~ November 2014 ~

Beyond the Seen by Yana Djin

This new poetry film by Karen Mary Berr is based on a poem by Russian-American writer Yana Djin (website, blog). In a post on her blog, Berr noted:

It has been said her poetry offers no consolation, no ‘right’ solution to the tragedy of life, but paradoxically this is precisely the only one I needed when the time came for consolation.
Yana’s voice is a true voice, with no concession, no need for gilding, no lies.
She’s not only an inimitable writer, but a beautiful woman and an irreplaceable friend.

Type Motion exhibition opens in Liverpool

“FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) is the UK’s leading media arts centre, based in Liverpool,” according to their website. A new exhibition should be of particular interest to fans of videopoetry and poetry film.

This November, FACT is pleased to present the UK premiere of Type Motion, an exhibition featuring over 200 outstanding examples of text and typography being used alongside the moving image. The exhibition celebrates the creative possibilities of opening up uses of text far beyond print, and seeks to showcase not only the importance of writing, but how bringing it to life with movement is an artform in itself.

Kinetic text has emerged as an important sub-genre of poetry animation in recent years, spawning some of the most popular poetry videos on the Anglophone web. This exhibition sounds as if it might really help contextualize that. It’s on from November 13 through February 8, 2015.

UPDATE (Nov. 14): See Grafik magazine for a short selection of poetry films from the exhibition. I like their thumbnail history:

The avant-garde filmmakers of the early twentieth century were interested in liberating the then-new medium from those other media that were already considered art prior to their incorporation into film — theatre and literature, language and writing. Today, however, the conceptual integration and the creative visualisation of what had once been (ideologically) rejected as ‘un-filmic’ has become a growing trend. Artists now strive to interpret literary works in animated poetry-clips, transform literary idioms into filmic language and draw attention to the form of writing to visualise the content it conveys.

(Hat-tip: ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival group on Facebook)

Kaspar Hauser Lied / Kaspar Hauser Song by Georg Trakl

The recently concluded Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival Vienna challenged filmmakers to make a make a film with this poem by Georg Trakl, and screened the results just two days after the 100 anniversary of his tragic death. For those who wished to use English, festival organizers supplied a most excellent translation by Alexander Stillmark, as well as a reading in German by Christian Reiner. Many of the competition films have now been shared on Vimeo. UK director Maciej Piatek said about his film (above):

Before I started working on the video footage I had conducted a small study on Georg Trakl’s work. The poet himself was one of the most important Austrian Expressionists. As an avant-garde style, Expressionists cherished more emotional experience over physical reality. The starting point for me was to watch Werner Herzog’s “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser”. The movie had inspired me to carry out another research on Georg Trakl. This time I was studying the importance of colours in Georg Trakl’s poetry. The Kaspar Hauser Song incorporates colours into a text as much as the other poems by this poet. The main four colours I was focused on were: crimson, green, black and silver. According to Wiesław Trzeciakowski (,,Kolorystyka wierszy Georga Trakla”,kwartalnik-pobocza.pl) we could ascribe to each colour certain emotions and feelings. Therefore I tried to use those four colours as a foundation and structural framework of my film. Additionally I brought to the film an experimental/improvised music by Fanfare, a perfect background music based on live instruments and free unspoiled expression.

German director Susanne Wiegner‘s 3D animation style is instantly recognizable. Quoting from her description at Vimeo (spoiler alert; watch the video first):

The visualization of the poem is based on the inscription of Hauser’s gravestone where you can read in Latin: “Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious.” In the film, the typeface is three-dimensional and builds a sequence of spaces, that is passed by the camera. Images and videos are projected on the letters, that lights up in the dark like kaleidoscopic smithers of memory. By these means the epitaph becomes the abstracted path through Hauser’s life from the subtle, slightly colored experiences of nature to the gradually darken spaces of civilisation, to a confusing labyrinth. Towards the end of the poem, the camera leaves the typeface, the script becomes flat again and one realizes Kaspar Hauser’s headstone.

Swoon‘s take. He wrote about it in a recent blog post:

Once I had a finished [sound-]track I started working on the visuals. A combination of sources this time. Footage by Lauren Lightbody (I used parts of this years ago) and SeriesNegras combined with stuff I filmed myself last fall.
I wanted anything but sharp images…blurry feel, colours green and brown… I wanted the edited parts to project a feeling of travel or movement over a period of time and seasons. From contryside to the city from spring to fall.

https://vimeo.com/107221272

And finally, this film was

a collaboration between JosdenbroK (video) and Alfred Marseille (sound). The poem, Das Kaspar Hauser Lied, by Georg Trakl was written in 1913. Kaspar Hauser (30 April 1812 (?) – 17 December 1833) was a German youth who claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell. Hauser’s claims, and his subsequent death by stabbing, sparked much debate and controversy.

