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Our attempt consists, after a decade, in re-discussing the points of
the Manifesto. We need to state immediately that the reasons which induced
us to theorize the performance of sound poetry, still exist. Nobody,
save very few cases, has felt the urgence of making clearer the procedure
of a stuff still enough practised. Maybe, it’s difficult to find
the new practioners, as nowadays it seems that only the most sofisticated
iper-technology or the violence against the body itself (also transfigured
or made through genetic manipulation) are the unique, authorized ways
of the artistic research.
Our intention was based on the persuasion that those who were experimenting
performances of sound poetry, not always were perfectly aware of what
they were producing. And such an impression is still neatly kept today.
By awareness we mean the capability of a project able to organize round
the voice, round the nucleus of the voice a series of interventions
involving other media, without going towards the performance of art,
the experimental theatre, the concrete music or, worse, the reading
of a poem. It was necessary, and it still needs a high level of consciousnees
to manage such a tourbillion of multiple elements.
All that written in the Manifesto, was at a right time, positively valued
by Paul Zumthor who understood its theoretical-pratical importance.
Often he suggested us to go beyond, to create a group. Well, a group
in a way has been created through the chain of someinternational festivals
(Bologna, Mexico City, São Paulo, Budapest, Montevideo, Athens,
Barcellona...). Our editions in records (almost twenty records produced
along ten years) have rightly supported the theory. Various articles,
essays, catalogues and anthologies have been done. The phenomen exists,
it is perfectly recognizable, also to search new followers. In view
of the new millenium, it is one of the experimental possibilities still
worth being developed, without running the risk of getting out of date,
especially if the dialogue with the
media will be kept alive.
1 Only the development of new technologies will mark the progress of
sound poetry: electronic media and computers are and will be the true
protagonists.
This has been an easy prophecy! During the Fifties, the invention of
the recording technique and its immediate commercialization has deeply
influenced and accelerated the passage from phonetic poetry to sound
poetry, or better said, the change from the typical lettrist approach
to the more spacial, electromagnetic sound. The same can’t be said
after the appearance of the computer into the artist scene towards the
end of the Eighties. No doubt that the production times are neatly shortened,
it’s easier to work with special effects, to control the sound
waves. But the final product, that’s the sound poem, has not been
improved both from the structure and the contents. We are sharing the
idea that the end-of-the-century big-computer-bang has not provoked
the foreseen wave of “new” sound poetry. We say that those
who have always used the technology for the composition of the poem,
still go on exploiting it, maybe in a more sophisticated way, see Larry
Wendt, Charles Amirkhanian, Sten Hanson. Or one would mention the extreme
technological coherence of Henri Chopin who, at least for forty years,
has been proposing his rarefied style, not so far from a phonetic ‘rumourism’.
Other poets who first denied their involvement with iper-tech recording
studios, now they are not afraid of it and are used to click the mouse
to select their recorded voice finally visualized into the screen. Still
convinced that the fundamental help of technology is necessary to the
cause of sound poetry, this is the winning instrument, so that the sound
poet has got not only the task of not being unprepared in front of the
very fast electronical development but also that of experimenting the
new media for the safe progress of the sound poem itself. Set in other
words, thinking of the poem also after the new technological suggestion
and the new devices introduced. We ought to avoid that unbearable situation
so typical of controlled freedom, where, apparentely we can do what
we want to, but, we do nothing or better, we do only that thing others
allow us to do. That’ why we do appreciate those poets or searchers
who have been able to set up ex novo their own softwares, Tibor Papp,
Jacques Donguy, Eduardo Kac, Fabio Doctorovich or those who can wholly
dominate the program they are using, exploiting it along an original
process, Mark Sutherland, Philadelpho Menezes, Takei Yoshimichi, Suzuki
Takeo.
Finally, some short words about the highways of the Web. We speak as
Internet producer and Internet navigators. Our Website is three years
old, and has been visited by more than 6.000 people, which is nothing
if compared with great industrial sites, but a great success if you
think we are defending an item not yet so visible. Our experience says
that Internet module is not yet available for creative purposes. We
are still in front of a medium more done for the diffusion of the products
(see, the Websites), than for the building up of the poem itself.
Of course such a virtual existence is necessary, as Virilio said, we
do exist only if we exist in the Web. Paradoxically, the world has become
smaller and smaller or huger and huger, so that we are unable to distinguish
what is real from what is virtual, and viceversa.
2 The object ‘language’ must be investigated in all its smallest
and most extensive segments. The word, basic instrument of sonorous
experimentation, takes the connotation of multi-word, penetrated all
the way in and re-stitched on the outside. The world must be able to
free its polyvalent sonorities.
Here we discuss the age-old problem of the word ‘poetry’.
