseen/read/heard in a new way--from night before--

(btw--the spray painted backgrounds all done in the near darkness also--)


26/45


27/45


28/45

Haptic Visual Poetry of RubBEings--in the cold--& snow--& wind

Today we had the first snows here in Milwaukee. Temperatures to drop near

zero--while I was out working I was informed it was 16 degrees. Winds haveblown for days signaling changes on the way--and today they

arrived--swirling gusts of full flaked snow--drastic drop in the

temperatures--Since I work by hand directly pressing paper to the material to be rubbed

with one hand--and then holding lumber crayon in other hand--touch and

temperature play a large part in my daily work outside. The cold will be

soon affecting the ways I work--I will keep a log of these.

Through time the hands learn to see and the eyes learn to touch--Iexamine materials as they arise for possible rubbing--things that may look

good to the eye do not work by hand and vice versa--one has to go back and

forth in using both hands and eyes to tell if a given fence or telephone poleor raised letterings on dumpsters may be of use. The same goes for any

surface in which there are cracks and knots and the swirled lines made by

circling knots--

One learns that what may look good to the eye when rubbed by touch isnothing much at all--and one may feel by hand something that seems to be of

great beauty--and then when rubbed by eye sight--it is nothing at all--just

a mess.


29/45


30/45


31/45


32/45

RubBEings are a Haptic form of work--touch plays such a role--that I

have of late done much work in the dark or near dark literally feeling myway--since it gets dark earlier, I have grown used to working by dimmer and

dimmer lights, fading into darkness--this is a fascinating way to work--one

has to use the hands as eyes--and yet one also knows that what may feel good

to the touch is unpleasing to the eyes--so this working by touch--one begins

to learn just how deep an impression or incision in wood or other materials

made by--numbers and letters on telephone poles for example, burdened into

the wood--or raises letterings--and then from this to being able to read by

hand the heights of raised lines of wood--how high they may be beforemaking truly a good series/set of lines on the paper--slowly but surely I

find that I can by touch find what will be pleasing to the eye--it takes time and

patience and much running of the hands over surfaces--that one cannot see.

I find this a purely Haptic approach--and that my rubBEings do feel

to the touch differently in the almost invisible differences in the heightsof the crayon wax on top of the paper--or the areas in white where it is

incised--One may read subtly by the touch the crayon wax on paper--and see with

the eyes--the shifts in heights and shades and weights of the hands andcrayon as it varies according to the raisings and lowerings of the

materials-

The making and touching/reading of rubBEings are a way to introduce

the Haptic element directly into visual poetry--a visual poetry in which the

visual may be by touch--and the touch may be visual--- The Haptic

element is important in what I work with daily--and is another means by

which to extend visual poetry from the word/paper into the world ofmaterials.Concrete--materiality of the word--physicality of letters and

words on a page--these names and phrases remain removed from the touch of

the world and are abstractions. In working with the Haptic, one essays a

finding through the working of a ways in which all these mere phrases may

truly be a part of the world and visual poetry a lived experience, one not

RubBEings and Public Art, Art Made in Public Spaces among the Public


33/45


34/45


35/45

I hope in my work that there is conveyed a sense that a public spacetruly belongs to no one and is shared by everyone. This is in part

why in making my work I collaborate directly with what is there inthese spaces, so that they are present in the works literally, and

calling from these worlds hidden in plain site/sight/cite all around

one, everywhere to be found.

By using the simplest, very ancient and childlike techniques, by

using found materials only, and working only in public spaces or in myroom with things found in the streets, I hope that the work conveys

what the meeting of the hand on one side of the paper with the ground

on the other conveys in the creating of a collaborative workno

separations, no Walls, no deliberate or trained overlookings and

unhearingsbut an encounter, a "shock of recognition" and an awarenessof the world under everyone's feet ("Look under your

feet!"Chuang-Tzu) as a shared space to be worked WITH. Necessity is

indeed the Motherfucker of Invention, and in the ever ongoingnon-recognition of others and of all that is hidden in plain

site/sight/cite is their vanishingand in that vanishingthese methods

become a kind of guerilla survival toolkit, ways to keep open the

communications with the grounds and beings of the everywhere foundhidden all around one, the public spaces of a public without Walls,

without separations, without Publicity


36/45

A public of uncanny recognitions and encounters and creation with

refuse as a way t refuse these endless barriers between peoples,between "art" and "life," between the privatized and the public,

between the ground itself and those who walk upon it.

RubBEings and Reveries


37/45


38/45


39/45


40/45


41/45


42/45


43/45


44/45


45/45

"

Documents

Conceptual Poetry and its Others2