This was chosen as the winner of the competition. The statement from the jury reads (in English):

The art work in its graphic-abstract form offers versatile imaginative arrangement and a striking combination of drawn animation and moving image sequences to the text. Together with the coherent music composition a compelling work of art has been created. The film by Jos den Brok and Alfred Marseille on the text of Georg Trakl has been considered to the jury to be particularly outstanding and worthy to win the ART VISUALS Special Award 2014.

The nine other “Kaspar Hauser Lied” films screened at the festival may also be watched on Vimeo or YouTube, from directors Jutta Pryor, Nicolas Pindeus, Zooey Park, Dean Pasch, Othniel Smith, GRAF+ZYX, Justine Bauer, Karina Ille and Timon Mikocki.

On Loop by Christine Hooper

Struggling with insomnia last night, I kept thinking of this film by Christine Hooper—a Royal College of Art graduation film that’s gone on to win a whole raft of awards and screenings (I saw it at ZEBRA). The voice is provided by British comedian and actress Susan Calman, and the sound design is by Tom Lock Griffiths. As Michael Fukushima, the Executive Producer of the National Film Board of Canada, says:

The animation and cinematography are beautifully executed with spontaneity and verve that complements the liveliness of the monologue, and the Hockney-esque composition and playing with time sequencing is such an apt visual metaphor. An exceptional graduate film, showing enormous potential for a successful future.

Results of the Poetry Storehouse’s First Anniversary Contest

Remix Category results

by Erica Goss

From the judges (Dave Bonta, Erica Goss & Marc Neys):

The winner of best video for the Poetry Storehouse’s First Anniversary Contest is:

Marie Craven for “First Grade Activist”

(based on the poem by Nic S.)

Watch the video at Moving Poems’ main site.

In judging the contest, we looked for an overall fit between the poem, images and soundtrack. The winner had to demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the elements of video poetry, blending them to create an artwork that is more than the sum of its parts.

As we evaluated the contest entries, we watched the videos many times over. Dave watched each video on different days, to try to eliminate the influence of whatever mood he might be in at the time, while Marc says he looked at “the total package, the crafting, as in editing skills, original camerawork, and the visual concept and originality.” For my part, I watched looking for that indescribable quality that a good video poem has, the juxtaposition of poetry, sound and image that jumps from the screen.

We agreed that “First Grade Activist” has those qualities. Dave said it had a “great populist aesthetic, as is appropriate for the subject matter. The music is fitting and compelling. The split screen with text on the left is on one hand reminiscent of a classroom blackboard, and on the other just a good choice for a self-referential poem like this one. I like everything about it.”

I thought it dealt well with a subject that’s gotten a lot of attention lately: bullying. I love that the poem imagines a “first grade activist” who combats bullying with a poem praising her friend’s red hair, the very attribute she’s getting teased for. As the children march down the hallway, little ones first, we feel the pain of the child who doesn’t fit in and the courage of her friend, who imagines a way to help.

Marc added, “The video is as crisp and fresh as a first school day, with a strong and taut concept in a tight execution. Good rhythm and good use of split screen in combination with the poem on screen (and the use of red in the letters). The music brings it together and gives it a nice build up, while the visuals remain the same. The video is clever and actually lifts the poem to a higher level.”

Congratulations to Marie Craven for winning the contest, and thanks to all who sent in their work.

Disclaimer: Although Nic S.’s voice and poem are part of the winning video, she had no part in the judging of the contest.

Poetry Category results

by Jessica Piazza

At the Poetry Storehouse, we believe multi-genre work is truly special. The best ekphrastic art will draw from the spirit of two (or more) separate works to truly create something new, ideally allowing the very best of multiple genres to shine in a single work.

As the judge of the poetry portion of the 2014 Poetry Storehouse Anniversary Contest, I was excited to see the new life our entrants would breathe into our video offerings. How would they respond, I wondered, to Marc Neys’ dark, psychological clip, Eduardo Yagüe’s gritty but hopeful urban commentary or Lori Ersolmaz’s semi-expressionist land- and water-scapes?

We could not be happier with the answer to that question. We were looking for poems of individual merit, of course, but more importantly we wanted pieces that paired with the visual imagery to tease out ideas, nuances and feelings that neither poem nor video could evoke on its own. And we found them.

Thus, we are proud to congratulate the winner of the poetry portion of the 2014 Poetry Storehouse Anniversary Contest.

“Backward Like a Ghost” by Amy Miller

(based on a film by Lori Ersolmaz)

We also chose three runners-up, one for each video presented to contest entrants:

“Muscle Memory” by Michael Biegner

(based on a film by Lori Ersolmaz)

“Foretold” by Luisa A. Igloria

(based on a film by Marc Neys)

“I Was Grass” by Amy Miller

(based on a film by Eduardo Yagüe)

The poetry entries were screened by Marielle Prince and Jessica Burnquist, who were indispensable to this process. Thanks to them, and to Lori, Eduardo and Marc for creating such incredible videos for this contest.