As one considers that the starting material is the language, we have
always believed, by convention, to accept the definition of sound poetry.
One doesn’t feel scared if the word ‘poetry’ would have
to disappear. We do know that the ground to be dug still belongs to
the language, to that language brought by the voice in that dual meaning
Paul Zumthor introduced clearly :”I do define orality the working
of the voice as it brings language, vocality the whole activities and
values which are its own characteristics, apart from the language”.
Here, it’s summarized all the research of sound poetry. It’s
a dialogism which provokes others, as signifiant-signifè, that’s
orality stands at signifiè as vocality stands at signifiant.
Again, orality stands at the morpho-syntactic chain as vocality stands
at the phonetic ‘rumourism’. The aspects of multiword are
fundamental. It is not only the old idea of the bag-word introduced
by Joyce, although it was confined into the prison of the written page,
but the use under the perspective of vocorality (forgive the neologism,
fusion of vocality and orality) of the word itself. After the great
seasons of the ‘rumourism’ of the Eighties, where the language
was exploited vocally, we came into the Ninties where the integrity
and integrality of the word was pursued. A vocoral word is able to free
still that ‘polyvalent’ energy repressed at the level of writing.
Energy which comes out under the shape of phonems, aboveall, by means
of permutational methods or reduction techniques, and under the form
of word sequences developed in their normal trend. This part seems to
us still uptodate. The word must become really multiword, directing
itself towards manifold areas, creating the right background for multiple
meanings, and so for its media expansion, related to the new tools of
communication. Along this path, the most interesting poets are Clemente
Padin, Julien Blaine, Serge Pey, Bernard Heidsieck, Bartolomè
Ferrando, David Moss, Anna Homler, Franz Mon, Ide Hintze, Philippe Castellin
and his Akhenaton group.
3 Sound elaboration admits no limits, it must be pushed beyond the sole
of the pure ‘rumourism’, of a significant ‘rumourism’:
the sonorous ambiguity, both vocal and linguistic, has a meaning if
it fully exploits the instrumental apparatus of the mouth.
If we should change something in this part, instead of ‘linguistic’
we’d write ‘oral’. That to be coherent with what we said
above. The instrument ‘voice’ is the base, the principal one,
thanks to all its anatomic aspects, and it is evident that its stream
is vocoral. From this point of view, the old idea pursued by Lettrist,
and earlier by Futurists and Dadaists, was a winning one. A steady starting
point. The novelty here consists in not including limits or borders.
All that happened in a perhaps unique artist, Demetrio Stratos, who
used the instrument-mouth like nobody had done before, reaching extremely
unbelievable results. His sounds were able to defeat the same resistence
of his body. He intended to break the wall which separates what it’s
possible from what it’s impossible thanks to the voice. In this
area of research one can see other poets who are going on along the
same line of development, Jaap Blonk, Valeri Scherstianoj, Brenda Hutchinson,
Miroslaw Rajkowski, Christian Prigent, Giuliano Zosi, Katalin Ladik,
Nobuo Kubota, Paul Dutton.
An extreme level of vocoral sound can also be reached exploiting the
digital process. We do believe as a very important step, beginning from
the natural aspect of the voice produced by the mouth, which means that
we escape from the use of artificial voice. It must be still improved
and too much determined by a metallic, cool tone. The electronic approach
pushes the voice into a ground where it is unable to recognize itself.
It starts as voice, it arrives as sonorous piece, ‘rumourism’.
Today, the sole is continuously crossed thanks to the powerful softwares.
We have to admit that the technological progress reaches record after
record. We do recommend that the poet must not follow passively the
latest device, to show himself not too dependent, that’s why the
compact structure of the project plays an important role, the best guarantee
for the consciusness of doing a poem.
4 Rescuing the sensitivity of time (the minute, the second) beyond the
canons of harmony and disharmony, since only editing is the correct
parameter of synthesis and balance.
This point is so important that it establishes the success or the failure
of a sound poem. It’s not a chance if we dared to mention minutes
or even seconds. We would always want to know the reason why a poem
lasts x minutes and not y minutes. Such a statement is directly connected
of that one which underlined the prevalence of the project and its awareness.
It means that the sound poet when he produces, controls all the elements,
he dominates their use and function, for the purpose of getting the
desired effects.
It is not always necessary to prepare performances based on the idea
of time, as it happens in Gerard Rhum, Josè Calleja, Maria Teresa
Hincapie. We want to point out, obviously, that the performing time
is different from that of the audience. So the time of the performance
must be supported by the structural need of the poem itself. We do not
mean at any cost a full time, where it is compulsory that something
has to happen. No. We are talking of a justified time. Kirsten Justesen
included in a performance of hers, huge cubes of ice which reasonably
should have melted, giving the temporal rhythm of her intervention.
