NYAB Event - "Telefone Sem Fio: Word-Things of Augusto de Campos Revisited" Exhibition

"Telefone Sem Fio: Word-Things of Augusto de Campos Revisited" Exhibition

EFA Project Space

This event has ended.

EFA Project Space partners with Telephone to present a unique venture inspired by concrete poet, Augusto de Campos. The exhibition and corresponding publication "Telefone Sem Fio: Word-Things of Augusto de Campos Revisited" uses de Campos's work as a catalyst for a multi-disciplinary exercise in which a group of artists and poets have been invited to create "translations" in their own language and medium. EFA Project Space joined with Telephone in order to conceive of an exhibition that connects the poetry and visual art communities, and to illustrate this connection through process rather than by more obvious means. The resulting show and publication follow the rules of Telephone which, mimicking the children's game of "Telephone," focuses on the work of one poet that is then translated multiple times in a variety of ways.

De Campos, along with his brother Haroldo and poet Decio Pignatari, promoted and defined concrete poetry as a "tension of thing-words in space-time." They sought to reduce language to its essential components of letters and sounds in order to re-create a language that blurs the sensory lines of speech, sight, and sound with time. The Brazilian sector of the concrete poetry movement is characterized by the "verbivocovisual," a term from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Bringing to mind the combined sensory episodes experienced by synaesthetes, de Campos pushed boundaries of traditional text usage by introducing light, color, aesthetic arrangement of letters and words, sound and animation. Decades later much of de Campos' work and influence is only known obscurely in the U.S.

The poets and artists invited to participate in this project have practices that exist across a continuum of text, sound, and visual expression. They were asked: How do we look at such text/objects now? How do we enable this strange case of spatial and temporal translation-from Brazil to the U.S. and from the mid 20th century to the 21st century? How can we re-inject the heart of the original sentiment and intention into our current context?

The hybrid nature of de Campos's work has naturally elicited hybrid responses and many of the artists have made concerted efforts to physically interact with the content and literally reanimate it. Brendan Fernandes translates the original SOS animation into a Morse code pattern across the gallery floor that suggests a choreography for how viewers move through the space; Andrea van der Straeten interprets the same poem through sign language and an installation of cast shadow effected by a gentle breeze; Dannielle Tegeder sends the viewer on 'scavenger hunts' through New York Public Library Archives, requiring that one locate an authentic De Campos publication in order to retrieve his or her inserted original work on paper response; Brazilian artist team Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain revisit Pulsar, a pivotal animation and sound piece, to create the Flash animation "Amplitude" which uses a numeric formula to rewrite the poem in a language of concentric circles.

Many of the poets took this opportunity to push the boundaries of their genre by producing new works which-- like Kenneth Goldsmith's digital maps-- explore how the "concrete" can be incorporated into conversations happening currently around conceptual writing and translation; Jen Bervin refashioned de Campos's impossible/verbal city, "cidade, city, cite" in silver paper; Steve Savage and Benjamin Moreno produced interactive works which literally require the space--albeit a digital one--in order for the user to "read" them. These are not standard poems. The contributions are as varied as the means of translation itself.

[Image: Augusto de Campos "Codigo" (1973)]

Media

• Drawing
• Installation
• Digital

ADVERTISE ON NYAB