Editor’s note: We’ll share the poems on the main site along with the resulting video remixes when they are completed. Stay tuned.

About the winners

Marie Craven (music, videos) began making independent films on celluloid in the mid 1980s as part of the super 8 group in Melbourne, Australia. She was involved in experimental and narrative filmmaking on 16mm and 35mm throughout the 1990s and the short films she directed were successful on the international festival circuit. Screenings included the festivals of Cannes, Rotterdam, London, Sydney and about 100 others. In the 2000s the digital age saw her finding special interest in newer technologies and the possibilities of internet collaboration. Since this time she has collaborated widely as a vocalist for electronic musicians around the world. More recently she has returned to audiovisual arts through poetry video.

Amy Miller’s poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Rattle, Spillway, Willow Springs, and ZYZZYVA. Winner of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod National Poetry Competition, judged by Tony Hoagland, she has been a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize, the 49th Parallel Award, and the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. She works as the publications manager of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and blogs at Writer’s Island.

Michael Biegner has had work published in Blooms and Silkworm, and has taken part in Florence Poetry Society’s annual poetry festival. His prose poem (“When Walt Whitman Was A Little Girl”) was converted into a video short by North Carolina filmmaker Jim Haverkamp, where it has traveled across the nation and overseas, winning best of show and other honors in various film festivals. He has been part of UMASS MFA program’s Juniper Institute, studying with poets such as Matea Harvey, Matthew Zapruder and Dan Chelotti. He has taken part in Patrick Donnally’s Writing Poetry for Performance workshops. Biegner received his M.Ed in Education and is currently studying for his MAT where he hopes to teach writing. He lives in Western Massachusetts with his wife of many years.

Luisa A. Igloria‘s books include Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, selected by Mark Doty for the 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow: Prose Poems (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2014), The Saints of Streets (2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, UND Press), Trill & Mordent (WordTech Editions, 2005), and 8 other books. Luisa has degrees from the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was a Fulbright Fellow from 1992-1995. She currently directs the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University. She enjoys cooking with her family, book-binding, and listening to tango music.

First Grade Activist by Nic S.

This film by Marie Craven is the remix category winner of the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest. The challenge was to “Create a remix (a video remix, an art collage, a soundscape, a sound collage, or surprise us) in response to any Storehouse poem currently up at the site.” Erica Goss, Marc Neys and I were the video judges, but in fact all the remix entries were videos, so our top pick was the category winner.

On the poetry side of the contest, Jessica Piazza picked a winner and three runners-up, and I’ll be sharing the resulting ekphrastic videopoems by Neys, Eduardo Yagüe and Lori Ersolmaz as they are completed. Please see the full announcement at Moving Poems Magazine. Let me just quote what Erica Goss wrote about why we selected First Grade Activist.

In judging the contest, we looked for an overall fit between the poem, images and soundtrack. The winner had to demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the elements of video poetry, blending them to create an artwork that is more than the sum of its parts.

As we evaluated the contest entries, we watched the videos many times over. Dave watched each video on different days, to try to eliminate the influence of whatever mood he might be in at the time, while Marc says he looked at “the total package, the crafting, as in editing skills, original camerawork, and the visual concept and originality.” For my part, I watched looking for that indescribable quality that a good video poem has, the juxtaposition of poetry, sound and image that jumps from the screen.

We agreed that “First Grade Activist” has those qualities. Dave said it had a “great populist aesthetic, as is appropriate for the subject matter. The music is fitting and compelling. The split screen with text on the left is on one hand reminiscent of a classroom blackboard, and on the other just a good choice for a self-referential poem like this one. I like everything about it.”

I thought it dealt well with a subject that’s gotten a lot of attention lately: bullying. I love that the poem imagines a “first grade activist” who combats bullying with a poem praising her friend’s red hair, the very attribute she’s getting teased for. As the children march down the hallway, little ones first, we feel the pain of the child who doesn’t fit in and the courage of her friend, who imagines a way to help.

Marc added, “The video is as crisp and fresh as a first school day, with a strong and taut concept in a tight execution. Good rhythm and good use of split screen in combination with the poem on screen (and the use of red in the letters). The music brings it together and gives it a nice build up, while the visuals remain the same. The video is clever and actually lifts the poem to a higher level.”

Congratulations to Marie Craven for winning the contest, and thanks to all who sent in their work.

The music in the soundtrack is by Dementio13, and the film footage is courtesy of the Prelinger Archives. See the contest results announcement for Craven’s bio.

On a personal note, I was pleased that the winning film was made with a poem by Nic S., even though this barely registered when I was evaluating the entries. Nic is of course the driving force behind The Poetry Storehouse, and added some of her poems at the beginning (as did I) mainly to set a good example and get the ball rolling. She works tirelessly to promote others’ poetry, lending her wonderful reading voice to many projects and creating a huge number of remixes herself, but her own poetry deserves to be much better known.