This is an example. Much better about the same problem has been done
by some Fluxus artists as Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles,
Eric Andersen, Charles Dreyfus. Even if the sound research seems to
appear weak.
We never thought that the best approach to the performance which had
in the time its main characteristic, could be done through a unique
entity, without being helped by the cut-up. All that is unavoidable
if the poem is structured through a minimum level of complexity. Apart
from it, we do not know a good poem which has not used the technique
of the cut-up. Today, furthermore, the cut-up of an oral poem can be
done easily on the screen of your computer, moving only the hand on
the mouse, whereas until the end of the Eighties, to operate a cut-up,
one needed physically to cut the tape and stick it. From bricolage to
the era of computer. Such an easy use of the hardware has not provoked
a better role of the cut-up, to prove once more that the mere technological
development is not enough to do the poem. Poets like Paul de Vree, Bob
Cobbing, John Giorno, Fernando Millàn, Gianni Emilio Simonetti
or Joan Brossa especially in his theatre ‘Strip-tease’ always
seem to control wholly the element of time during the performance. The
cut-up is an obliged passage for a homogeneous, organization of the
poetic material.
Finally, there are poets who, without practising great theories about
the idea of time, without using a cut-up in front of the hardware, do
operate a sort of mental cut-up, better defined like cerebral-vocoral,
as during the performance, they feel the weight of the flowing time,
so that their own body gets loaded like clocks to determine the time
that goes by. Examples of that are given by Llorenç Barber, Josè
Iges, Pierre Andrè Arcand.
5 Language is rhythm; tonal values are real units of significance: first
the rational act, then the emotional one.
This is the point which determines neatly the prevalence of vocorality
against writing. The signifying tone, almost morpho-syntactic structure,
full of meaning. Demetrio Stratos used to say that “the rhythm
develops the raising of the physiological conscience”, stressing
perfectly that universal-holy aspect the voice gets during its rhythmic
evolutions. More. The language, meant as corporal instrument, is comparable
to a finger, to an arm, to a penis, and it is able to imitate all of
them, producing sonorous movements rich of energy and impact towards
audience. The voice can be uttered through the breast, the head, the
diaphragm, it does not matter. It counts the rhythm pattern inside which
it is developed. It can be violent object, charming caress. The rhythm
must be decided consciously. The rhythm must be heard inside the body
of the performer. It is signifying rhythm because it is the rhythm of
the poet’s body. The voice is his visible extension, as in the
egyptian hieroglyphics, when the voice was drawn like a cloud of signs.
Getting the rhythm of the poem, means managing the prossemic lines.
The wise sound poets do possess this quality. Chris Mann, Amanda Stewart,
Allan Vizents, Richard Kostelanetz, Carlos Estevez, Rod Summers, Rosaria
Lorusso. We are deeply persuaded that such a choice must be done rationally
and not left into the dangerous hands of improvisation. The sound poet
is not working into a jazz session, with all our respect for this really
democratic, musical branch. We’ll extend on purpose this great
trend of rationality to the whole structure of the poem, following a
lesson of Sartre who, on his turn, had learnt by Hegel “the true
is the whole”. Only totality is true, and only in front of the
whole, one is able to reach the truth. Our whole is polypoetical, which
is connected to the world of the media, beyond the totality of the body
(mind, thinking, heart). The polypoetical act is based into a rational
approach to reach its own truth. The use of the reason allows us to
go into a real, concrete direction. Gadamer, via Descartes, thought
“all that is rational is real, and all that is real is rational”.
We are so real that we still go on performing (tomorrow at the Theatre
Acid, we’ll have the performance n.200). You are so real that the
performing event is necessary to be what you are.
6 Polypoetry is conceived and made actual in the live show. It trusts
sound poetry as the prima donna or point of departure in order to build
a relationship with: musicality (accompaniment, rhythmical line), mime,
gesture, dance, (interpretation, extension, integration of the sound
poem), image (televisional, color transparency, as association, explanation,
redundancy, alternative), light, space, costumes, objects.
We’d like to start from a short quotation about Lied, before developing
the sixth and last point. “What in Lied is fused (italics is ours),
is not music and poetry as abstract entities, but a word and a melody
which move themselves round a lost subject...”.
Not by chance we have emphasized the verb ‘to fuse’ because
we think that all the experimental production of performance, from the
beginning of the century (Futurism, Dada) up to the recent Intermedia
work, crossing through Lettrism (from Artaud to Paul de Vree), operates
a fusion, mixing up various media, to the point they lose their own
characteristics, to get new ones. We are not so far from the concept
of ibridation introduced once by the canadian scholar McLuhan.