Robert Peake: Ten of My Favourite Animated Videopoems

This is the first of a projected series of “top ten” lists from a variety of contributors, intended to help new or occasional visitors to Moving Poems discover the best videopoems and poetry films. —Ed.

In animation, as in poetry, anything is possible. Both media also have a similar range, sweeping up everything from the surreal to the hyper-real, comedic to sublime. In this, they are well suited to collaboration. Here are ten videopoems that work as closely together as a practiced tango duet.

Homage to the Mineral of Cabbage by Stephanie Dudley, poem by Erín Moure (2011)

Simply gorgeous stop-motion animation, as dark and mysterious as the heart of a cabbage.

“Balada Catalana” (with English subtitles) by Laen Sanches, poem by Vicente Balaguet (2010)

A musical and imaginative bacchanal, I had to remember to shut my jaw after I first saw this.

Old Astronauts by Motionpoems, poem by Tim Nolan (2009)

Image and text perfectly tempered to the poet’s delivery.

“Of Care” by Ruah Edelstein (2011)

A deceptively simple poem unfolds through repetition, music, and imagery, drawing out the archetypal wisdom of a fable.

“Why do you Stay Up So Late?” by Ernesto Lavandera, poem by Marvin Bell (2004)

(Interactive, click here to begin)

An experimental interactive piece that beautifully matches the mood and timbre of this fine poem.

“Streamschool” („Patakiskola”) by Péter Vácz (2012)

Fluidity, beauty, and grace are evoked through stop-motion animation from this traditional Hungarian rhyme.

“Square Pears, Rare Bears” by Sharon Keighley, poem by Ed Barton (2009)

Deliberately low production values and literal depiction of this fast-paced linguistic romp heighten the delight.

“About Bigmouse” by Constantin Arephyeff, poem by Ludmila Ulanova (2008)

In this piece, music plays a central character around which the words and images dance.

“Brother” by HBO Family, poem by Mary Ann Hoberman (2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR3Rtmmi2lA

The story told through the animation gently enfolds and unfolds this simple poem. Read by Carrie Fisher.

“Four Years From Now Walking With My Daughter” by Liam Owen (2013)

A piece that bears re-viewing, as no attention to detail is spared, giving this touching poem a sense of familial care.

“Embrace the happy accidents”: an interview with filmmaker Lori H. Ersolmaz

This is the 20th in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” This time we talk with Lori H. Ersolmaz.


1. Would you briefly describe the remix work you have done based on poems from The Poetry Storehouse?


LHE:
My first remix was with Claudia Serea’s poem, The Moon and I was first drawn to it because of the subject, but I also fell in love with Nic S.’s voice. Narration is an art, and the smooth, soulful, sometimes sensual quality of Sebastian’s voice touched me immediately.

I am in the process of finding my own film poetry voice. I’ve been making short documentary films for almost ten years, but I get great satisfaction from creating remixes. I love filming and collecting footage which now finds a home in my remixes. With each new piece I reach for an abstract expression using image and sound. The first remixes I produced were more literal than I wanted and I prefer playing with the material—molding and shaping it. I have always loved print collage and I’m trying to experiment similarly with video. I tend to embrace the happy accidents I sometimes make and interrogate them in multiple ways. Jim Murdoch’s poem As Is, again with Nic S.’s narration, allowed me the freedom to express and insert some film accidents. The Poetry Storehouse 2014 Anniversary Contest also gave me the freedom to follow my instincts. It will be exciting to see what poem gets paired with it, as it was a different process than the other remixes I’ve done, which begin with the poetry.


2. How is The Poetry Storehouse different from or similar to other resources you have used for your remix work?


LHE:
Other remix resources I’ve had experience with are Freesound, Flickr Creative Commons and the Internet Archive. I find my experimental work is more successful when paired with a narrative, and poetry helps to inspire me to produce an experience based on the words I encounter on the page. I try to transform imagery, sound and audio effects with a strong narrative voice to hopefully create an altered meaning. Without a license to use the poetry the filmmaker has more production work to do, so Poetry Storehouse alleviates time and energy on what sometimes can be a lengthy process.

Poetry Storehouse’s model is fantastic because it’s free of any license to use the material and is an inclusive community of people who love poetry and want to see the audience for it expand. It’s a progressive idea to make poetry more accessible by marrying audio-visual techniques with narration to create a multimedia experience. We are a visual society and the synchronicity of the mediums can create a successful partnership. But I can also see how it could be gut-wrenching for the poets and I try to stay sensitive to their work.


3. What specific elements do you look for when you browse offerings at The Storehouse (or, what is your advice to poets submitting to The Storehouse)?


LHE:
I look for poems that resonate with me and I can potentially make a social commentary. Instead of going on a rant about a problem, for instance; trying to find a workman who can fix things in my 1920’s house, I was actually able to articulate my own experiences through a James Reiss poem, A Day in Ohio. Michael Dickes’ gritty voice had the perfect tone to deliver the narration and I merged my own footage with what I found on Internet Archive to say exactly how I felt about the matter, and although it may be a bit more of a literal depiction, I made my commentary nonetheless.


4. Talk about how the remixing process comes together for you — for example, does your inspiration start with a poem, or with specific footage, for which you then seek a poem? How does sound play into the picture for you?


LHE:
I always start with my mood and a poem that seems to fit it, or what’s happening at the moment. I’m constantly shooting new material because I also use my smart phone everyplace I go. I’ve always been a believer that creativity isn’t about the tool—it’s about an idea. If I see something, I stop and shoot immediately. Recently, I shot footage of two fish tanks at a local hospital when I was there for routine tests. At the same time we were bombarded by news reports about the outbreak of the Ebola virus. When I read Tara Skurtu’s poem Some Days Begin Like This, again it just jumped off the page for me. I immediately felt I could place it up against the fish tank imagery because the concept emulated my feeling about being in a fishbowl. I emotionally sensed the poem, having myself been in the hospital feeling somewhat anxious about the potential results. So far it’s my favorite piece, along with As Is. I was so happy to hear Tara Skurtu say that she “loved the remix.” I feel a responsibility to honor the poet and it’s terrific to get feedback, either way because I can learn more about the process and the audience’s reception.

I’ve always felt sound is extremely important, but I save it to the end. I play with multiple tracks laid over each other and create whatever intuitively feels right to me. I think my love of imagery sometimes overtakes the time I spend on the audio component.


5. Most Storehouse remixers are video-makers who combine a poem with video footage and a soundtrack, but all in very different styles. What have you learned from seeing how other remixers work?


LHE:
I’m new to this genre and am humbled by the great work of the poets and filmmakers. So far I’ve tended to produce more abstract work, but I’ve seen smart Storehouse films that showcase people and I’d like to include more people/figures into future remixes. Since I interview people so much for documentary work, I tend to move in a different direction for the remixes. Poetry Storehouse and Moving Poems are my go-to places for my personal educational awareness and to see new film poems, both on their websites and Facebook. There is just so much material to review and the articles, films and discussion are highly inspiring. I initially came to enjoy the genre three years ago after seeing a screening of several Nathaniel Dorsky films, which are without sound. I find the genre to be spiritual, lyrical and utterly sublime. I watch and make poetry films to stimulate creativity and to partake in a spiritual, “Zen-like” journey.


6. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience (or anything related)?


LHE:
I would like to encourage poets and others to provide narration for poetry remixes. I dislike my voice, so I prefer to not to record my own narrative. The Storehouse is a wonderful asset and I’m thrilled to be part of a community of talented and serious artists and poets. I was welcomed with open arms from the very beginning and since I started remixing, Nic S., Dave Bonta and the Storehouse poets have been very encouraging and supportive. Poetry Storehouse is a true gift to me, and I look forward to many more collaborations in the future, as well as finding ways to give back to the community.

Some Thoughts on Tom Konyves’ “Videopoetry – A Manifesto”

Of its definition.

Videopoetry1 is a genre of poetry displayed on a screen, distinguished by its time-based, poetic juxtaposition of images with text and sound. In the measured blending of these three elements, it produces in the viewer the realization of a poetic experience.

Presented as a multimedia object of a fixed duration, the principal function of a videopoem is to demonstrate the process of thought and the simultaneity of experience, expressed in words – visible and/or audible – whose meaning is blended with, but not illustrated by, the images and the soundtrack.

This definition is an interesting approach as Tom Konyves puts videopoems into the tradition of poetry, rather than film per se and therefore allows a media-specific transgression of the genre from the page to the stage to the screen. From a scholarly approach, this expansion provides a back-bone for analysis that one can rely on. The challenge that many teachers (especially from literature departments) face, but will hopefully embrace, is to stay open to new media developments and experimental art forms that have merged with poetry at specific points since the early 20th century and will continue to do so.

At this current juncture, I believe that it will be important to learn more about certain trajectories as well as about individuals, i.e. where videopoets see themselves aesthetically, ideologically, where they think they come from, who they felt was inspirational for their work and what it is that drives them into this complex relationship between words, images and sounds in a world that is already saturated with media. George Aguliar’s machinima Warriors of Aliveness is a vivid reflection of that current mode of existence. Poetry has always had the potential to express an alienation between the self and its environment for numerous reasons. In the course of a century, poetry has begun to adjust to and align itself with the visual arts and sound in order to continue to explore its own (up)rootedness and to branch out to new media art forms.

Consequently, it requires people in the arts and academia to see multiple strands of traditions and trajectories where the arts have crossed their creative paths. In my book Poetry Goes Intermedia (2010) I treat videopoems/Cin(E-) poems/poetry films as an intermedia art form, which requires an openness towards the sheer power of the intermedia arts that one can only hope will begin to flood universities. Some of the best works today – such as The Dice Player by Nissmah Roshdy – come out of media departments, so change is already happening. Where academia is still lagging behind is to introduce students (i.e. practitioners and non-practitioners alike) to a century-long practice of an art form that has so far largely been ignored. We need more experts who know about various styles of filmmaking as well as about new media art developments.