We believe that Polypoetry, far from criticising the past theory, has
surely the desire to clarify the performing action, following the attempt
of building up a new group, Polypoetry does not operate at all through
fusions or ibridations, but it keeps visible the role of protagonist
belonging to vocorality, see in it, sound poetry, capable of attracting
the dialogue with other media, without losing or forgetting its specific.
If one should employ mathematical percentage, one ought to say that
70% belongs to vocorality.
From this point of view, it fits our argument a statement done by Ilya
Prigogine, according to whom classic science was based on the balance,
on the stability; now, all the levels of observing the events are involved,
and we find ourselves in fluctuations, bifurcations and evolitive processes.
Well, just the fluctuations and the bifurcations are so typical of a
polypoetical research inside a line which is rigorously vertical, unlike
the horizontal one, which is representing the already mentioned historical
experimental experiences.
The practice could be represented by Xavier Sabater, Fernando Aguiar,
Endre Szkarosi, Clemente Padin, Laura Elenes, Michael lentz, Wladislaw
Kazmierczak, József Rocco Juház, Magnus Palsson, Enzo
Berardi, Luisa Sax, Tomaso Binga, Felipe Ehrenberg, Seiji Shimoda....
Although we could easily include many other performers who apparently
they declare to be far, but analysing their work, they are going towards
the same direction.
At the very end, we hope first of all to provoke reactions, it does
not matter how negative or positive they can be. Then, we are willing
to support the idea that Polypoetry does contain the same categories
of the ‘sublime’ as Lyotard has defined them.: no doubt that
it belongs to the avantgarde, then a polypoetical work tries to present
what is unprensatable, then words like ‘spectacularitation’
or ‘mediatization’, are perfectly coherent with a polypoetycal
approach which testifies once more as every day it gets true ‘the
missing of the object and the prevalence of the imaginary against reality”.
July 1999
Enzo Minarelli,
born in 1951 (graduated in a psycholinguistics thesis at the Venice
University) has been involved into the field of poetry and its relationships
with tthe sound, the writing, the video since the early Seventies.
He has published many books of poetry, among them “Poesie Doccaso”
(Reggio Emilia,1993) “Meccanografie” (Udine,1991), “Poemi
Cognomi” (Rome,1988), “El Poemméxico” (Mexico
City 1988), “Commediarcom” (Naple,1983), “Multipoesie
Melogrammatiche” (Mulino di Bazzano 1981), “Obscuritas Obscenitas”
(Mulino di Bazzano 1979).
Several sound editions in records and audiocassettes with collaborations
to international radios and tv; in 1983 he founds 3ViTre PAIR Editions
of Polypoetry, a record review. His sound poems are currently present
in many internationat archives. He is now directing special Baobab issues
about sound poetry in the world. In 1998, it comes out ‘Coralmente
me stesso’ a CD which assembles his recent sound poetry production.
In 1987 he writes the Manifesto of Polypoetry, an attempt to theorize
the live show of sound poetry, his polypoetical events (the Author calls
with the label Polypoetry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7...) have been performed
in Europe, Canada, U.S.A., Mexico, Cuba, Japan and Brazil.
As a videopoet, he has been producing with the Centro Video Arte di
Ferrara many videopoems since1982,and recently some videosoundpoetry
installations among them ‘The Flag’ (1989), ‘The Shop’
(1991) ‘The sky and the earth tell...’ (1998) by which he
has taken part to european and american festivals. ‘Videogrammi’
(1998) is a videocasette which presents his videoworks.
He still directs the Video Sound Poetry Festival, international meeting
wholly dedicated to the connections between the video image and the
sound of poetry, and Festival di Poesia Sonora, a symposium-festival
of polypoetry events, yearly held at DAMS, University of Bologna.
Many one-man shows about the poetry of the image, to be stressed the
anthological one-man show at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Zaragoza (Spain)
in 1986 and ‘Fonografias/Phonografies’ (Galleria Alphacentauri,
Parma, 1998). Next to the production of book-objects, the series of
picture on canvas called ‘Phonographies represent the central part
of his visual reasearch.
He has edited many shows of visual poetry in Italy, recently he has
been editor of italian selections for the reviews Dimensão (Brazil)
and Visible Language (U.S.A.).
He has been ‘visiting poet’ at thea San Francisco State University,
at the University of California in Davies, at the San Jose State University,
at the University of California in San Diego, at the San Diego State
University, at the Universidad Autonoma in Mexico City, at the Pontificia
Università Cattolica in São Paolo in Brazil.
Many critics have been writing about his work, to be pointed out at
least, Renato Barilli, Vittorio Fagone, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Wladimir
Krysinski and Paul Zumthor. |