The vast collection of videopoems on Dave Bonta’s movingpoems site will help us to begin to see various forms of relations. By archiving and curating videopoems one may begin to be able to draw connections between them, such as, for example, “nature videopoems”, “feminist videopoems”, “anti-war videopoems” and many other thematic relations. The website will help us to investigate who creates these films and who collaborates with whom to be able to further explore where certain networks have emerged on a local and global scale.

The literary and oral legacy of written and recorded poetry provides artists globally with a range of poems that have not yet been put to screen. It is different with poems that are written for the screen. Opening oneself up to different media will put the verbal back into the picture (literally), which might be the one critical tool that keeps our responses to various forms of media in a productive distance and provides us with new perspectives on literary creations as well.

One unifying criteria that Tom Konyves proposes in order to define a videopoem is that it holds “a poetic experience.” It would be interesting to exchange ideas with people from various parts of the world as to see how they define a poetic experience, i.e. if it still retains its universal quality that it seems to have and whether this transcends the medium of verbal poetry. A poetic experience is something one can have in nature, in a city, by looking into the face of another person, as a response to injustice, to the news on television etc.– i.e. the source can be located anywhere (without ever even expressing it). It can also revolve around the construction of emotions, thoughts, images etc. that emerge from a digital remix that is driven by creative insights on previously mediated forms of poetic expressions. From the point of the viewer, in order to get in contact with this “poetic experience” on the screen, what may be the best place to experience a videopoem? A computer screen? A movie theater? A museum? A videopoet’s home studio? A handheld device?

If meaningful image-sounds-word relationships change and evolve, then so will our thoughts on these creative productions, and we will ultimately develop a critical language to analyze them together with our students, who will be more and more exposed to videopoems and new media art.

A question that comes up, and about which Tom Konyves goes into detail in his manifesto, is whether there are limitations with regard to the narrative mode and a poetic experience, and whether a visual impression can create this poetic experience despite or even because a documentary or narrative style accompanies it. How “poetic” do each of the media (verbal/sound/images) have to be? What makes this “balance”? What if the medial components blend perfectly, i.e. create a poetic experience, but are not necessarily juxtaposing each other as in one of my favorite short animated films, Ryan Larkin’s Walking, but as well in Billy Collins’ The Dead? In short, how does the art of blending come into play as opposed to the art of illustrating?

It seems to me that the poetic achievement of a verbal-visual-acoustic poetic experience on film can unfold in at least two interesting ways (and so many more and overlapping ones): one mode of poetic experience may come from the juxtaposed space between the medial components – i.e. something one learns from and appreciates in regard to the achieved discrepancy and disrupture. The second mode of poetic experience may thrive from connections between the media precisely because they are in sync with each other.

Yet, regardless of how analytically one may want to approach these questions, the power that videopoems hold is that they give us the chance to explore poetic experiences from many parts of the world, to collaborate and share them online, and to allow poetry to continue to shape us as human beings.

__________

lIn a German context the term videopoem may evoke a video tape and thus comes across as dated, but I am using the term here in my response as it points to Tom Konyves’ manifesto where it has many layers of meaning. (back)

Call for submissions: Text(e) Image Beat exhibition at Galerie Sans Nom

(The following press release is from Annie France Noël, co-director of the GSN.)

GSN logoThe Galerie Sans Nom (GSN) in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, is organizing a screening of videopoetry with the curators Daniel Dugas and Valerie LeBlanc. The exhibition will be presented from March 20 – May 1, 2015.

The work should be screen-based poems where the text, image and sound intermingle. The maximum duration of the work cannot exceed 5 minutes and must have been realized after January 2013. The works must be in either French or English. If the language in the video poem is other than French or English, the artist is required to submit a version that is subtitled in French or English. All video poems must be received by the December 15 deadline through a file hosting service (Dropbox) or through Vimeo. A short artist bio and synopsis of the video poem must accompany each submission.

No entry fee, CARFAC rates will be paid.

Deadline: December 15th, 2014

Submissions must include:

  • Director’s name
  • Address
  • Email
  • Duration
  • Year
  • Format
  • Link (Vimeo / Dropbox)
  • Previous screenings
  • Synopsis
  • Bio
  • Artist portrait (JPEG, 300 DPI)
  • Still image of video (JPEG, 300 DPI)

Submit as a WORD .doc attachment to: videopoesieGSN@gmail.com

Die liebe in den Zeiten der EU / Love in the age of the EU by Björn Kuhligk (Part 2)

As mentioned in Part 1, for the 2014 ZEBRA festival, filmmakers were challenged to make a film using a text by the young German poet Björn Kuhligk, with an English translation provided by Catherine Hales. The ZEBRA programme committee chose three best films; these are the other two — both animations, conceived and directed by the animators themselves.

Susanne Wiegner says about her film (above),

The film starts with a peaceful, blue sea scenery full of hope and light. The recitation of the poem begins, that describes in a very drastic way the treatment of the boat refugees by the European Union.
The sea scenery becomes dark and hostile and ends up in front of a wall. The ear-deafening noise of helicopters resounds.The camera pans upwards and one realizes that the walls were built by the European emblem and the whole scenery turns into the European flag. The helicopters disappears, the Fortress Europe “was defended successfully” once again.

The heraldic description of the European flag given by The Council of Europe is:
“Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars represent the peoples of Europe in a circle, a symbol of unity. Their number shall be invariably set at twelve, the symbol of completeness and perfection…Just like the twelve signs of the zodiac represent the whole universe, the twelve gold stars stand for all peoples of Europe – including those who cannot as yet take part.”
Council of Europe. Paris, 7–9 December 1955

Ebele Okoye’s animation, produced in Germany with the support of Shrinkfish media studios in Abuja, Nigeria, is the stand-out interpretation for me. Okoye’s summary reads:

Sometimes, we are like marionettes in the hands of those whom we have either consciously or
unconsciously chosen to please.
A visual adaptation of the poem “Die Liebe in den Zeiten der EU” by Björn Kuhligk.

In addition to the nicely oblique relationship between images and text, I thought the interplay of spoken and whispered lines worked brilliantly.

Address to VideoBardo 2104: Ocho Videopoemas

(Para leer la traducción en español, consulte la versión bilingüe de este trabajo en academia.edu.)

I hope that my selection of these Spanish-language works for VideoBardo 2014 will demonstrate that a successful videopoem will always transcend language and cultural boundaries; these eight artists are universal artists, well-versed in the art forms that have emerged with the technological advancements of our time; as well, they all possess the profound, innate understanding of what I often refer to in this genre as poetic juxtaposition.

At its best, videopoetry frames the fragmentary nature of our contemporary lives. It does not illustrate this vision as the happy encounter of words, images and music; it does not exploit or celebrate the technology that enables it to be experienced; videopoetry, as I see it, is a form of aesthetic expression that only reveres its elements – the word, the image, the sound – when each brings to the work what the others lack. For each of these elements, I believe, are inherently incomplete before brought into juxtaposition with the other two. Once juxtaposed, these incomplete elements acquire an entirely new function – what may have originated with a well-meaning text, a seemingly unrelated image or a captivating soundtrack, is found to present a new meaning, an unanticipated revelation, a videopoem.

 

Javier Robledo, POESIA (2007)
Ileana Andrea Gómez Gavinoser, COSMOS EN FORMACION (2006)
Alejandro Thornton, O (2014)
Dave Bonta, LAS OYES CÓMO PIDEN REALIDADES (2009)
Oscar Berrio, VERTIGO (2010)
Dier, TODOS ESOS MOMENTOS SE PERDERAN (2011)
Azucena Losana, LoCo PAPARAZZI III (2009)
Lola López-Cózar, EL ETERNO RETORNO (2013)

 

Javier Robledo’s 2007 performance-poem is structured in 3 parts. In the first, the poet/artist follows a magical “bulging” that is occurring along a typical cobblestone street. He discovers one perfect 6-sided cobblestone; painted on each of its 6 faces is a letter that, when held and turned by the hand of the artist reveals its new identity – the word, P-O-E-T-R-Y. Like throwing dice, the stone is thrown by the artist, picked up and examined (lovingly, I might add) then thrown again.

What comes to mind is Stéphane Mallarmé’s visual poem, “A Throw of the Dice”. Robledo is thus associating POETRY with both chance and play.

In the second part, the magical aspect of “poetry” is emphasized by reversed motion film: the stone appears to be rolling back to the hand that had thrown it. Text (the word POETRY painted and spelled out on the stone) and image (the stone rolling forward, then rolling backward) are integrated to produce a poetic experience.

In the third part, the stone is shown exhibited on a pedestal pushed back into a corner of an art gallery or a museum; it has become an object to be experienced at a distance, by a public whose presence is only implied by chattering voices heard on the soundtrack. Robledo’s comment suggests that poetry – living poetry – is exemplified by action, by chance, by play. It does not belong in a museum with other dead objects. It must be experienced in our everyday lives, in our streets, in our hands.

 

In Ileana Gavinoser’s Cosmos en Formacion three techniques of art-making – painting, collage and animation – are presented as a visual metaphor for the formation of the universe. What completes or fixes this work in the rectangular frame of the screen is the ingenious addition of a reverberating effect to the narration of an androgynous creator – in the “form” of two overlapping voices (male and female) – rendering this version of the creation myth as if delivered from “outer” space.

 

One distinction I have observed between a pure videopoem and most “poetry videos” is the presence of self-referentiality. Nowhere is this aspect better exemplified than in Alejandro Thornton’s minimally titled work, O. It opens on a locked-off shot of a moving landscape stamped at the centre with a gigantic letter O. After 12 seconds, the frame containing the image slowly begins to rotate. In its revolution about the fixed sign of the letter O, the moving landscape is reduced to a demystified representation of any image displaced from our screen. This videopoem not only performs the function of a traditional concrete poem (presenting meaning by its physical shape), it demonstrates the collaborative property of the image. Self-referentiality removes the narrative propensity of the work; the moving landscape loses its original meaning in favour of the word (in this case the letter O representing the world, or at least circularity).

 

It is becoming evident that one of the primary sources for the text element is a previously published/written poem. Dave Bonta’s adaptation of a Pedro Salinas poem presents what I am seeing as a critical question for the genre of videopoetry. If the poem written-for-the-page was perfect, the best words in their best order, so to speak, was the motivation to appropriate the poem based on the notion that a new platform/medium was in order to disseminate the work? Alternately, using the poetic juxtaposition of visual and sound elements, did the filmmaker discern a specific attribute or collaborative property of the poem that could be subsumed in the new, original work? I think Las oyes cómo piden realidades was a result of the latter. In this videopoem, the image of a nest of snakes provides a constrained visual metaphor for each reference to “they” “these” and “them” in Salinas’ reading: “these wild and dishevelled ones” “they beg” “they can’t go on living” “help them” etc. One lasting impression that differentiates a “pure” videopoem from any other “poetry video” is that you will always associate the text you read (or hear) with the image(s) and the soundtrack it was created with. After viewing this work, how can we not help but associate this poem by Pedro Salinas with a nest of garden snakes?

 

Oscar Barrio’s Vertigo opens with the sound of two blasts of a train’s whistle and the footsteps of a man walking. What follows is the rapid-fire voiced repetition of the word “abismo” (abyss) interjected with fragmented phrases, a virtual torrent of words. Juxtaposed with the fast-paced soundtrack is the silhouette of a man walking from left to right across the screen superimposed on an over-exposed color-saturated image of train cars speeding in the opposite direction. For me, this 73-second work best exemplifies the function of a videopoem – “to demonstrate the process of thought …”

If one were to search for meaning in the fragmented phrases of this veritable stream-of-consciousness, it could be found in the nutshell of Nietzsche’s Aphorism No. 146, “When you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

 

I have written extensively of the Madrid-based graffiti artist Dier’s videopoem, All These Moments Will Be Lost. Appropriating what at least one contemporary philosopher referred to as “perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history”, Dier makes a case for interpreting graffiti and its removal as the loss of memory among the disenfranchised in the world. It is also a case for an indirect form of narrative storytelling, juxtaposing images of the real world with the sorrow expressed in fiction; in this videopoem, Dier suggests that truth and fiction are not only equal in their strangeness but also partners in the struggle for change.

 

Between 1930 and 1933, the Surrealists published 6 issues of the periodical “Surrealism in the Service of the Revolution”, marking a significant transformation of the movement that began with the introduction of the irrational to the art practices of writing, painting, sculpture, performance and film. Political and social activism became the focus of many artists who shared the movement’s methodology as well as its expanded ideology. Asucena Losana is no stranger to political and social activism. Appropriating Bolivian poet Oscar Alfaro’s famous poem-fable, The Revolutionary Bird, for its soundtrack, this videopoem illuminates the poem’s allegorical meaning in a singular image of a homeless man sitting against the wall of his sidewalk, surrounded by his belongings stuffed in plastic and burlap bags, the focalized subject whose animated loco gestures appear to blend with and inevitably articulate the impassioned reading of the poem. Associating the gesticulations with the voice on the soundtrack exemplifies Andre Breton’s statement, that “Bringing together two things into a previously untried juxtaposition is the surest way of developing new vision.”

 

To conclude this program of 8 Spanish videopoets, I selected el eterno retorno from the prolific Lola Lopez-Cozar. Breton’s “new vision” is here exemplified by the juxtaposition of a slow relentless ascent of words with a dark score of orchestral and choral music. Simultaneously, we witness as rain falls, its hundreds of hard-hitting drops mimicking the punctuated end of each sentence that is moving in the opposite direction. Each line of text presents a new attempt to name the unnamable meaning of time and loss. It is a relentless list of attempts, punctuating the end of every attempt with a period. The repeated refrains of the choir invoke an epic moment – the return of the king in a classical fairy tale – but the orchestral treatment also speaks to another return, the cyclical myth-concept of the “eternal return”; this title, the subject of the work, is viewed through the doubled image of hard rain falling, text rising with the rhythm of the chant – all enveloped in the viewfinder of a video camera, flashing its record button to remind us that, after all, this is a work limited by its own time, the time it takes to experience a videopoem.